Green Day has been around for a long time now and “Uno!” is the next album in a lately lackluster discography. They started out in the Berkeley punk rock scene in the late 80s to early 90s. They honed their skills as punk rockers for years and became locally popular. Now, 25 years after their inception, the release their 9th studio album, Uno!

Green Day broke into worldwide popularity with their 1994 album “Dookie.” After this initial success, the band’s popularity waned. But in 1997, they released “Nimrod,” containing the acoustic ballad “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life),” which not only played at every graduation ceremony for the next three years, but also garnered an MTV Video Music Award. After releasing their multiplatinum album, “American Idiot,” Green Day never got the memo that they weren’t punk anymore.

Tracks rely on clichés

Now this brings us to Green Day’s latest release: “Uno!” It is the first in a trilogy; the next two installments released over the next six months. In this, their ninth studio album, Green Day continues to release what sound like the same songs they’ve been releasing for the past 10 years. Cliché punk chord progressions are the centerpiece of “Uno!” The opening track, “Nuclear Family,” is a perfect example of this. It seems that Green Day found the sound that made them the most successful with “American Idiot,” and have since attempted to recreate that sound, rather than growing as musicians.

The next track, “Stay The Night,” is a predictable, poppy love song with a sad attempt at punk snarl. Sounding like a seventh-grade boy who just learned a curse word, the band randomly places a profanity in the beginning of an otherwise cheesy love song, perhaps trying to retain some sense of street cred.

It's the same chords as always on "Uno!"

The track “Kill The DJ” is another failed attempt by Green Day to seem like anti-pop, rebellious punk rockers. The lyrics repeat, “Someone kill the DJ, shoot the f—— DJ” as if a Green Day song had never been beaten to death on the radio. Yes, Billy Joe Armstrong, everyone still remembers “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” Because the members of Green Day are all in their 40s, the track comes off as men in their mid-life crisis trying to relive the glory days.

Green Day is an interesting band. They are not bad musicians, but they do nothing but rehash the same songs, the same chords, the same song structures and present it in a package as if it’s brand new. That’s exactly what happened on “Uno!” The worst part is they try so hard to pretend they’re something they are not. Green Day is a pop-rock band, but they act as if they are the Sex Pistols reincarnate. The band must choose to either return to its roots as a punk band or accept that it is a pop-rock radio band.