By
Maggie Burnett
Grade: C-
The first word that comes to mind while listening to Green Day's latest release, Warning, is "disappointment." Compared to the band's earlier CDs, Warning plays out slowly and with a more "immature" sound.
In other words, it seems as though Green Day's sound has shifted to the teeny-bopper side of music. Oh, the humanity!
Green Day released its first CD "39/Smooth" (re-released as "1,039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours") in 1990, four years before the popular single "Basket Case" hit the radio waves. Despite paramount success with the following albums Dookie, Insomniac and Nimrod, Green Day seems to have regressed to pop-beats and, in essence, an anti-punk sound in Warning.
There seems to be no song on the new album that sounds even remotely like Green Day's former productions. Where is the angry-white-male aggression we know and love? For example, the eighth track, "Hold On," incorporates a harmonica and tambourine into the main instrumentation of the song. How much more 1960s can this song get?
Even the album's title track lacks the substantial punk beat that made Green Day popular in the first place. Much of the song is sung in harmony. The fact that the guys are singing slow enough for the listeners to actually understand every word they are saying proves Green Day has lost its edge.
Although the songs on Warning are not completely miserable and torturous to the ears, Green Day fans desperately in love with the band's signature punk sound have little to look forward to on this album. The title of the disc should have been Warning: Green Day Sold Out. Now that's a disappointment.
