Singles Roundup: Green Day, Cold Years, Anthrax, & Nickelback

Summer is in full swing, and there has not been a 'song of the summer' to my ears as of yet, or at least not one that isn't on the melancholic/depressing side. I don't think this week's collection of new songs is going to change that, but let's see what has been offered to us.

Green Day – I'm Never Gonna R.I.P.

I haven't had much of anything positive to say about Green Day since "American Idiot" came out, and today is not the day for that to change. This song comes from the soundtrack to "Nimrods", and harkens back to the "21st Century Breakdown" days, when the band was accused to being to obvious about 'borrowing' from their influences. The difference here is that neither The Stray Cats nor the blues are obvious influences of Green Day that we've ever heard before, so jumping into an old-time rock n roll blues groove is not at all what we would expect from the band.

It doesn't help that they aren't doing it in any particularly interesting way. The riff is all too standard, the vocal line is pure blues cliche, and Billie's vocal is buried under fake distortion so we don't even get the human element that makes the blues interesting... to people who like the blues. Instead, this is two minutes of pastiche that doesn't sound particularly good from a production standpoint, and doesn't offer any musical idea that sticks with you after hearing it. I'm not exactly sure what the point of it is.

Cold Years – Dread

I loved "Goodbye To Misery", but found "A Different Life" to sound almost like an entirely different band. This new song is the first piece of their next step, and it straddles the two in a way I'm not quite sure how to feel about. The guitars have a bit more body and bite to them, which reminds me of "Goodbye To Misery". The vocals still sound thinner and high-pitched than they did on that record, which gives it some of the sound of "A Different Life". It's a bit of the 'uncanny valley' effect, where it sounds enough like the Cold Years I love to be recognizable, but just different enough to still sound 'wrong', for lack of a better word.

Maybe I would be more forgiving if the song itself had a bit more to offer. When the chorus comes along, and it settles into "whoa oh" territory, I find myself losing some interest. It feels to me like the song needs something more substantial to use those wordless vocalizations as a palate-cleaner, but we don't get enough of that. Instead, it feels more like a placeholder melody that didn't get filled in between the demo and the final recording. Those sorts of bits are difficult to pull off, and this pattern of notes just doesn't quite get there for me.

Anthrax  - Edge Of Perfection

Raise your hand if you want your classic thrash bands to be introducing black metal influences forty years into their career? Yeah, my hand is not up. Look, I have never found Anthrax to be all that interesting a band, but I recognize why they got popular enough to be one of The Big Four, and why people find the John Bush era to be underrated compared to the downfall of the other bands at the same time period. That doesn't mean taking the tact Testament did is a good idea, especially as they don't have the same degree of metal heft in the band to pull it off. (Not that I like "Low" or "Demonic", but they at least executed what they attempted.)

Anthrax does not have the same cache to be playing blast-beats with tremolo riffing. They have always been the 'party' band of the thrash scene, and hearing them trying to be darker and more sinister does not fit anything we know about them, nor does it fit Joey Belladonna's voice. The band is miscast in this role, which is only made worse by the haphazard songwriting, where the black metal bits come and go with hard transitions, acting more like masks the band is putting on so one person can play multiple characters. It doesn't work for me in the slightest, and it's two songs in a row that make me concerned their record is going to be one of the biggest misfires of the year.

My theory is that all the time spent playing with Pantera has been a bad influence on Charlie Benante.

Nickelback – Rattle The Cage

Since we're in a bad mood today, let's finish things off by talking about Nickelback. Their comeback into ironic popularity has not sat well with me, both because few have ever reckoned with just how goddamn ugly their music got ("Figured You Out" should have ended their career. Sorry, not sorry. Fuck that song.), but also because they aren't the band anymore who was making songs so popular they would become overplayed and hated. Nickelback now is consumed with keeping up their 'metal cred', which puts them in an area where they have no business being. They became Nickelback by playing to mainstream radio, and the heavier version of the band holds none of that cheesy, yes 'ironic', appeal.

The guitars on this are so processed they lose the bits that would make the muted riffs sound massive, which is a mistake made by too many people who don't understand the difference between distortion and playing heavy. Chad's voice has enough grit in it, but knowing how many pop song's he's written, it doesn't sound authentic to have him barking about going to Hell. If they were considered posers back in the day for chasing pop audiences, they're just as artificial today chasing the metal audience.

Maybe some people will find this a refreshing change of pace, but to me it sounds like a band that traded in melodies for amps that went to eleven. Just like how "Spinal Tap" didn't need a sequel, neither does Nickelback's popularity.