Weezer has truly stayed golden in their later years. With their 20th album, Weezer, better known as The Gold Album, the band came to melt faces, and mission accomplished.

Even this deep into their career, Weezer can still deliver flashes of the sound that made so many of us fall in love with them in the first place. There are heavy, fuzzy riffs throughout The Gold Album that at times feel like a modern-day Pinkerton, but the record never comes across as the band simply trying to recreate its past. Instead, it takes pieces of classic Weezer and pushes them into something that feels experimental, loose and capable of standing on its own.

A big reason for that is the unique approach the band took while making the album. Drummer Patrick Wilson was given significant control over the overall aesthetic, with Weezer moving away from the usual process of using Rivers Cuomo demos as the main building blocks for new songs. Instead, the band spent time jamming together in the living room of Panic! at the Disco drummer Dan Pawlovich’s house and letting the songs take shape as a group.

That change in process can be felt throughout the record. The Gold Album sounds less calculated and more like four guys in a room figuring out where a song wants to go. There is an organic energy to it that fits Weezer particularly well, especially when the guitars get loud and the record starts leaning into the heavier side of the band.

Wilson’s increased creative role also makes perfect sense when looking back at Weezer’s history. He shares songwriting credits on longtime fan favorites including “My Name Is Jonas,” “Surf Wax America” and “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here.” On The Gold Album, his presence as a songwriter becomes even more prominent, including a co-writing credit on “Hoops” and sole writing credit on “Shine Again.”

Weezer has always been fun in this way. They are willing to mess with the formula, change the creative process and even switch up the roles individual members play within the band. Sometimes those experiments take them far away from what people expect Weezer to sound like. This time, that experimentation seems to have brought them closer to the core of what makes the band work.

The result is arguably one of Weezer’s most collaborative albums yet and, more importantly, one that sounds like the band genuinely had fun making it. The Gold Album has the hooks you expect, plenty of classic Weezer weirdness and enough huge riffs to deliver the promised face-melting experience.

With Weezer: The Gathering set to take the band and these new songs on the road, the energy of The Gold Album makes the upcoming tour feel even more exciting. If this record is any indication of where Weezer is creatively right now, The Gathering could end up being one of the most fun Weezer tours in years.

Words by Mason Guidry