Bad Religion - Hardcore Epic

At 15 Greg Graffin founded Bad Religion, at 16 the independent record label Epitaph (yes, the one that in the '90s would sell millions upon millions of records with Offspring, NOFX and Rancid), at 17 he could theoretically have died too; in fact, by 17 Gregg Graffin had already said everything he had to say; the only thing left was to actually do it; and so he did.

Bad Religion were born with the second wave of Los Angeles hardcore, a second generation of hardcore kids so close to the first (by just 1-2 years) as to be almost indistinguishable from it, if it weren't for the fact that, in the phenomena we're dealing with here, even a single year counts. By 1980 the Germs had already ended, with Darby Crash's death — the founders of Los Angeles hardcore (having fused Ramones and Sex Pistols), the founders (alongside Zeros, Avengers, Weirdos, Misfits, Fear and Black Flag) of hardcore since 1977. But while this, effectively the original lineup, could be called the "generation zero" of hardcore, the genre truly became a genre starting in 1979 with the explosion of the first, tightly-knit generation of LA hardcore kids (Adolescents, Circle Jerks, Descendents, Christian Death, Agent Orange), passing through 1978 (Dead Kennedys, Angry Samoans, TSOL, Flipper, Social Distortion).

Until 1980, hardcore had essentially been music played and listened to by underage (not underdeveloped!) Angelenos. 1980 marked both the peak and the overhaul of the movement. On one hand, the various founding bands of the genre finally emerged — meaning they actually managed to put out records, having until then remained largely confined to the anonymity of live shows; on another, the first cases of post-hardcore appeared (Minutemen, Flipper, Fear); and on yet another, the genre was refounded both geographically (hardcore pockets sprang up across America, especially in Washington, Chicago, Minneapolis, New York, Boston and San Francisco) and formally (Bad Brains and DRI pushed the genre to its most extreme, unsurpassed limits).

In this context, in a Los Angeles that was about to stop being hardcore's Los Angeles (soon the city would be swept up in the heavy metal wave), there appeared a band playing hardcore that either wasn't from LA, or wasn't really hardcore, or, as was often the case, was neither LA nor hardcore anymore: a traditionalist outfit like Bad Religion, with a sound that was if anything less devastating than average, members even younger than average, lyrics less savage than average, and manners far less thuggish than the hardcore norm of the day: who would have bet on those four?

The historical role of Bad Religion was essentially to be the only hardcore band active in Los Angeles between the birth and life of the movement (1977-1980) and its revival (1990-1995) in that same city. Bad Religion fulfilled this role in a singular way: essentially failing during the first part of their long career (1980-1987), when hardcore was either post- or hyper-, only to hit the mark unexpectedly and supremely between 1988 and 1990, refounding the genre for the third and final time (first founding: Germs; second: Bad Brains and DRI), and representing the rare, almost unique case of an artistic old age superior to its youth. But wait a moment! This is often said of Bad Religion, yet it's not quite accurate: Bad Religion don't constitute an exception to the rule of the first three albums (after which no rock band would ever add anything more or better to their body of work); in fact, Bad Religion can be taken seriously, and their first "real" album can be considered the one from the year in question, starting in 1988 — because while it's true that by then the band had been active for 8 years, it's equally true that only in 1988 did the average age of its members reach 23! And not even a child prodigy, with all his technique, has ever managed to make art.

Bad Religion simply had the misfortune of releasing records too early (a misfortune they brought on themselves, having started their own label); most other rock and hardcore bands, by contrast, had constraints that in time proved to be an advantage. The Bad Religion of 1988, the Graffin of 1988, are nothing different from before — they've simply come of age... The fact that finding the right way to say what they'd always had in mind led them to found a third wave of hardcore simply means that was what Bad Religion wanted and needed to do from the moment they were born, but which, without physiological growth, they were simply unable to do.

I'd like to address all the Nirvana fans out there, and ask them to consider this: Greg Graffin is not Kurt Cobain's grandfather — he was born just two years before him. One gets the sense he belongs to another era only because, in effect, he began his career one, two, three musical eras before Cobain. And before judging the results of these early attempts, consider what Cobain might have had to offer in '82 (at 15) or in '85 ("Bleach" came out in '89). Few people factor in these elements: usually, when picking up a band's first EPs or debut album (especially in hardcore), it's assumed the person behind it is 18-20 years old. With Bad Religion, the truth is we're below even the age of majority.

Bad Religion were born in 1980, a year in which all the emerging bands were either not properly hardcore (Gun Club, Meat Puppets, Minutemen, Mission of Burma) or excessively so (Minor Threat). Bad Religion thus positioned themselves (against the grain, setting aside bands that were hardcore merely as a fashion statement) as mild-mannered, tough, conservative custodians of the genre. Reactionary conservatives: rather than moving forward or settling into what had already been done, they went all the way back to the primitive hardcore of the Ramones. They sound almost punk (which, for a hardcore band, isn't exactly a compliment — it's a bit like telling a model she looks masculine...).

The other half of why Gregg Graffin matters, as mentioned, is the label he founded. It should be noted that, for the time, self-releasing was almost the norm rather than an exception; or rather, it was customary in the sense that between 1979 and 1981 the most important American independent or indie labels were born, labels that emerged out of the hardcore scene and, for the most part, in the city of Los Angeles. Still, Graffin's precociousness made even this a unique and somewhat excessive case (until he reached maturity, Graffin's label, much like his music, bore no particularly notable fruit). In Los Angeles, Gregg Ginn (note his birth year, though: 1954) had kicked off the process of founding both a band (Black Flag) and a label specifically to release its records (in this case SST, which boasted some of the greatest hardcore acts of all time: Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Descendents, Saccharine Trust, Husker Du, Dinosaur Jr, Bad Brains); also in Los Angeles, nothing short of fundamental was SLASH (Germs, Violent Femmes, X, Dream Syndicate, Gun Club, Fear, Misfits, L7), run by Bob Biggs (who also produced the landmark documentary "The Decline of Western Civilization" on the life and work of LA's hardcore scene); in Washington, a partial counterpart to Graffin was Dischord (later home to Rites Of Spring, Fugazi, Nation Of Ulysses, Jawbox), founded by Ian MacKaye for his band Minor Threat (who, in any case, had three years on Graffin).

From the very start, Bad Religion took a punk route into hardcore, essentially doing in earnest what the Ramones did while playing around (or rather, with a smile — since the Ramones' game is in fact tragic and bitter). Every musical passage, and Graffin's thin voice (closer to punk recital than hardcore scream), betrays the sheer adolescence of the band. From the outset, the lyrics read as university culture coming into contact with the gutter, through a kind of mutual compensation and rejection between the two worlds. The lyrics speak, with a materialist, left-leaning skepticism, of the alienation inherent to the bourgeois world just as much as to the proletarian one, and to the punk one too, in a nihilism that isn't self-satisfied but has simply outlived itself (as is typical of all hardcore, which is what sets it apart from punk), distinguished by post-nuclear settings centered on themes and language drawn from biology and anthropology (today Graffin is a university professor of evolutionary biology). Essentially, the mature Graffin's lyrics would come to center on human alienation rooted, even more fundamentally, in a social nihilism. And for this reason, even when occasionally repetitive, they would never be as stale as the tired old punk rants against the bourgeoisie — instead, they stand as the formalization of a hardcore unease that isn't historical (as punk's is) but constitutive: and one doesn't rebel against necessity. All of which gives rise to a philanthropy that is more compassionate and passive than humanitarian and active. From the very beginning, the songs were written sometimes together, sometimes separately, by Greg Graffin and Brett Gurewitz, the two founders of Bad Religion.

Bad Religion 1981, EP (7 tracks, 12 minutes). Jay Bentley (bass), Greg Graffin (vocals), Brett Gurewitz (guitar), Jay Ziskrout (drums). “Bad Religion” is the band's first classic and its manifesto: “See my body, it's nothing to get hung about. I'm nobody except genetic runaround. Spiritual era's gone, it ain't comin' back. Don't you know the place you live's a piece of shit? Don't you know blind faith in life will conquer it? Don't you know responsibility is ours?”. There's plenty of despondency here, plenty of garage-band feel, a rhythm section that dominates (that very ‘80s bass sound) and guitars that clatter along avoiding any kind of solo (basically just providing accompaniment). “Politics” is a bland communist chant. “Sensory Overload” shows how a bunch of heartbroken, sincere kids can move and involve a listener even without much technical or compositional grounding. “Slaves” is a saddened Ramones. “Drastic Actions” rests (at a slow or limping pace) on the untamable spirit of a suicidal kid not yet of age. Graffin's voice is full of heart and worth more than what he's singing and how he's singing it. Same goes for the instruments. It's a broken sob of a record. “World War III” is a faint pacifist dirge.

