Green Day – Saviors

Green Day are back with their 14^th studio album, and well into the fourth decade of their illustrious music career. The band have carved out a unique brand of popular punk rock, and Saviors doesn’t budge much from that.

The album crashes in with The American Dream is Killing Me, the first single to be released off the album, and it’s a classic angst-ridden track with a thumping chorus, drawing on familiar themes of despair towards American values. Look Ma, No Brains! is fast-paced and upbeat but holds a darker meaning with themes of self-hatred and suicide ideation. Bobby Sox is a definitive highlight on the record with its screaming chorus and heavy guitar work, it could have been released 20 years ago and would have happily fitted in with the grungey releases of the turn of the millennium, and One Eyed Bastard is even better, ensuring it’ll stick in your head and verging on anthemic.

Green Day have a knack for creating timeless popular punk songs, reeling against the pitfalls of modern life and the political powers of America. Despite parallels being drawn on specifics, these songs often turn out to be easily adapted to any time in recent history. Take 2002’s massive hit American Idiot, written under George W Bush’s presidency and during the much criticised Iraq War, but since then has been used to criticise the more recent (and much more polarising) ex-American president Donald Trump.

Saviors is full of anger at political systems, and it occasionally seems to take aim at the general public. No issue/staple of modern Western culture is safe from a mention: TikTok, Uber, the Fentanyl Epidemic, suicide, addiction… there are plenty of them.

There are some fun rock ‘n’ roll tracks, notable the extremely catchy high-school-drama-soaked Corvette Summer, the aptly named 1981, and the powerful Goodnight Adeline. Much of the second half of the album becomes less punk, with melodic verses and occasional 50s and 60s rock ‘n’ roll influences, particularly on the more sombre Susie Chapstick.

The title track Saviors pops up towards the tail end, and it’s nice enough but not a particular highlight. In fact, as the album draws to a close it does feel like it could have been stronger if they’d left out a couple of tracks in the second half, and maybe Saviors could have been one of them.

This is a fun record with anger, confusion and disdain for the modern world at its centre. Green Day fans will be happy with another belter of punk angst, and while there is an insatiable appetite for anger at the world, the band is bound to collect more fans along the way.

Hannah Broughton
Images: Alice Baxley

Saviors is released on 19^th January 2024. For further information or to order the album visit Green Day’s website here.

Watch the video for the single The American Dream is Killing Me here: