When it works, don’t bother tweaking it. ‘American Idiot’ besides a massive chart success was also an album that left quite a few songs any self-respecting rock club on the face of the Earth still plays. And it makes sense for Green Day to try making pretty much the same album again. Another rock opera, another concept album, once again quite a commercial one… ‘American Idiot’, though, besides a commercial album was also a very well written one – songs flowing into one another, some of them reaching the unthinkable in the context of punk rock length of 8 to 9 minutes, and it also had a very strong rebellious rock vibe to it, as refined as it was. Well – ‘21st Century Breakdown’ is the same, but without the above mentioned things. The album starts pretty much where the previous one left us, not minding the 5 year gap between the two. A short intro, the epic title track, and then the first single ‘Know your Enemy’. All is OK – fueled with rage, multi-layered and very, very rocking! It’s a pity that from there on the band’s desire to make an even more ambitious concept album becomes more apparent. And as it usually happens in such cases, things lose focus, become watered down and the anger and energy (that are your reason to listen to such a band to begin with) get buried under some questionable experiments. The rocking moments from a certain point on become less and are topped by some, as intelligent as they are, playing around popular melodies such as the ones in ‘Peacemaker’ and ‘Static Age’. Two of the best songs on the album by the way! You can also feel the influence of Butch Vig’s production, and he pretty much does the same to Green Day that he did to AFI (‘Sing the Sorrow’, 2003) – making a punk-rock band sound milder and even more electronic influenced. Not that it is not an effect the band themselves went for - Billie Joe Armstrong admits he started writing most of the songs on his piano instead of on guitar. The dude is middle-aged now - no surprises here. And now, the question ‘then why do you give the album 5 out of 6?’ arises. Well, after all ‘21st Century Breakdown’ is once again a super strong album that delivers a lot of music worth listening to. As long as you don’t expect a new ‘Dookie’ or even ‘American Idiot 2’.