How Could Hell Be Any Worse? 1982, LP. Fourteen tracks, 30 minutes. Greg Hetson of Circle Jerks adds his own guitar. “We're Only Gonna Die” shows a band with a fresh coat of paint: faster, more violent, more hardcore, but less inspired. “Latch Key Kids” has the breakneck, noisy unintelligibility typical of the cheapest brand of hardcore, and it's nowhere near capable (as the future Bad Religion will be) of turning that into art. “Part III” returns to the emotional pull of the first EP: the novelty here is the Hetson/Gurewitz solos, a shame they're gratuitous. “Faith in God” is a poor copy of “Bad Religion”.

“Fuck Armageddon…This Is Hell” is Bad Religion's second masterpiece, one of the anthems of the '80s; it's propped up by as much violence as desolation, all delivered with a disarming naive simplicity and immediacy. Bad Religion come across as apocalyptic and Earth-centered only from the Cosmos's point of view.

“Pity”, in its frail, breakneck mournfulness, fully anticipates the future Bad Religion, and it's melodic too: unfortunately it lacks arrangement and production. “In the Night” again lays out a sonic and harmonic layer that foreshadows the future Bad Religion sound, or rather the future execution of a sound or idea that it seems Bad Religion had had from the very start. One could almost say that, had these songs been properly produced and arranged, they would already have accomplished the band's entire future body of work. “Damned to Be Free” is nonsense in search of meaning. “White Trash (Second Generation)” is the same. “American Dream” is a botched “Fuck Armageddon…This Is Hell”. “Eat Your Dog”, “Voice of God Is Government”, “Oligarchy” add nothing further.

“Doing Time” is a fully realized summation of the despair and sadness of the first EP. A hardcore homily in the shape of a ballad.

Into the Unknown is the 1983 album that offers the same strengths and weaknesses as its predecessor. After this second album the band (that is, Graffin, Gurewitz and Bentley) broke up. Graffin carried on alone with the Bad Religion project. Back to the Known, 1984, EP. Five tracks, 10 minutes. Tim Gallegos (bass), Greg Hetson (guitar), Greg Graffin (vocals), Pete Finestone (drums).

“Yesterday”, at a slowed-down pace, is a preview of what Bad Religion will become in the second half of the '80s: hardcore epic. “Frogger” is an absolute masterpiece, the best Bad Religion song up to 1989 and even afterward matched only by their very best. It's the peak of Graffin's elegiac lyricism; introduced by barks hovering between joke and tragedy, it reveals the author's heart left to rot (but never to dull): “I'm tired of this city, all this toil and strife. Trying to cross the boulevard, playing frogger with my life. Frogger with my life”. “Bad Religion” is a jazzed-up version of the classic track. “Along the Way” is Graffin's other masterpiece, almost on a par with “Frogger”: still elegy, still morality lived rather than theorized, still refinement. “New Leaf” is anonymous power-pop.

After four years of silence, Bad Religion reform. By now they're all past 20. It's 1987: a few hundred miles north of Los Angeles, grunge and Seattle hardcore are taking shape, made by other twenty-somethings who, geographically, never had the chance to go through Bad Religion's early Los Angeles hardcore experience, and who, once that scene ran its course, try to build something of their own back home. In 1987, Fugazi form (in Washington) and the Jesus Lizard (in Chicago), formally opening the post-hardcore era (which, in truth, had begun 7 years earlier; let's call it, then, “a” post-hardcore). In 1987 Squirrel Bait, with “Skag Heaven”, deliver one of the greatest rock albums ever made and mark the split between a traditional hardcore now being swallowed up by metal or noise, and the aforementioned post-hardcore or emo-core of the late '80s and early '90s (which will lead all the way to the post-rock of Slint).

