This is a review of the single. I’ve also written a review of the whole album.
I’m a huge Green Day fan since Dookie. Listened to every album, loved especially Dookie, Nimrod and American Idiot. They’ve written some great songs (such as Ashley or Troubled Times) since their biggest hit albums, but their albums haven’t really reached such great heights ever since the Idiot days. I liked most of Revolution Radio, and I could find an albumful of favorites from Uno, Dós and Tré.
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The vocal effects, especially on the Uno, Dós, Tré trilogy bothered me a lot. They sounded out of date, unnecessary and just not very tasteful. Too much delay. I would much rather not drown Billie’s wonderful voice in a sea of effects, other than the standard compression and reverb with just a tad of distortion. The vocal sound on “Father of All…” is even worse than on four previous Green Day albums – the vocals have been effected way beyond recognition. The singer could be anyone, and that’s not really desirable if your singer happens to be Billie Joe Armstrong. Someone said on a YouTube comment, that the song sounds a bit like Paramore, and I have to say I agree. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, because it’s good for the band to keep on moving and to surprise fans from time to time.
The song is alright. Not a masterpiece, but something I quite like to listen to. There’s a lot of energy, but not enough contrast between parts to last repeated listens. It’s an unapologetic banger, which could be a cool thing, but it’s hard to actually hear the song properly because of the distancing vocal effects. The song kind of just slips by. It seems a bit overproduced, which has been a problem for Green Day way too many times. They sound the best, when there’s not too much going on, and they have to concentrate on the actual performance. Organic band sound has certainly been one of Green Day’s strong suits – why distract the listener by unnecessary trickery and not build on Green Day’s core strengths?
The songs from the trilogy sounded much better on Demolicious. “Father of All…” will sound great on Demolicious 2.
Regardless, I’m excited about the new album! I’m sure there will be lots of good songs.