Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
For Icarus, the fall from grace was too much to survive, the hubris shown in the face of the gods a damning streak of complacency, self righteousness that smacks the face of those that display it. Icarus had no return, falling from the height that no human could withstand the impact from. Icarus had no way back but for Green Day, the almost smug delivery that preceded the trilogy of releases in 2012 over a four week period; thankfully has been washed clean, there is a taste for redemption, salvation and it is o ne that they plainly had to extradite themselves from before it became too late.
To have brought out the trilogy in the manner that they did was enough to make many fans question just exactly what was going through the mind of the band, such hubris never ends well and for Billie Joe Armstrong, the cracks showed, a decent man, a great thinker and lyric writer, the strain was too much. Time is the healer, talent the key and whilst the band’s new album, Revolution Radio, doesn’t live up to the extreme high that saw the band soar and glide towards the sun in the albums Insomniac, American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown, it does at least show that the genius still resides, that the beating heart of post-punk anarchy and anger still has the ability to converse with its audience.
The fact that Revolution Radio has more going for it in one small album than the misery inflicted upon the ears in ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré! speaks volumes, the fall from touching the rays of the sun thankfully not fatal, the mortal blow only needed Time to heal the wounds and it is one that many will celebrate; nobody wants to see a great band suffer in such a way, nobody likes to see a group destroyed by their own insistence.
Although the new album doesn’t immediately grab the listener in the same way that the Progressive American Idiot did, it still has plenty to reflect upon, it has found its voice and it resonates and stirs, pound like waves crashing against the might of a cliff face. In the songs Say Goodbye, Outlaws, Too Dumb To Die and the sadly prophetic Troubled Times, the Green Day machine starts to whirr back into action and it is with hand on heart a pleasure to have the band back to their old selves.
An album many might have feared would never be realised, revolution is not always about claiming something new, it is often just as important to face the upheaval to bring back the old.
Ian D. Hall