 
I have been a fan of Green Day since the mid 90’s
so when they announced that they were releasing
a trio of albums over the period of five months
I was excited yet slightly cautious at the fact
that there was far too many rumours going around
on how the new albums were going to see Green
Day go back to their punk rock roots, whilst other
rumours said that it was going to be a cross between
AC/DC and the Beatles and that topped off with
my own thoughts of have Green Day just bundled
together a lot of B-sides and unused tracks from
throughout the years to make up the albums.
Green Day wasted no time in previewing new tracks
from ‘Uno!’ with ‘Oh Love’
being the first single taken from the album and
as soon as I heard ‘Oh Love’ I become
disappointed with just how slow paced, repetitive
and generally bland sounding it was, weeks later
Green Day released another teaser track and this
time it was ‘Kill The DJ’ which happened
to be yet another repetitive track which I disliked
even more than ‘Oh Love’ but then
out of nowhere Green Day unveiled ‘Let Yourself
Go’ the third track to be taken from the
album which was a simple punk rock by numbers
track and straight away I was hooked.
‘Uno!’ has now been released and I
can confirm that it has been worth the wait and
all the doubts as mentioned above were wiped away
minutes into the album as with ‘Uno!’
Green Day have created a solid sounding 12 track
album which runs for just over 40minutes and gone
are the long complicated yet well loved political
concepts of ‘American Idiot’ and ‘21st
Century Breakdown’ and in is a random collection
of songs with each song sounding and flowing different
from the last creating a very diverse sounding
album.
The album opens with ‘Nuclear Family’
a song which has classic Green Day written all
over it, the well loved Mike Dirnt bouncy basslines
are there, Tre Cools constant lets bash the shit
out of my drum setting drumming is there, Billie
Joe Armstrong’s catchy riffs are there and
vocally Billie Joe Armstrong is full of the tricks
of the trade with melodic vocals, a few random
screams and a 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 countdown which perfectly
closes the song.
The great thing with ‘Uno!’ is one
minute you can be listening to a simple track
like ‘Stay The Night’ and then the
likes of ‘Carpe Diem’ comes on and
you might think you are back listening to the
‘21st Century Breakdown’ album, and
then ‘Let Yourself Go’ comes on leaving
you thinking that Green Day have go back to the
early 90’s to challenge that era of punk
bands again.
It is very hard to pick a standout track from
the album as they are all good in their own way,
even ‘Oh Love’ and ‘Kill The
DJ’ have grown on me after a number of listens,
but I will say the likes of ‘Let Yourself
Go’, ‘Angel Blue’, ‘Rusty
James’ are easily some of my favourite tracks
on the album at the moment but I am sure if I
was asked again in a week’s time this wouldn’t
be the case.
I feel Green Day have done well with ‘Uno!’
it is a fantastic collection of songs which have
clearly been influenced by their whole back catalogue
as elements of every single Green Day album can
be found here in some shape or form, only time
will tell what direction Green Day go in with
‘Dos!’ and ‘Tre!’ but
in the meantime there is more than enough here
to keep the fans happy until then.
4/5
Review by Trigger
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