Father of All…

Invigorating results. ... It's refreshing, comforting even, to have Green Day back in their exuberant element, unburdened by message or morality. [Mar 2020, p.86]

Green Day deliver everything with such panache that the songs’ limitations don’t really matter, especially when they manage to make tired old tropes seem fresh, as on the swooning brilliance of Take the Money and Crawl and Meet Me on the Roof.

These songs feel like the bratty little brothers of the likes of ‘Castaway’ and ‘Blood, Sex And Booze’ from 2000’s ‘Warning’, but with more of a snarl and a need for speed.

Father of All… is a bountiful act of recovered rock memory, an effortlessly affirming argument that the first mosh pit or car radio contact high you get when you’re 13 years old can be enough to sustain you long into life. It’s a deep, deep thing, and, in a sense, a defiant and subtly political statement, too.

I mean it as a compliment when I say I didn’t immediately recognise Green Day the first time I heard their new album. There is something positively gleeful about the American multimillion-selling stadium punk trio’s reavowal of the fundamentals. They exhibit the swagger of a hot young band discovering rock’n’roll for the first time, allied to the abilities of old pros who know exactly how to do it right.

By its very nature, Father Of All... is slight compared to a sprawling magnum opus such as 2009's 21st Century Breakdown, but it's close to impossible to emerge from its rapid-fire near-half-hour without a smile on your face. [Mar 2020, p.112]

It's a hella mega good time from start to finish. [1 Feb 2020, p.53]

The effort feels more like a sidestep than a leap forward.

The most notable thing about the record is how excited everyone sounds. It crackles with energy, buoyed by the feeling that the trio are finally unshackled by their past. It's punchy, and the hooks generally last long past the record's short runtime.

Green Day are watching the world burn from an air-conditioned dance floor on Father of All.... While the album doesn't deliver their most memorable songs, its wild glam experimentation and attitude-heavy performances show a band still seeking new thrills even decades in.

Green Day have delivered possibly their most immediate album this century and an album that, despite its short length, grows more rewarding with repeat listens.

Fuses the hormonal aggression that put Green Day on the map with punched-up modern-day production courtesy of Butch Walker and a razor-sharp mix by Tchad Blake. [Mar 2020, p.29]

The album aims for instant gratification and achieves it so efficiently that it can’t help but burn fast.

Father of All… is a solid album that shows not only their mastery of sound but also genre and a nod to the greats that came before them.

Green Day’s 13th studio album set sees them step outside of their comfort zone, experimenting with a range of new sounds and styles. However, this leads to mixed results.

It's clear what they've wanted to do, and in some aspects have nailed it head-on, but to execute this properly, there needs to be more focus on wrapping that pure-as-fuck punk heart that beats in their chests in something more than a cartoon unicorn.

Granted, it doesn’t always quite connect, and it probably won’t enter the Green Day canon, but it’s a bit of fun all the same.

Certain songs try to recapture their old glory, while others feel like an embarrassing pop ploy—but the most consistent feeling is pure disappointment. Even when Green Day is supposedly having fun here, they sound tired and overworked at best.

It's another sequence full of common tropes and techniques (to the point of plagiarism in some cases), and at only 26 minutes in length, it rushes by without leaving much of an impression.

A derivative party foul, a spirited genre game that plays like a copy of a copy. [Feb 2020, p.104]

Father of All... is fundamentally toothless and lacking in wit, originality, and invention. Armstrong decries "fakes" across this album without once acknowledging the irony that these songs represent exactly the sort of corporate rock he is supposedly standing against. Of course, Green Day remains a competent band to the point that this slickly produced record is not an all-out disaster. But it is certainly not worth remembering.

Glam, anthemic and messy Father of All… may be, but “inspired” and “baddest” it is not.

Everything about Father of All Motherfuckers is lazy. It begins with the self-referential American Idiot album cover, which features a unicorn exhaling/vomiting rainbows whilst forcefully blowing flames out of its ass. The music is befitting of said artwork, as even the staunchest fan would have an aneurysm trying to figure out what the hell these guys were thinking on this one.