21st Century Breakdown - Green Day

Although in their late 30's, no one can connect with Generation Y's angst like Green Day. The Bush Administration has left the spirit of the country in shambles and Obama is not (yet, anyway) the Superman who could make things go back to the way they were in the Clinton years. In 21st Century Breakdown, Green Day gets angry and goes on the offensive, attacking the government, the religious right and the sensationalist media en mode de Rock Opera. Now, one may think this all sounds similar to American Idiot, but this new effort is a lot better both lyrically and musically.

There is a reason why critics everywhere are calling Green Day the new Who, Rock Opera's pioneers. Billy Joe Armstrong — the guitarist, lead singer and lyricist of the band — is the turn of the century's Pete Townshend, seamlessly weaving the story of two Detroit kids struggling in the post-Bush era. The teen couple named Christian, a semi-neoconservative churchgoer, and Gloria, an emotionally guarded anarchist, begin to change each other and themselves as the world crumbles around them because of the myopic views of religion, the media and the government. On the album's eponymous track, "21st Century Breakdown," Armstrong sings, "We are the cries of the class of 13 / Born in the era of humility/ We are the desperate in the decline / Raised by the bastards of 1969." I don't know about you, but this is the way I feel as a young American. Suddenly, because of the mistakes of these "old heads," we have to live with the plethora of possibilities that could cause Judgment Day? Now, the quacks claiming Nostradamus prophesied the world's end in three years (around 2012-13) sound more and more convincing.

To add to The Who comparison, the music on Breakdown displays so much more depth and variety than American Idiot. The latter album had only two kinds of songs — hard anthems and soft anthems. However, every song on Breakdown is different and, for the most part, exciting. One song in particular, "Horseshoes and Handgrenades" reminded me a lot of The MC5's "Kick out the Jams." If people doubt that Green Day can rock out anymore, I would suggest that they listen to this track. To add to that, another favorite of mine was "Peacemaker" just because there is no way that the Green Day of 2004 could write this song. It sounds almost like Armstrong's playing a Spanish classical guitar, blending a melody that displays both Southwestern/Mexican and North African/Arabian styles. I think it's symbolic in that both these fundamentalist Christian and Muslim ideologies have the same goal in eradicating the infidels of the opposing faiths. This might be a long shot, but maybe you'll notice it, too, if you listen to it that way. And, thankfully, Mike Dirnt (pop-punk's greatest bassist imo) plays much more of a role than he did in the previous album. And I like the motif of static-radio sound producer Butch Vig put on some tracks. It almost sounds like America's conscience is trying to get through to us in our new technological age we've created for ourselves. In summary, Green Day in Breakdown plays the role of both the angel and devil on our shoulders telling us we should feel ashamed of ourselves for letting this happen, and that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.

So here's the ruling, and it's going to sound strange: I like this album but I don't think I'm going to put it on my iTunes. First, I liked American Idiot when it came out a few years ago, but now I think it's kind of lame. Second, I also am not really a fan of Rock Operas in general. Besides for "Pinball Wizard," Tommy can't really keep my attention. And third, and most importantly, I've accepted that the Green Day of Dookie is gone. It's sad, but they've moved on, I've moved on, and so should you. Green Day is not the same band we grew up with. They're now appealing to kids younger than us ... think emo ... think weird hair. Everybody keeps telling me, "Green Day sucks! I liked them when they put out Dookie." Ok. Remember when most of the people reading this were in Kindergarten when that album came out? I don't even want to go into the years between Insomniac and American Idiot, when the only thing keeping Green Day relevant was the Pop Disaster Tour with Blink-182. This doesn't mean that Breakdown is a bad album. The effort the band put into this album, and the quality of the songs they produced makes this a good effort, if not really good. This certainly isn't everyone's cup of tea, and I don't think this is the album we necessarily want for a summer of fun. But I think it urges the American public to examine how much optimism we can afford to feign right now. Although Green Day leaves room for the ubiquitous "hope" in the last track, "See the Light," I think Green Day's true sentiments lie in the rest of the album. As in "American Eulogy," I think the band would rather not "live in the modern world." To reiterate, judge this album on what it was compared to the band's last effort and not on Dookie's standards nearly 15 years old. Are you seriously going to cry over something released when you were under 10 at the time? No. Shut up.

