Rock Revoluntion

Faster riffs, huge hooks, and even bigger tones! make dirnt and green day return to their punk roots to start a revolution one airwave at a time

- Jon D’Auria

AFTER SELLING OVER 75 MILLION RECORDS, BEING inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and earning five Grammys and two Tony Awards, most musicians would happily call it a career and ride out their days in complacent bliss. That’s not the case for Mike Dirnt. Before heading in to write Green Day’s 12th studio album, the 44-year-old decided to do something he had never done before: take bass lessons. In a humble act of betterment, Dirnt studied under a San Francisco Bay Area musician who taught him music theory, which further sparked his drive to make Green Day’s best album yet. And it worked.

Shedding the rock-opera theatrics and dramatic orchestration of their albums of the 2000s, Dirnt, alongside frontman Billie Joe Armstrong and drummer Tré Cool, took it back to their punk-rock roots as a trio and effectively created the band’s best album since— dare we say it—1994’s Dookie. Featuring 12 tracks that could each be radio singles, Revolution Radio showcases Dirnt’s signature, rabid-picking tone, which holds up the foundation whether he’s riff doubling, chugging along with Cool’s manic kick, or stepping out into the forefront with his speedy counter-melodies.

If Dirnt’s new studious approach to writing wasn’t enough to boost his band, his new tone certainly did the trick. Spending the last few years working with Fender to build a rig that would satisfy his taste for gritty yet balanced sound, he helped introduce the new Bassman 800 series of amps, which produced his ideal tone while allowing him to ditch distortion pedals altogether. No matter how seasoned and road-tested he becomes, Dirnt’s passion seems only to intensify with time. Between his efforts to improve both his playing and his sonic profile on his band’s most pivotal album, a revolution is bound to ensue.