While Green Day‘s new album is only to be released in February 2020, I’m already starting this album review now, September 2019. 5 months before the release. Why? Because this album has caused some uproar already when they released the first single of the album, also named ‘Father of All Motherfuckers’. It was silent for a long time at camp Green Day and then boom: New album and the Hella Mega Tour announcement. Cool, very cool, but the first single is not lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong’s original voice. I get it, they want to be controversial and stuff. But Billie’s voice sounds much better natural than with layers of effects on them. 

And then, they played Father of All Motherfuckers live at Jimmy Kimmel for the first time. And man, that song rocks. It’s fast, it’s different. Billie can hit the high notes really well. In my opinion, this song sounds so much better natural than with all the voice effects on it. In an interview Billie said that he wanted to sing like Prince and so he did. I have to say, he is a very talented vocalist. 

Anyway, in that same interview things started to get weird. Billie said he didn’t like long songs. But wait… didn’t you also write ‘Jesus of Suburbia’, ‘Homecoming’ and ‘Dirty Rotten Bastards’? All of these songs are about 10 minutes long, and you just said you don’t like long songs? Or he just drastically changed his mind or, could this be a troll record? They are already speaking about another album in 2020… It looked like they were messing with the record label. A full record needs to be 25 minutes long. Father of All Motherfuckers is, well, 26 minutes long. Their contract with their current label Warner has ended and this is the last album on that contract. 

Let’s talk about the album cover. They basically recycled the American Idiot cover and wrote the album name on the arm and put a unicorn over the word Motherfuckers cause it’s a bad word. Their argument: ‘Cause nothing says fuck you like a unicorn’. Ok… I guess?

Later on they released ‘Fire, Ready, Aim’. Which was used for the American hockey sports promotion. 

The third single for this album is called ‘Oh Yeah’, a song close to my heart. It talks about how everybody is a star and everybody is on their phones all time. People are too busy watching what others do to be actually alive themselves. 

With that, they’ve probably released the most exiting songs on the album. Maybe I just have to get used to it. I’m still not 100% convinced that this isn’t a joke. I mean, Green Day would never release something that they wouldn’t agree 100% with themselves, but it just feels a bit off. It’s not a bad album, but it starts with a blast and energy. and then it just misses that Green Day feeling. That feeling of emotion going though your body. Music that grabs you form the inside. I’ve sang along with the song Father of All Motherfuckers a lot. It took me a while to get used to that one as well. But at this moment I feel that they put out a quick album to show everybody what the world is like. Just a quick note. The next album will be the latest greatest thing and this one can be the little brother. 

This album has a, let’s call it a Rock ‘n’ Roll and a rock lite sound to it. Green Day doesn’t like the term pop punk or pop rock, cause they don’t agree with the image pop music has, so rock lite it is. It’s groovy, it’s rocky, it definitely is a Green Day album with some great rock ‘n’ roll sounds but without the emotion that, let’s say, Boulevard of Broken Dreams create or Still Breathing to take one of their later songs. Or Ordinary World, which is not a rock song but brought with heart. But this album definitely says Fuck you with a capital F. This album has a ‘back to basics’ feel to it. Yet with some creative new vocals on it. Green Day dares to try new styles and I appreciate that. I just feel that there is something big that yet has to come. Probably soon.

So, a few days after the album was released, Green Day did an interview with iHeart Radio. Billie Joe Armstrong said that, just to piss people off, he was going to call this album American Idiot 2: Father of All Motherfuckers. So that’s why we can see the ‘recycled’ American Idiot cover. They just ended up only using the last part of the title. Billie is also the one who drew the unicorn over the bad word so it wouldn’t get censored. And guess what, in that same interview Green Day confirms that they recorded 16 or 17 songs and that they picked 10 out of those 16 or 17 songs to form this album. The others will be released as well. Another album that is coming soon just has been confirmed. 

To make a long story short, Father of All Motherfuckers is definitely a Green Day album with a lot of fucks to the world. It’s a rock ‘n’ roll album with some lighter songs on it as well. I do still think this is a fast short one to give another fuck you away, but it’s a good fuck you.

Be sure to check Green Day out at the Hella Mega tour together with Fall Out Boy and Weezer! They’ll be visiting Belgium in the Sportpaleis in Antwerp on June 17, 2020.

Release date: February 7, 2020.
Label: Reprise Records
Tracklist:

1. Father of All …
2. Fire, Ready, Aim
3. Oh Yeah!
4. Meet Me on the Roof
5. I Was a Teenage Teenager
6. Stab You in the Heart
7. Sugar Youth
8. Junkies on a High
9. Take the Monkey and Crawl
10. Graffitia