Review: Green Day remind us exactly why they are God’s favourite band

Green Day – ‘Greatest Hits: God’s Favorite Band’ – 17/11/17
10/10

When you release a greatest hits album with the title ‘God’s Favourite Band’ it would be fair to say you’re making quite the statement. Only a few bands are good enough to get away with it, and one of them is certainly Green Day.

For a band going strong for over 30 years now, of course this wouldn’t be Green Day’s first greatest hits album, but with their back catalogue you would not expect to find only one disc in you’re CD case (that’s presuming some of us still buy physical copies of course). With over a dozen albums they have rinsed out just 21 (& a brand new track) onto the new album to remind us just how good they really are.

 

Throwing us back to 1991 and their opening track from album ‘Kerplunk’, ‘Two Thousand Light Years Away’ feels exactly that as we hear Green Day stripped back to their raw punk roots, and if that isn’t enough to make you feel old, you should definitely check out their recently uploaded video for the track literally “Taking you on a trip down memory lane” as stated by the band themselves.

Arguably one of Green Day’s best albums ‘Dookie’ would be sold short without at least four of its best tracks involved in any greatest hits album. ‘Longview’, Welcome To Paradise’, ‘When I Come Around’, and the pop punk belter ‘Basketcase’ all feature nice and early in the track listing to have you bouncing out of your armchair in no time. ‘She’ is also thrown in just for good measures.

Speeding things up we fly through the years with the likes of ‘Brain Stew’, the beautiful ‘Good Riddance’ and the dangerous ‘Warning’ before we hit the second huge milestone in Green Day’s career. If one good thing came from the presidency of George W Bush, it would be the political fuelled reaction of Green Day in the form of their super hit album ‘American Idiot’. Written with angst, inspired by contemporary political events such as the war in Iraq and George Bush himself, ‘American Idiot’ became one of the biggest benchmarks in music history with its fuelled lyrics and driven riff. Leaving it out of this album would be criminal. Joining closely are ‘Holiday’, ‘Boulevard Of Broken Dreams’, and the tear wrenching ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’ which all hold just as strong a message as the other.

The Greatest bands in the world would struggle to outdo ‘American Idiot’, but Green Day continued with moments of brilliance from album to album. ‘Know Your Enemy’ and ’21 Guns’ taken from ‘21st Century Breakdown’ follows before a leap forward to the energetic ‘Bang Bang’, the beautiful ‘Still Breathing’ and ‘Ordinary World’ pick out highlights from the recent ‘Revolution Radio’.

You can’t help but notice the absence of anything from the trio of 2012’s albums ‘Uno!’ ‘Dos!’ and ‘Tré!’, but in honesty they had little to question replacing anything on the album. You could reel off a list of tracks not included on this album that could quite easily feature, but that’s just evidence of the bands success and talent over the past 30 years.

Brand new track ‘Back In The USA’ closes off the album with more than a little quirky dig at America’s current affairs with Donald Trump causing chaos across the US lighting some of that fuel that wasn’t quite burnt out from ‘American Idiot’ back in 2004.

It’s a fantastic album of punk rock anthems and memories for many, but is likely to be the inspiration for new younger fans of music should they fall across this album. With a little reminder of Green Day’s dominance in the form of this album, we’re pretty damn sure the big man upstairs is more than pleased with his favourite band!

 

Danny Peart
Danny Pearthttps://www.dannypeartphotography.co.uk
Editor / Live Music Photographer / Journalist at Soundcheck-Live

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