One of the last times Green Day had a real hit, it consisted of Billie Joe Armstrong asking, over and over again, “Do you know your enemy?” His band rumbled behind him, creating a kind of back-and-forth sawing sensation, as he repeated the question but only ever answered it vaguely.

As is the case with a lot of music that styles itself as “punk” (even or especially pop punk), there is always an enemy in Green Day’s songs. In the early days, the villain was small-scale suburban conformity; in the band’s grandiose 2000s, it was also the state of the world more broadly. The group’s solidly enjoyable new album Revolution Radio positions itself as continuing on the protest march announced by 2004’s American Idiot, but listening to its songs’ mentions of gun violence, drones, and the Flint water crisis, you might get the counterintuitive sense that “the enemy” here is not actually any larger evil—it’s age.

Green Day are 30 years into their career, and their entry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015—their first year of eligibility—was a recognition of the group’s enormous influence. The fact that their near-contemporaries Blink-182 had a No. 1 album this year speaks to the fan base that remains for pop-punk veterans. But Revolution Radio is also the band’s first album since Armstrong’s well-publicized 2012 onstage meltdown and trip to rehab for addiction, and also its first release since the poorly received album trilogy ¡Uno!, ¡Dos!, and ¡Tré!. All of which explains why Revolutionary Radio sounds like a safe regrounding. It’s a 12-song blast of comforting melody and guitar crunch that uses protest rhetoric almost like someone saying their daily affirmations—rebellion as soothing routine.