Who would have guessed that Green Day, one of the last punk bands standing, would still be churning out music that rocks after seven albums. 21st Century Breakdown, the band's eighth release, produced by Butch Vig is a mix of punk, ballads and classic rock that follows a young couple in love through three acts of a disintegrating America.
Act I: Heroes and Cons
Heroes and Cons, the first act of this epic style album, includes tracks 2-7. The first song in this act, 21st Century Breakdown, is Billy Joe Armstrong's proclamation of his generation's failures. The next song, Know Your Enemy, asks "Do you know your enemy?" and answers "Silence is the enemy".
Know Your Enemy is then followed by a punk ballad, Viva La Gloria! which starts off slow and then makes an immediate switch to fast Green Day style rocking. The rock opera then presents Before the Lobotomy, another song that starts out slow and ambient, but then morphs into a heavier rock that sounds as if influenced by Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.
Track 6, Christian Inferno is more alternative sounding than the first five songs. Armstrong's vocals are nearly drowned out by the music for the first 37 seconds of the song, an effect obviously done on purpose, then repeated again midway through the song.
Last Night On Earth is the last track in the first act. A beautiful, gushing love song which no doubt will be played as a hip alternative for slow dancing at many upcoming high school proms.
Act II: Charlatans and Saints
Act II of the rock opera, Charlatans and Saints, includes tracks 8-13 of the album. The first song in this act, East Jesus Nowhere sounds like someone is turning the knob manually on an old radio. Armstrong's whispering voice, at one part in the song, adds drama to this already exotic sound.
Peacemaker and Last Of The American Girls are tracks 9 and 10 respectively, both are mediocre songs right in the middle of the album. The following song, Murder City, speeds things up again as it is the most punk, and the fastest song on the album.
Track 12 is another Viva La Gloria?, but this title has a question mark at the end while the previous one has an exclamation point. It is a fairly strange type of melodrama music, that somehow fits with the details of the previous old style effects used in the first, sixth and eighth tracks.
The last song in this second act is Restless Heart Syndrome, and it's good. It may be the closest to a classic sounding rock song that they will ever come.
Act III: Horseshoes and Handgrenades
The third and final act, Horseshoes and Handgrenades, features tracks 14-18 of the album. The first song in this act, the aptly titled Horseshoes and Handgrenades, is a rock worthy Green Day song complete with explicit lyrics and some screaming.
The Static Age, is the next track which is dominated by drums, and then dwarfed by the deep and questioning song, 21 Guns that follows it. 21 Guns is political. It's a song about Americans opening their eyes to the facts about war.
American Eulogy and See The Light are the last two songs in this last act. American Eulogy begins like the first song of the album, Song of the Century, which features Armstrong singing acappella on an old phonograph, then gets fast while repeating the mantra, "I don't wanna live in the modern world".
Two additional tracks of Know Your Enemy and The Static Age, both live exclusives, are also included at the end of the album.
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