will go down in history as one of the best punk albums ever made. And yet, it almost wasn't. Shortly after the release of 2000's oddly experimental Warning:, the world's most successful punk band set to work on their seventh studio album, one intended to return Green Day to their hard-and-fast Dookie and Nimrod pedigree. As the Bay Area trio worked tirelessly, they dropped International Superhits! and B-side compilation Shenanigans to sate their fans' increasing hunger. And though frontman Billie Joe Armstrong and crew categorically deny it to this day, they even found time to invent "neo-new-wave" withtrippy, hilarious debut

"Welcome to a new kind of tension / All across the alienation / Where everything isn't meant to be okay..." -- "American Idiot"

"To live and not to breathe / Is to die in tragedy..." -- "Tales of

Another Broken Home"

"Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me / 'Til then I walk alone..." -- "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"

Then, tragedy struck. In a grave misfortune Bono has come to know all too well, the master tapes of Green Day's new record simply disappeared, stolen from the studio right under the band's noses. It was back to square one. During a particularly lax day in the studio, Green Day bassist Mike Dirnt decided to write a 30-second song. Intrigued, Billie Joe asked drummer Tre Cool to add another 30-second segment to it. As the musicians took turns adding chunks of song to what had already been created, they realized that something interesting was going on -- a sort of "plot" was beginning to develop. The punk-rock opera was born... and the rest, as they say, is history.There's a point to this story above and beyond the creation of a brilliant new art form. Though it may not have seemed so initially, the theft of Green Day's "lost album" could very well be the best thing that has ever happened to the band. You see, American Idiot is not a good album. It's not even a great album. No, American Idiot is Green Day's masterpiece, their magnum opus, the indelible mark they have left on the music world forever. It is not only the best record of Green Day's career, but I can say with the utmost certainty that American Idiot is the single greatest album I have heard in my entire life. Your mileage may vary. I, for one, am in awe.To keep things in perspective, American Idiot is not your average Green Day album. While previous entries in the band's canon have featured collections of fantastic individual tunes ranging from the serious to the not-so-much, American Idiot is an opera, which means that it is a single, cohesive, dead-serious story possessed of a distinct beginning, middle, and end. There are real, human, flesh-and-blood characters who you will come to know and who you will suffer with throughout the album's . There are tragedies. Betrayals. Plot twists. American Idiot is a one-hour manifesto on our world.Yes, these are the guys who recorded an album named after bodily waste. The same three lads who sang songs about methamphetamine and sexual self-gratification. If you grew up with Green Day, you're in luck... Green Day has grown up with you. They've never been this angry, either. No one is safe from Green Day's 20/20 vision of society. The American domestic media is given just as much ill will as the nation's foreign policy. The leaders of our country are no more at fault for our current state of affairs than the apathetic suburbanite who allows it to go on. There is no one enemy, no one ally. It's never that simple.Our story begins with the title track, a deceptively straightforward tune that belies the gravity of the material to follow. Granted, the song "American Idiot" does have a "single" feel about it, but the piece is easily superior to most of Green Day's radio-airwave contributions in the past. Their sound has continued to become fuller and more well-rounded as time goes on, but thanfully their punk essence has remained impervious to each successive album's increasingly immaculate production values. It's a fitting and wholly appropriate prologue to Green Day's finest hour. Then comes "Jesus of Suburbia." And the doors are blown wide open."Jesus of Suburbia" is a nine-minute epic suite composed of five separate and unique pieces -- "Jesus of Suburbia," "City of the Damned," "I Don't Care," "Dearly Beloved," and "Tales of Another Broken Home" -- which are expertly blended together with some exquisite guitar work. It is here that we are first introduced to our protagonist, Jesus of Suburbia, the disillusioned teenage "son of rage and love." Lost in a world of confusion, apathy, rage, loneliness, and drugs, Jesus doesn't come off as the kind of fellow who's going to take our story home into a warm and rising sun. And yet, for better or for worse, he's completely relatable, these nine minutes locking you into an empathetic mindset that persists throughout the length of this man's odyssey.After giving us a sobering glimpse of Jesus' constricted and poisonous world, Green Day sets it against the intimidating backdrop of the international theater in "Holiday," their inevitable polemic against Gulf War II. The song is as powerful and poignant as it is inflammatory; our President is reduced to the status of "gasman" and the picture painted of battle is as hellish as one might imagine. The true power of the song, though, is derived from how our crazy modern world factors into the lives of Jesus and the other characters we meet. Green Day forces us to consider not only the casualties of war abroad, but also those in our own neighborhoods.