The debut song from Green Day's album, "21st Century Breakdown", is energetic and a great intro to the upcoming play list. The music video, on the other hand, is underwhelming and fails to deliver to our hype train for the new album. The director brought the simple concept of just the band playing on stage. This is definitely not a bad thing; sometimes all your want to see is a band rocking the crap out of their instruments. While that may be true, there is also a wrong way to present this kind of video. "Know Your Enemy" is set in a prison-like area with barbed wire fences and security cameras surrounding the stage. The camera compulsively changes every few seconds which is an attempt to keep things interesting. The lighting isn't too bad, and fills the camera lens up with bright bloom and flashes. Generally, the video squeaks by with a passable presentation.

There are some outlying factors that are very noticeable, and prevent the video from living up to the song. There is no crowd, which sucks some of the energy out and makes for an isolated performance. The band doesn't move more than an inch while performing and forces them to rely on facial expressions only. When the camera breaks away from the band, the shots pan to a vacant city and don't add any context to the song. One saving grace is when the stage props light on fire. Three burning band mate figures was a cool addition and if there were more ideas like this it might have been more entertaining. Overall, it was a great song that should of had a better debut video.