Suffer 1988, LP. Fifteen tracks, 26 minutes. Jay Bentley (bass), Greg Hetson (guitar), Greg Graffin (vocals), Brett Gurewitz (guitar), Pete Finestone (drums). This album invents a new hardcore style (refounding the genre for the third time after Germs and DRI/Bad Brains) that we might call power in form and epic in content. Never had hardcore songs been so short and fast; so fast, in fact, that the speed muffles their own power. Never had rock songs been so dense and concentrated. Every song seems indistinguishable from the next because every song is so packed and so fast that its richness only becomes tangible after many, many listens. It's a gold mine that collapses all at once, making it impossible to actually mine. And that is extreme art. Every song is wildly different, and every song is made up of a thousand songs: yet, on the surface, every song appears identical to the others because of the excessive speed and monolithic perfection with which it reaches the ear. It's a beauty that needs to be slowed down to be admired, and yet it's beauty only because it moves at supersonic speed. This album elevates the bloated, tedious punk sing-along, with its nauseating verse-chant, into an epic meditation on the human condition conceived as a perpetual existential fading. Conceived at the atomic level (and all the more ruthless for using the language of a genetics textbook). The writing and performance of every instrument are polished and orchestrated to the utmost, in a harmony that prevails over, and that the melody is subordinate to.

Bad Religion rank among the best musicians ever, not just in hardcore but in rock as a whole. The sonic range this chamber-like ensemble is able to command is truly impressive. Bad Religion elevate the scruffy, adolescent hardcore kid to the rank of a disillusioned, deeply modest epic hero — compassionate, solitary and anarchic (no longer merely anarchist) — turning nihilism into daily bread to be chewed rather than spat out. This album holds enormous importance in rock history, within which it achieves absolute formal perfection. Substantively, however (in terms of “great songs”), Bad Religion still have something to prove, still saddled here, as before, with their old sterility when it comes to melodic punch.

No Control 1989, LP. Jay Bentley (bass), Greg Hetson (guitar), Greg Graffin (vocals), Brett Gurewitz (guitar), Pete Finestone (drums). This is the album of the band's definitive artistic maturity. It's a perfect album in every respect; it pushes the power-epic sound of '88 to unmatched expressive and conceptual heights and stands as one of the top five hardcore albums of all time. We get the same monolith as the previous record, we're hit by the same wall of sound that, on the surface, still carries all the apparent unintelligibility and flatness of the earlier work. But once that surface is peeled back, a deeply, intimately meaningful substance is revealed. The post-nuclear setting evokes, by contrast, the prehistoric, laying bare humanity's eternal nature. This album has the same number of tracks and the same length as its predecessor; like its predecessor, it's essentially recorded live in the studio. And every song, as before, is written by the Graffin/Gurewitz duo.

“Change of Ideas” (0:56) is the first masterpiece among masterpieces; irrepressible and absolute (and therefore ungraspable); an extreme power-pop combed through with swarms of riffs and tempo changes. “Big Bang” (1:47) barrels forward without a breath in this sonic holocaust that, as if moving past the speed of light, ends up giving the impression of stillness. Once the underlying motifs (or melodies) of each piece settle in, though, one can't help but appreciate their lyricism and sensitivity. Every instrument shines in its part.

“No Control” (1:40) further confirms the polyrhythm and polyphony that constantly skirt the edge of the baroque, yet supremely never tip over into it (like truly great epic, which is never rhetorical) — this is classical music for hardcore kids.

“Sometimes I Feel Like” (2:19) shows, with all its tricks (both in the rhythm section and the layered guitars), how entire songs could be built out of every single second of material like this. Bad Religion end up so irrepressible that they almost squander their own richness (in a waste that, if anything, only increases it) by piling solution upon sophisticated solution.

“Automatic Man” (2:05), same story. “I Want to Conquer the World” (1:34) is the peak of epic drama (disguised beneath a refined vocal and instrumental surface that seems monotone but is, underneath, built from variation upon variation) and of Graffin's compassionate, introspective humanism.

