Green Day’s New Album Title Inspired by Slayer’s Kerry King
Green Day have been pretty low profile regarding the creation of new music since their last studio release in 2016, Revolution Radio. They've finally started spilling the beans about Father of All Mother Fuckers — their forthcoming effort, which is set for release in early 2020.
Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool sat down with Kerrang! recently to discuss the new album, which clocks in at just over 26 minutes long. “I’ve decided that I don’t like long songs," Armstrong said, acknowledging the hit "Jesus of Suburbia" was quite lengthy. "If I’m listening to other people’s music, I always look at how long the song is. If it’s over three minutes I go, ‘Urgh, pass. I don’t wanna listen to that shit.’”
As for the new set's daring moniker, the frontman pointed out Slayer's Kerry King as an inspiration for it. "It's just a badass title," he remarked. "I think it was Kerry King from Slayer – they have an album called God Hates Us All, and someone asked, ‘Do you really think God hates us all?’ And he goes, ‘I don’t know! It’s just a badass title!’ As soon as the title came up, I was like, ‘Oh man, this is good.’”
The band admitted they indulged in all different types of music when gearing up to start making this new album, including '70s hip-hop and Motown. "We don’t want to do what everyone would expect us to do, so it was just kinda mischief and making it fun," Cool explained. "That was the bottom line of it.”
“There’s a very fine line threading the needle for us, because we do want to try new things, but we always want to make sure it’s absolute Green Day, you know?” Armstrong added. So don't worry, you won't hear any rapping on Father of All Mother Fuckers.
The members collectively decided that they hope to spread the notion of freedom with this new project. "I think that this is going to be one of the hardest records we’ve ever made, meaning the sound is hard," the vocalist enthused. "But not trying to recreate Insomniac or something like that. It’s just different, and that, to me, is super exciting.”
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