4/5

Relapse - Eminem

It's finally here. It seems like I've been waiting for this forever, but the fifth major album, Relapse, has finally dropped legally despite being leaked a few weeks ago. I don't want to brag, but I must have listened to this about four times in the past 72 hours in order to soak it all in. So far, the critics have not reached a consensus on whether to praise or pan Eminem's latest opus. While Rolling Stone rated it a 4 out of 5 stars, and Entertainment Weekly gave it an A-, PopMatters Webzine only rated it a 3/10. In my opinion, this effort falls in the middle. Eminem proves again he's a fantastic lyricist, Dr. Dre created terrific beats, but there is something that is missing. Something is out of sync. Anyone who has listened to any of Eminem's best albums like The Slim Shady LP, The Marshall Mathers LP or The Eminem Show can tell something makes this album seem sub par.

Let's begin with this crazy new accent Eminem's putting on. On most of the album, Eminem has this really weird delivery. I can not imagine why he would do this other than to piss even more people off except it allows him to rhyme words that wouldn't rhyme otherwise. I guess using an accent with a mid-central vowel sound, Em can rhyme "mom" and "valium" much easier. Well, if I wanted to hear Sean Paul, for example, I would be listening to ... Sean Paul. Hmmmm. No, I haven't hit the nail on the head. It actually sounds more like Sean Paul doing an impression of an Afghan exchange student on St. Patrick's Day. I actually was relieved when Eminem did an impression of Christopher Reeves on "Medicine Ball" and temporarily saved me from this corniness. This new flow is asinine, it's absurd and it's absolutely annoying after 15 minutes straight. Unfortunately, I will tell you that out of 20 tracks, he plays with the accent on half of them — and out of the rest, five of the remaining tracks are skits. Get used to it if you want to listen all the way through the album.

Relapse has several distinctive themes. Eminem verbally abuses Hollywood starlets through Ed-Gein-like murderous fantasies, pokes fun at his past motifs like his mother's abuse, and addresses his struggles to stay clean of drugs and alcohol. These serial killing fantasies border on Silence-of-the-Lambs-esque in how creepy Eminem is willing to sink. Either as a symbolic "relapse" in showing how primitive and inhuman one can become when succumbing to drugs or trying to shock his audience into laughing at things they probably would feel guilty laughing at in retrospect. If you remember "Kim" from the Marshall Mathers LP, this act of degrading and then killing people like Lindsay Lohan is both lighter and darker at the same time. In this way, the first half of the album resembles a campy horror movie. A young boy is abused by his step-father and ignored by his mother who, much like Eminem's public now, sees no need to care about him anymore. Although he wants to avoid taking drugs like his mother, instead he does so and becomes a monster. From "3 a.m.," in which he becomes consumed with blood lust, to "Song & Dance," in which he hunts down and kills young girls, the tone becomes borderline disturbing. If not for the catchy "We Made You" that declares Eminem is just having a laugh, even Charles Manson would think he needs psychiatric attention (maybe he still does).

The album seems to be bipolar in it's tone, much like the personas of the id Slim Shady and the superego Marshall Mathers that combine to create Eminem's personality. Slim Shady elevates his previously sinister acts to a hyperbole. In "Must Be the Ganja," Slim says, "How many people you know can name every serial killer who ever existed in a row, / Put em in chronological order beginning with Jack the Ripper, / Name the time and place from the body the bag the zipper, / Location of the woods where the body was dragged and then dumped, / The trunk that they were stuffed in, the model the make the plate and which model which lake they found her in, /and how they attacked the victim, / Say which murder weapon was used to do what and which one, which knife and which gun, what kid, what wife, and which nun?" (note: The answer to this question is Slim Shady). He elevates the serial killer act even more in "Underground": "Captain of a cult, with an elite following to turn Halloween back into a trick or treat holiday / Have Micheal Myers looking like a liar, swipe his powers / Replace his knife with flowers and a stack of fliers / Hit Jason Voorhees with 40's / Stuck a expository up his ass and made him tell me a story / Gave Hannibal Lecter a fucking nectarine / Sat him in a fucking fruit and vegetable section and gave him a lecture / Walked up elm street with a fucking wifflebat drew / fought Freddy Krueger and Edward Scissor Hands too / Came out with a little scratch, ooh / Looking like a got in a fucking pillow fight with a triple fat goose."