"Sanity" (0:47) is the second masterpiece among masterpieces: boundless sadness, boundless grace, boundless endurance. "Henchman" (2:44) carries the discourse, or the saga, forward. "It Must Look Pretty Appealing" (1:07) does the same, and adds the emotion that comes from every melody that isn't sought out but found in soft focus. "You" (1:57) sounds as if it fuses the two preceding tracks into a single piece of complexity and emotion, never shown off. "Progress" (2:08) is the third masterpiece among masterpieces. It's like hyper-concentrated hardcore-progressive. "I Want Something More" (1:54) inaugurates the "cut track" technique: a classy device to surprise the listener and avoid any mediocrity or predictability. Halfway through, the tape is cut, then starts up again a few seconds later for a choral, martial finale. "Anxiety" (1:42) is the fourth masterpiece among masterpieces. Particularly intimate and moving. "Billy" (1:23) again burns through downcast riffs and equally downcast vocals. Always with discretion, always with perfection, always with infinite sensitivity, put on public display on one hand and snatched away from the public on the other, given how quickly it's delivered.

"The World Won't Stop" (2:14) closes with the fifth masterpiece among masterpieces, one that shouts out the greatness of the whole Bad Religion album: the need to reflect from within an unstoppable rush of speed, the need to run at full tilt in order to stop. This album is one of the most meditative records in rock, and it's the one that appears least so. That's exactly why it ranks among the greatest, and must be regarded as a classic among classics.

Against the Grain 1990 LP. 17 tracks, 34 minutes. Jay Bentley (bass), Greg Hetson (guitar), Greg Graffin (vocals), Brett Gurewitz (guitar), Pete Finestone (drums). After the previous album's epic/power perfection, this one widens the boundaries in an operation that, while diluting the essential effectiveness of its predecessor, expands its reach into extremely varied and immediately recognizable formal directions. This album leans into the epic rather than the power, and makes room for various novelty touches that would have been inadmissible on the previous battleship of a record. Still, that sense of detonation or charge remains, centered now on implosion rather than explosion. These are hardcore confessions before one's own self, not public-facing punk harangues. After 10 years, Graffin and Gurewitz split the songwriting between them, like the mature Hart and Mould of Husker Du (9 tracks from the former, 6 from the latter), presenting themselves, just like Hart and Mould, as two more classic singer-songwriters of hardcore. Bentley and Hetson also each find room for one contribution apiece.

"Modern Man" (Graffin) [1:56] is a masterpiece that echoes the epic anthem "Change of Ideas" (with even more choruses that make it even more epic — and when you say "epic" about this genre, hardcore, it really ought to raise eyebrows!); it sublimates anti-evolutionist proselytizing and the alienation that results from Graffin's own failure on this front. The lyrics stand as the testament of the author, or punk-scientist: "I've got nothing to say, I've got nothing to do, all of my neurons are functioning smoothly yet still i'm a cyborg just like you, I am one big myoma that thinks, my planet supports only me, I've got this one big problem: will I live forever? I've got just a short time you see, modern man, evelotionary betrayer, modern man, ecosystem destroyer, modern man, destroy yourself in shame, modern man, pathetic example of earth's organic heritage, when I look back and think, when I ponder and ask 'why?', I see my ancestors spend with careless abandon, assuming eternal supply, modern man…, just a sample of carbon-based wastage, just a fucking tragic epic of you and I".

"Turn on the Light" (Gurewitz) [1:23] has an almost western gait, or at least one more suited to the prairie than the city, more day than night (a trait, a Meat Puppets-like varnish, that will run through the whole record).

"Get Off" (Graffin) [1:42] is, like all of Graffin's songs, more serious, nostalgic, downcast. Flawless. "Blenderhead" (Gurewitz) [1:11] is, like all of Gurewitz's songs, on the hunt for a device, a space-opening solution: here it's a chorus of the kind only Bad Religion have learned to pull off (neither time-wasting like the Ramones nor rhetorical like almost all rock choruses, but sublime in its epic quality, and carefully measured), plus a surprise ending with the tape cut off. "The Positive Aspect of Negative Thinking" (Bentley) [0:57] is a fully successful piece of ferocity that changes tempo near the end, becoming even more ferocious. One of the tracks that enriches the album.

