10 Rock Bands That Had Alter Egos
4. The Network - Green Day
It could not have been a walk in the park for Green Day at the turn of the century. After their more mature turn on Warning fell on deaf ears for the mainstream, they were about to make their punk leaning follow up before losing the master tapes and shelving it to make American Idiot instead. You can't just switch on a dime like that though, so the boys ended up blowing off some steam by doing what none of their fans asked for.
Released on Billie Joe Armstrong's own label, The Network appeared to be some weird European synth rock band, who more often that not had a bone to pick with Green Day in the press. If you're able to look past the flimsy facade though, it was just Green Day in masks, playing weird offbeat synth rock music in the vein of someone like Devo.
Then again, Devo were never too far removed from punk in the first place...it's just strange seeing Green Day of all bands turning in songs in this style, like the songs Joe Robot and Roshambo sounding like Mark Mothersbaugh had a writing credit on them. This might be more for the devoted Green Day fans than anything else, but if you think that your pop punk music could use a little more synths in the mix, you can certainly do far worse than this.