Green Day tests new ground on way to "Breakdown"

GARAGE-ROCK SIDE TRIP

To keep things interesting, the threesome toured small clubs last May as their alter-ego side project, the Foxboro Hot Tubs. "We were sitting around one night and drinking a bunch of wine at the studio," Dirnt recalls, "so we decided to write a bunch of trashy songs." The result was the EP "Stop Drop and Roll," which debuted at No. 21 on the Billboard 200 and has sold 55,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The side project "gave us a platform to put something out and have some fun and get out from underneath the Green Monster," Dirnt says.

Armstrong notes that the '60s garage-rock sound of the Foxboro Hot Tubs is the "complete opposite" of material found on "21st Century Breakdown." The other members agree that the rock opera is the band's most ambitious album to date.

After playing it live for the first time at clubs in San Francisco and Oakland, Dirnt says, "21st Century Breakdown" is "probably the most physical record we've ever done. It's physically really hard to play." Cool says his intensive drumming during rehearsals and the gigs erased some of his fingerprints and has given him "new muscles on my arms that I don't know where the hell they came from."

All three band members say that fans so far have reacted positively to the new material, and they look forward to playing the new material for the rest of the world. The punk-at-heart trio won't stop making new music anytime soon, Armstrong says. "Nobody leaves this band," he says, "unless it's in a coffin."