Lets face it, for nearly the last decade listening to Green Day felt like home work. After the brilliant success of their 2004 masterpiece American Idiot, the California punk rockers found themselves having to write tunes to fill out cavernous arenas. Such pressures resulted in 2009’s bloated 21st Century Breakdown, another rock opera that – despite a few terrific songs – sunk under the weight of its own expectations. ¡Uno!, ¡Dos!, ¡Tré!, their 2012 trilogy of albums, didn’t help matters. They felt the need to make another grand statement – in this case to release three albums in as many months.

The decision to take a break – even if it was prompted by frontman and chief songwriter Billie Joe Armstrong’s decision to seek counseling for substance abuse – turns out to be a wise one. The past three years have allowed the band to regroup and go back to the foundations – literally. To ensure privacy they built a studio in their home city of Oakland and started jamming for fun. The end result is energizing new album Revolution Radio which, despite its rallying cry of a title, is the sound of band rediscovering themselves once again. Also, while current affairs and social issues in US society are hinted at throughout, there are thankfully no overarching themes to the album – it is simply a collection of a dozen songs full of Green Day’s signature three-chord ­assaults.

With this stripped-down, self-produced record, Green Day come to terms with their demons, only to find a new struggle waiting on the outside. Terrorism, racial strife, class warfare, a divisive presidential election—this is just some of the tension that underpins the album’s 12 songs. But this is also the most intensely personal Green Day album in years; as much a celebration of life on the upside of 40 years of age as it is a reminder of the choices, conflicts and contradictions that mark a life well-lived.

Building off a plaintive melody that weirdly recalls Boston's "More Than A Feeling," "Somewhere Now” starts things with the most ironic opening line in Green Day’s catalog: "I'm running late to somewhere I don't want to be." It’s a simple play on boredom, inertia—stuff we’ve heard before. But as bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tré Cool power toward a crescendo, the tone darkens, the urgency builds, and Armstrong's lyrics (“Here comes nothing/We’ve got nothing to lose”) feel like a rallying cry to stop wasting time and start taking action.

It's a quick turn into the topical from there. The racing, propulsive first single "Bang Bang" finds Armstrong stepping out of his own head and into the psyche of a mass shooter.

Fun Fact: The bank where they've filmed "Bang Bang" and the concept of the video are almost the same ideas that Pierce The Veil made in 2012 for their single, "King for a Day (feat. Kellin Quinn of Sleeping With Sirens).

The minor-key-driven "Revolution Radio" doesn't explicitly mention Black Lives Matter, but with calls to "Testify for the life that's been deleted" and "Sing, like a rebel's lullaby/Under the stars and stripes/For the lost souls that were cheated," it’s easy to make the connection. The rousing "Say Goodbye” extends the theme with gang choruses that’d be at home in any stadium—if not for lyrics that put the screws to racist cops. "Troubled Times" opens with a vocal melody that's just a few notes removed from the Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," but unfolds into a pulsing, bass-driven lamentation on modern civilization's lack of empathy ("What good is love and peace on earth when it's exclusive?").

While there’s nothing here that’d count as filler, the mid-album singalong "Bouncing Off the Wall" is the closest thing Revolution Radio has to a diversion. With its bone-simple lyrics and glam-rock swagger, the song feels like a party in the middle of a revolt. (Which, granted, could be the point.) Ditto for "Still Breathing," which, despite its earworm of a melody, comes on like a relatively by-the-numbers emo anthem. It's a powerful song lyrically, though, with Armstrong confronting mortality through a cast of hard-luck characters and proudly belting, "I'm still breathing on my own."

Maybe so, but Revolution Radio makes it clear the human condition needs a support system. The power-pop romp “Youngblood” sends a self-effacing thank-you to Armstrong’s wife, likening her patience to that of “Miss Teresa.” The acoustic closer “Ordinary World” (written for Armstrong’s film of the same name) is a beautifully simple meditation on unconditional love (“Baby, I don’t have much/But what we have is more than enough”). “Outlaws” leads off with a delicate piano figure, but as its huge choruses and walls of guitar rocket things skyward, you can feel the pride as Armstrong reflects on Green Day’s time together: "Hooligans, we destroyed suburbia when we were outlaws."

Toward the album’s finale, when Armstrong cracks, "I'm hanging onto a dream that's too dumb to die" (in—where else?—"Too Dumb to Die"), what'd normally be a throwaway line feels poignant in context. The conflicted emotion carries into “Forever Now”—a glorious, multi-part epic on par with the most ambitious of American Idiot’s material. As the true punctuation mark on the album’s final third, it should offer a sense of closure. But Armstrong—who sings from his own point of view—is all contradictions: on top of the world, lost and listless, ready to die, ready to start a revolution. It’s the first time in years Green Day haven’t had all the answers. But as a statement on how it really feels to fight, it’s the closest to the truth they’ve ever gotten.

Three decades after the band were formed, Revolution Radio is about survival and taking the next step. It is Green Day sending out the message that they are still alive and kicking. Green Day, welcome back!!!

Rating: 4.5 / 5 Stars

Now, if this album alone isn't enough for you, then something else will. Billie Joe will be starring is his first full-length film, Ordinary World, and it's coming out on October 14th in selected theaters and online. Also, it will feature some songs off of this album!