But the Marshall Mathers side comes out, too, in the best tracks pound for pound on the album: "Deja vu" and "Beautiful." In "Deja vu", Mathers struggles to get the monkey off his back and staying sober while trying to raise his two girls: Hailie Jade, his daughter, and Alaina, a niece in his custody. On "Beautiful," Eminem shows how hard it is to remain oneself in the limelight and how he could not have achieved everything he has now without being true to himself.

But, aside from that, this album serves as an experiment into where hip-hop goes even beyond gangsta. It is truly an adventure into the heart of darkness where some of us may not be able to go. It is torturing, shocking, and even tempting. But should this be celebrated? It could be. But that accent, man. Wow. I just cannot get past it. This is a good album for the gym or the car ride, but when you sit down and listen to it, anyone can tell Eminem was putzing around. Have fun, man, but not so much that it makes the product start to suck ass. I want the old Em back for the whole album on the next one, not just for a few songs.

3.5/5

Death Magnetic - Metallica

Note: I know what you're thinking. Another oldie? I know. I'm sorry. I promise I'll get to the relevant stuff in a few days. I have Relapse and I'm waiting for lastfm to put 21st Century Breakdown on their site.

But now I want to talk about the newest from the four horsemen. Love 'em or hate 'em, you have to acknowledge that Metallica has influenced an entire genre of rock music. And, although they were the pioneers, lately their efforts have lacked luster. Any real Metallica fan knows that The Black Album was the beginning of the end. The high-intensity headbanging was scrapped for more commercial appeal. Remember St. Anger? I heard drummer/front man Lars Ulrich just decided to eat a bunch of enchiladas and crap them out on a blank CD for that record. Metallica fans clamored for the band to return to their thrash roots. Thankfully, the band delivered.

I had my doubts when I heard this was going to be the case for Death Magnetic. Like most, I saw a track entitled "The Unforgiven III" and I almost threw my computer across the room. "The Unforgiven II" was sheer stupidity, thought I. Now I have to subject myself to this third piece of trash? A third copy of this insipid song masquerading as an original idea? Assholes! In that moment, I believed those bastards had punk'd me again. Even so, I just closed my eyes and bought it off iTunes (remember, Metallica personally hunts down and breaks the arms of illegal downloaders). Thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised that the rumors of a thrash return were true.

The old sound is back. But, the twist that's so interesting is this album's overall tone. Yes, ominous lyrics are abound, but all of them seem to be directed inward. Apparently, singer/guitarist James Hetfield drew a lot of inspiration for his writing from a picture of Layne Staley, the deceased singer for Alice in Chains. Staley, who died in 2002 of a severe drug addiction, was an admirer and later a contemporary of Metallica. This was the source of Hetfield's existential lyrics. For example, "My Apocalypse" seems to be Metallica's answer to the great mystery: "Deadly vision / Prophecy revealed / Death Magnetic / Pulling closer still." Wow. Creepy, huh?

This may not be the feel good album of the year, but the music is great if you're looking for vintage metal at it's finest. There is something for everyone on here. An epic in the style of "... And Jutice for All" appears in "The Day That Never Comes," the "Enter Sandman" stylized-hard-rock jam sounds a lot like "All Nightmare Long," and the "Master of Puppets" thrash-headbanger embodies itself in "Suicide & Redemption." Even poorly entitled "The Unforgiven III" is at least tolerable. It's not the same song repackaged from The Black Album. If it was, I'd be pissed. Still, I will do my part and skip it whenever it comes up on the iPod. We don't want "The Unforgiven IV."

