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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Twist On Punk Green Day Ventures Beyond Its Usual Angry Rock Sound With New ‘Nimrod’ Cd

Jim Sullivan The Boston Globe

Green Day “Nimrod” (Reprise)

You can’t call this anything but chutzpah a situation where Green Day has brazenly slapped a “Kick Me” sign on its own collective butt and then snickers about what it’s done.

The band’s fifth CD, “Nimrod” (Reprise), due today, has a song, “Redundant,” that opens with this verse: “We’re living in repetition/ Content in the same old shtick again/Now the routine’s turning to contention/Like a production line going/Over and over and over, roller coaster.”

Although the Berkeley-based trio is a satisfying and stimulating punk-pop button pusher, Green Day has always operated within a fairly narrow, three-chord (give or take), mid-to-fast tempo framework, having taken the angry fresh sounds of the mid-late 1970s punk era, both English and American, and spun them into catchy, resonant buzzsaw anthems for the 1990s.

Hence, Green Day gets points for the self-mocking reference, opening up the barn door for a critical whacking.

And so … does the band get one? No. Not as long as it’s writing witty salvos like “The Grouch,” where a grimacing Billie Joe Armstrong, all of 25, laments, “I was a young boy that had big plans/Now I’m just another … old man /I don’t have fun and I hate everything” and goes on to rant about wasting away, getting fat, becoming impotent, and losing his ideals - all in the context of about two minutes of chunky, slash-and-burn, stick-to-your-brain punk.

What Green Day has done on “Nimrod” is dish out a heaping helpin’ of More of the Same - agitated, quasi-angry punk played with maximum exuberance - and given it a twist. Certainly the industry buzz is, as Billboard just put it, “Green Day Grows Beyond Punk on ‘Nimrod.”’

In the press notes, singer-guitarist Armstrong talks about going down “different avenues,” adding: “Each song has its own character and identity, so we wanted to be able to bring that out as much as possible.”

Well, up to a point. “Nimrod” is not “Sandinista!” But it does include 18 songs in just under 50 minutes, almost opus length from a band whose last two CDs, “Insomniac” and “Dookie” clocked in at 32:54 and 38:48, respectively.

Green Day, fleshed out by drummer Tre Cool and bassist-singer Mike Dirnt, is still operating around the 2-1/2-minute mark per song, with the shortest here being 1:09 and the longest 3:47. The twists, though, include bits of violin (“Hitchin’ a Ride”), a horn-pumped ska song about cross-dressing (“King for a Day”), a moody equivalent to Nirvana’s “All Apologies” (“Walking Alone”), a country/surf/dub instrumental (“Last Ride In”), and an acoustic-slanted, wistful comedown near the end (“Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)”).

The final rocker, “Prosthetic Head,” is a typical ticked-off kiss-off, with Armstrong spitting out, “Don’t deny that you’re synthetic/You’re pathetic.”

Anger is still Armstrong’s main meat, or metier, if you wish, and it’s directed inwardly and outwardly. “Walking Around” is a look back at “the old stomping ground,” where no one’s left save a familiar face “too drunk to figure out they’re fading away.”

On “Nimrod,” there’s a sense of growing up and, thus, experiencing growing pains. When Armstrong sings about being so happy he could cry in “Nice Guys Finish Last,” the album’s kickoff, you know he doesn’t mean it. When he sings “It’s all my fault” in “Jinx,” the start of the second side (on cassette), he does.

Yet “Nimrod,” is less full of bile and spite than “Insomniac.” There’s more variation in tempo, some minirespites from the comfort of Punk 101 rage.

Commercially, what’s at stake? Green Day’s label, Reprise, reports that “Dookie” sold more than 10 million copies in the United States - it was the biggest surprise hit of 1994 - and “Insomniac” did less than a third of that. So, the sales graph is on a downward jag.

But, really, how can that be a failure if you’re not aiming to be the McDonald’s of punk? It’s possible Green Day lost the trendies and kept its core of fans on “Insomniac,” and, if that’s so, the band should maintain that base. There’s no reason to jump ship.