Music pundits are calling this the big rock release of the summer and predicting Green Day’s official return to the racks to be a major release for the year, so we at Popdose decided that one single review couldn’t live up to 21st Century Breakdown’s prerelease hype. Ted Asregadoo, Dave Steed, and Dw. Dunphy take a crack at the boys’ post-American Idiot, post-Foxboro Hot Tubs offering and find themselves in completely different corners.

Dave: 21st Century Breakdown (a.k.a. “American Idiot Part Deux”) probably isn’t a bad record at all, but I think to appreciate it you have to be 15. See, if you’re 15 your introduction to Green Day was probably American Idiot, so as you sit on your mom’s couch with your “punk” girlfriend and marvel at how their new record sounds “just like them,” you probably think this is the shit.

Unfortunately I’m not 15, which means I threw up in my mouth a little bit when I heard the new album. There’s certainly no mistaking a Green Day release even when they aren’t Green Day (see: Foxboro Hot Tubs), but this is a little much. Ever since they released Dookie in ‘94, every Green Day record has had some new sounds or concepts on it, but I have to dig really deep to find either of them on this album. The sad thing about it, though, is that I had to have seen this coming. The last record felt like a career revival, despite the fact that I never think they dropped off, so why not ride that wave all the way to shore? I don’t necessarily blame them, but if there was ever a point where Green Day “sold out,” this sadly feels like it.

That said, the one moment on 21st Century Breakdown that really gets me excited is buried three-quarters of the way into the disc: “Horseshoes and Handgrenades,” where Billie Joe screams, “I’m not fucking around.” Well then, prove it — take the fire and energy on that track, give me 11 more of them averaging two and a half minutes in length, and make me a real fucking Green Day record, because if you give me “American Idiot 33 1/3″ a few years from now, I’m through.

Ted: After the megasuccess of 2004’s American Idiot, the boys of Green Day had some choices to make. Where would they go next after writing an album that came together relatively quickly, sold a zillion copies, and made them the darlings of preteens, critics, and cynical Gen Xers? Go back? Go forward? Make “American Idiot 2.0″?

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