4.5/5

Only by the Night - Kings of Leon

Hey. Sorry for the leave of absence. I promise to update a lot more frequently now, especially in this period between school and work. Not only will there be new posts, but I can promise you there will be more recent albums. I can't wait to get my hands on the new albums coming out soon, especially Relapse, Eminem's new one.

But let's look at Only by the Night by Kings of Leon. Before this album came out, the Kings were actually more famous in Europe and Australia than here in the States. But with this album, the band has cemented itself as one of the last great American rock bands. There are obviously some fans and critics who resent the changes they've made in order to become a band of commercial note. The minimalism that made Kings cult favorites on the early albums Youth and Young Manhood and Aha Shake Heartbreak was scratched on their last album, Because of the Times. Only by the Night follows the style of the latter. So, which is better? I guess it depends on one's temperamental tastes. You could love this new style at one moment and then crave their early work the next. I personally like the band's early style, but the better production values put them in the status they are in today. And this makes the tracks on this album, especially in its first half, not good but great.

An example of one of these tracks is the opener: "Closer." Singer Caleb Fallowill channels his inner Poe to hauntingly describe a ghost town in the calm before what should be a tumultuous storm coming from the sea. Listen to this: "Do you think of me? Where am I now? Baby where do I sleep? / Feels so good but I'm old, 2000 years of chasing taking it's toll / And it's coming closer." Couple that with an eerie keyboard loop and echoey riffs, you've got a powerfully moving song. But, what it means is anybody's guess. Is it a commentary about America's twilight? Are the Fallowills reading too much Twilight? Regardless if it's a doom prophecy or the ode to the vampire fetish, it's still a great song.

This leads into the well-known single single taking the world of Rock by storm: "Sex on Fire." If you haven't heard it, why not do your ears a favor and check it out. It's a perfect track for this band. It just clicks.

"Use Somebody," the album's ballad, is also quite good, but not for everybody. Fans of Youth and Young Manhood may be advised to skip over this one; Because of the Times fans may be inclined to go right to it. It sounds a lot like a track from the previous album. Drummer Nathan Fallowill is most present on the track, still managing to take the lead just by keeping the beat with drum fills. Besides for Caleb's lead vocals, everything seems to converge in the background except for a bass breakdown in the bridge and a closing guitar solo.

However, the second half of the album is not as good as the first, which is the difference between what the album is and what it could have been. "17" sounds like it was put together at the last possible minute. "Oh, she's only 17 / Wind and wind and wound up over everything," sings Caleb. Didn't that awful hair-metal band corner the market on songs about barely legal chicks? "She's only 17!" Don;t lie. You know what I'm talking about. How about "Notion"? This sounds is just a victim of the overproduction. It could have been a good backslide into early Kings if it weren't for the reverb in the background. To add to that, "I Want You," aside from a nice little string-pickin' solo in the middle, sounds like someone is milking a cow with a bass. Seriously, I gotta have more cowbell? That was just a skit. Ease off, please. The worst, however, is honkey-tonk/Godsmack concoction called "Be Somebody." The song musically makes no sense musically, teetering forever between tribal dance and inspiring hymn.

Even so, there are some gems hidden in the album's second half. "Revelry" is a wistful, candid track, allowing the listener to straddle between a slow and rapid tempo at the same time. Even if you weren't born in the Fallowills transient upbringing in the South, the Kings whisk you away to a strangely familiar place among the kerosene lamps and down-home heartache.

Overall, though, this is a really good listen. I really had to put my cynicism hat on to say anything bad about these guys. But, as I said before, this could have been great. I would have liked the band have some longer time out of the studio to stew over this. They were at work on this as soon as they stopped the brief touring for Because of the Times. More time definitely translates to better songs, which would have helped the album's second half. But, I hope I didn't scare you away from this. Only by the Night was one of the best albums released last year. I am just saying it could have been the best.

4/5