Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating *
The trilogy is complete, Green Day have finally released the third and final album and all in all, it was two albums too many, roughly 25 songs that could have quite happily been written, composed and destroyed by any another band with half the talent that these three men have normally in abundance.
Tre! follows an unfortunate pattern that has arisen by the American band since they decided to publish three consecutive albums within a short space of time. It has also the inappropriate feel of a group deciding to go all out and make as much out of publicity and hype in a short space of time, by doing that, the quality they attained after a great career has now been dissipated and spoiled.
Green Day are so much better than the tired and expressionless songs that they have recorded for the three albums, if placing them in any order helps any wavering fans who are somehow unsure of which to part their hard earned money with first, it has to be said to get Dos! and only Dos! because Uno! and Tre! just don’t cut the mustard.
It is disappointing and regretful to see one of the standard bearers of American Psuedo-Punk become almost disenfranchised from their great highs, the towering angry and well thought out bombasts that they hurled with precision at the feckless and the irritating. It seems as though, unless something pretty amazing happens, that the band have become a pastiche of everything they used to get angry about. The warning signs were there when they produced two outstanding records in American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown; no-one can keep up that type of relentless and incredible energy without something giving way, the trouble is Green Day had so much further to fall than others who have been in the same exulted position.
Rather than giving way to sensationalism and hype, if Green Day had released the best songs available over the first couple of albums of the trilogy, they would have had a pretty decent follow up to 21st Century Breakdown, it wouldn’t have been epic but it may have been pretty enjoyable.
A sad end to a brilliant career or three small minor bumps in the lives of three great individuals and a hell of a band, either way time will tell.
Ian D. Hall