Green Day’s New Album Is Getting Some Downright Brutal Reviews
"What happens on 'Father of All' is a miserable and failed attempt at reviving some of rock's stalest, dumbest and shallowest cliches."
Green Day haven’t exactly been a cutting edge band for at least a decade. But rather than fight that off, their new record, Father of All… leans all the way in.
For a start, there’s that title. Father of All… is just the censored version. The album’s actually called Father of All Motherfuckers, which is the kind of name that might have felt shocking circa 1962, but six decades later feels delightfully quaint.
Then there’s the musicianship. An early press poster for the record heralded the fact that it’s completely free of features, “Swedish songwriters”, and trap beats, calling it “100 percent pure uncut rock.” Which is oddly accurate. The album is exactly as pig-headed, anachronistic and boring as that poster makes it sound — after all, Swedish songwriters and trap beats are great.
This promotional billboard for the new @GreenDay album is causing quite a stir on social media:
“No features. No Swedish Songwriters. No Trap Beats. 100% Pure Uncut Rock.” pic.twitter.com/UHpev3ePgX
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) February 8, 2020
Anyway, one critic who is not buying any of this nonsense is Anthony Fantano, also known as The Needle Drop. The owner of one of the biggest music criticism channels on YouTube, Fantano is well-known for his sometimes abrasive and unforgiving reviews. But his takedown of Green Day hits a new level entirely.
Giving the record a “strong zero” out of ten, Fantano tears the thing to absolute shreds.
“What the hell is this?” the critic starts. “I knew from the singles this wasn’t going to be good, but Jesus Christ. I feel like a newscaster who’s just been passed a report that the world is going to end in like, an hour, and I’m just sitting here shuffling the papers around figuring out how I’m going to say this.”
From there, he goes on to tear apart the record’s flabby, uninspired songwriting. “I can’t believe this thing is only 26 minutes long. 26 minutes. And it feels like it’s 56,” he says, exasperated.
But that’s not all. Possibly Fantano’s most shocking sledge comes two minutes in, when he sums up the whole disastrous project. “What happens on Father of All is a miserable and failed attempt at reviving some of rock’s stalest, dumbest and shallowest cliches.”
Fantano’s not the only one with the knives out either. Evan Rytlewski of Pitchfork describes the album as an occasionally entertaining, mostly reductive and dull listen, saying, “[Green Day] have no secrets to share; they reveal them all upfront, and its most eager hooks can begin to grate after just a few spins.”
The blog SputnikMusic goes even harder, calling it “lazy” and “chock-full of embarrassment; a veritable who’s who of awkward one-liners with absolutely no logical or thematic ties.”
Ooft. Watch Fantano’s video below: