Indonesian Eulogy

GREEN DAY SAY NEW ALBUM IS 'BACK TO THE BASICS'

In the new issue of Kerrang! magazine, Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong got fans salivating when he let it slip that the band was already working on songs for the follow-up to 2009's 21st Century Breakdown.

"We did some demos in Berlin, some in Stockholm, some just outside of Glasgow and some in Amsterdam," Armstrong told the magazine. "We wanted to get [the songs] down in some early form."

From the sound of things, GD were looking to get something out sooner rather than later, a far cry from the two-plus years they spent working on Breakdown. And, naturally, we were excited by the news. So when we spoke to the guys at the Broadway premiere of their "American Idiot" musical, we asked them about the status of the new album — which, as they put it, is shaping up to be a "back-to-basics" sort of affair.

"It's just been songwriting right now. Instead of doing it later on, we decided to start doing stuff now. ... It's all back to the basics again. Just getting in a room together and start jamming," Armstrong said. "We set up all of our old gear, which was like an experiment. We set up all of our equipment from 1992, and we sat in a room. We got in, and I was like, 'Come on, guys, we're getting back in!' and I [start playing] and go, 'This sounds like sh--!' Everything sounded so bad."

"Me and [drummer] Tre [Cool] were looking at Billie going, 'Really, you've got to pull out that POS amp?' " bassist Mike Dirnt laughed. "I mean, it really sounded like crap."

So maybe the new Green Day album won't be a return to their punk past. Or perhaps it will. As Armstrong pointed out, the finished album is still a ways off, and it's too early to see how it's going to turn out.
[Full article at MTV]