While Green Day are possibly still reeling from a security threat at their Detroit show last night, they’ve also got some more positive news: Billie Joe Armstrong’s side project Pinhead Gunpowder (with Aaron Cometbus, Bill Schneider, and Green Day’s longtime touring guitarist Jason White) are back! They announced a new album, Unt, due October 18 via 1-2-3-4 Go Records. It’s their first full-length album since their 1997 debut LP Goodbye Ellston Avenue, and their first new music since their 2008 EP West Side Highway. They recorded it in 2023 with longtime collaborator Chris Dugan.
The first single from Unt is the album-opening title track, which sounds like classic Pinhead Gunpowder, and therefore classic Green Day too. Green Day are coming off their best album in 20 years, but if you wanna hear Billie Joe at the most stripped-back, no-frills, ’90s pop punk version of himself, you’re gonna want this new Pinhead Gunpowder album in your life. Check out the new song below.
Along with the announcement, Aaron writes:
Pinhead Gunpowder started writing songs in 1990 and made our first 7” the following spring.
Nearly every year since, we’ve met up to play. Some years we recorded—five albums and eleven EPs—and some years we played shows.
But since 2010, we’ve been playing just for ourselves, something bands forget to do. Rather than “writing for the new album” or rehearsing to get ready for tour, we went back to the basement every year. We lived in the house we’d built, remembering how we’d made the music for each other in the first place. We played all over the world—well, at least Oakland, Singapore and New York—but only for each other. We worked on the reissues of our back catalog, too and found ourselves fonder of each other and more family-like than ever.
A new record and tour was only a matter of time, but between the members’ other bands projects, and families, that was hard to find. When we finally did, we were all surprised. We think it’s our best yet—our catchiest, most collaborative, and most poignant.
In 2021, Jason White told us about 10 of Pinhead Gunpowder’s biggest influences.
We recently caught Green Day’s tour (which has them playing Dookie and American Idiot in full, with support from The Smashing Pumpkins, Rancid, and The Linda Lindas) at Citi Field. They’re also putting out an American Idiot 20th anniversary box set in October.
Tracklist
1. Unt
2. Difficult But Not Impossible
3. Scum Of The Earth
4. Oh My
5. Nothing Ever Happens
6. Draw It In
7. Shine
8. ¡Hola Canada!
9. Here Goes The Neighborhood
10. Mumbles
11. Green
12. Chowchilla
13. Trash TV
14. Song For Myself