Is Green Day about to unleash the Hella Mega Tour part 2?
Green Day – Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool – gave fans a reason to look forward to 2024 during a secret show on Thursday, October 19. The band played at the Fremont Country Club in Las Vegas, filling the 850-person capacity venue, as part of the 30th anniversary celebration of their breakthrough album, Dookie. Sometime during the show, Armstrong, 51, said, “I have a big announcement. It’s really big. Get your cameras ready.”
The announcement, per Rolling Stone, is that in 2024, the band will go on a U.S. stadium tour with The Smashing Pumpkins, Rancid and the new band keeping punk alive, The Linda Lindas.
So far, there hasn’t been an official announcement of this hypothetical tour — details about what cities, dates and when you can beg Ticketmaster to let you buy tickets remain unknown. Us Weekly has reached out to Green Day’s camp for a comment about this proposed punk/rock extravaganza. In the meantime, Green Day also announced that they will be the headline performer on Amazon Music Live on October 26. The live-streamed concert series airs after Thursday Night Football, and Green Day has “prepared a career-spanning set that will draw from their extensive catalog and includes new surprises.”
This tour between these three ‘90s icons – and icons-in-the-making, The Linda Lindas – could be seen as the spiritual successor to The Hella Mega Tour, which saw Green Day tour with Fall Out Boy and Weezer. It was initially set to run from March to August 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on those plans.
The Australia and New Zealand leg of the tour, as was the sole Canadian date, were canceled. The proposed show in Moscow was also axed after Russia invaded Ukraine. Ultimately, the truncated tour commenced in 2021 before wrapping up in 2022.
Spiritually, Green Day’s Vegas show was a moment to celebrate the band’s past and future. This year, they observed their major label debut, Dookie, turning 30, and the band commemorated this occasion with a special super deluxe box set. The 6xLP / 4xCD re-issue contained the band’s Woodstock ’94 performance, a collection of demos, and a collection of outtakes.
“It’s not quite the anniversary,” Armstrong told the Vegas crowd, as Dookie was recorded in the summer of 1993 and scheduled for release early in the following year. “The record came out in February 1994, so in October of 1993, we were just scared s–tless,” he added.
After performing Dookie in its entirety, Green Day spent an hour playing some of their deepest cuts from their 30+ year catalog, according to Rolling Stone.
They also debuted “The American Dream Is Killing Me,” a new song the band has been teasing on its Instagram with Night of the Living Dead — inspired black-and-white clips of zombies attacking humans.
The subject matter seems to harken to the political themes of their beloved 2004 album, American Idiot, and if it heralds a new album, it would be Green Day’s first since 2020’s Father of All Motherf—kers.
“The American Dream Is Killing Me” is scheduled for a release on October 24, one week before Halloween.
