Quick Reviews: Green Day & South Of Salem

I don't feel like spending too much time dwelling on these disappointments.

Green Day - Saviors

As I mentioned when I reviewed the first single from this record, I feel like we've given Green Day far more credit than they ever deserved. By returning to the sound of their slick, concept-album phase, they're taking a massive swing that feels backward-looking. The similarities between "One Eyed Bastard" and the older "Holiday" (as well as Pink's "So What?") is a bit of a reminder of that, but it's more the fact the band is trying to capture the frustrations of these times when they are in one of the generations that has fucked it all up.

They sing about how the American dream is killing them, and how the world is crumbling around us. They're right that we are in a dangerous time, and we need to raise our voices to stop ourselves from sliding back into one of the uglier chapters of history. The problem isn't just that Green Day have lost all their credibility over the last twenty years of mediocre releases, it's that you can't make a point with bad songs and expect it to get any traction.

That's the biggest issue here. Green Day has never been politically adept, or very good at explaining what exactly they believe in, but when they were doing it with songs as good as "Holiday" or "Boulevard Of Broken Dreams", it almost didn't matter. The songs were so big they were going to generate a platform for conversation. The songs on this record are stock-in-trade Green Day, with forgettable melodies and no reason to engage beyond the surface level. When you swing big, you can miss big, and Green Day has once again struck out.

South Of Salem - Death Of The Party

One of the records I stumbled upon and quite enjoyed a few years back was South Of Salem's debut, which was a riotously catchy bit of horror-punk. The lyrics were a pun-filled pastiche of horror tropes, but it was all wrapped up in songs that knew just how tongue-in-cheek everything was, so we could have a laugh at the cheesiness of it all. There's a place for music that doesn't take itself too seriously, and that's exactly what South Of Salem did.

That's what makes it a bit odd that much of this follow-up record plays things straighter. The songs have the same catchy sound, but something like "Vultures" doesn't have any of the nod or wink, which makes the darker side of the songs feel less enjoyable. Rather than referencing horror movies of the past, "Static" is literally about what a horror movie looks like on the screen. It's all rather 'meta', and it doesn't pique my interest at all.

This record feels too much like a rock band playing rock songs, and it lacks the spark and fun I got from the debut. The actual quality is pretty much the same, and there are plenty of good melodies, but it doesn't engage me in the same way. I don't know how long a band can keep a gimmick going, or be less than serious, but this shift in tone has me wanting to find out.