"Anesthesia" (Gurewitz) [3:02] Gurewitz's masterpiece, even though it ends up sounding barely like Bad Religion. It's estranging, but, as with all great songs, it's a pleasure. A devastating, tireless rhythm section, airy, almost arena-rock guitars, touching, adolescent melodies in the choruses; a finale caught between metal riffs and synthesized drums. Bad Religion in Pixies mode.

"Flat Earth Society" (Gurewitz) [2:21] is a masterpiece on the same level as the previous one. Gurewitz does a great deal to refresh Graffin's inspiration (who nonetheless keeps growing ever deeper and more self-aware); it's a celebration of faint young lives, of memories, of shattered hopes (the device here, once again, a masterful chorus, like a Wagnerian western). It's a love song to nothingness.

"Faith Alone" (Graffin) [3:34] skilfully returns to darkness and pessimistic meditation. One of Graffin's best and most touching existential statements. "Entropy" (Graffin) [2:23] is a perfection that overflows with scientific precision in both form and content. "Against the Grain" (Graffin) [2:07] is Graffin's answer to Gurewitz's experimentalism: a masterpiece built on a hardcore pitched an octave below normal. The result is prairie folk set to a downtown funk strut. Anything but a joke: it externalizes death in an eccentric way, yet one no less elegant and engaging than usual.

"Operation Rescue" (Graffin) [2:06] is a solid passage. "God Song" (Graffin) [1:37] adds to that solidity the author's own long-standing personal bitterness. "21st Century (Digital Boy)" (Gurewitz) [2:48] is a serious game played with the band's punk past. Here the guitars pulse, and it's not the rhythm section that hogs the song's focus in that indistinct classic charge the band is known for. The track reveals a constant of the album: room made for hard rock riffs.

"Misery and Famine" (Graffin) [2:33] is a backdrop as elementary in its vocal line as it is varied in its accompaniment.

"Unacceptable" (Hetson) [1:42] is a blast of fresh air with the Circle Jerks stamp on it (with Hetson's backing vocals seeming to call back to his old band). "Quality or Quantity" (Graffin) [1:33] is another chapter of Graffin's more formal, abstract side, compositionally indulging in a meaningful string of tempo changes. "Walk Away" (Gurewitz) [1:49] brings back the kid that is Gurewitz: more carefree, even in sadness, and therefore more focused on action than reflection, compared to Graffin.

Thanks to the injection of energy from Bad Religion (1988-1990), a host of hardcore bands (more or less influenced by Seattle grunge) would be born in California, each one a variation on the main band's power-epic formula. Almost all of these bands started out in the court of Graffin and Gurewitz, Epitaph. Pennywise (debuting in '91), despite literally ripping off Bad Religion (or perhaps precisely because of that), were the best and most honest of the bunch. NOFX, Offspring, and Rancid were the ones who managed to sell the masses something that those masses more or less took to be grunge. Meanwhile, the ones actually cultivating that phenomenon known as the hardcore revival (1988-1991) were, from New York, Gorilla Biscuits, from Chicago, Screeching Weasel, but above all the Didjits and, even more so, Pegboy (whose early work ranks among the best in rock history).

After 1990, Bad Religion would have nothing left to say: they'd carry on with plenty of class, experience and craft, but with no hope of enriching that void in any meaningful way.

Generator (1992) features Bobby Schayer on drums. Recipe For Hate (1993) and Stranger Than Fiction (1994, on Sony, no less!) are the last albums before the band's second breakup. Graffin and Gurewitz divided up the estate: the former took Bad Religion, the latter took Epitaph (busy producing, building and cashing in on his trio of sellable acts, NOFX, Rancid and Offspring). Brian Baker (ex-Minor Threat, Government Issue, Meatmen, Dag Nasty and Junkyard) took Gurewitz's place in Bad Religion on Gray Race (Atlantic, 1996) and No Substance (Atlantic, 1998). On The New America (Atlantic, 2000), Gurewitz resurfaces as a third guitarist, and on The Process of Belief (Epitaph, 2002) the Graffin-Gurewitz partnership is sealed by the album's release through Epitaph and by songs all co-written by the two of them. For 2004, a reissue and remastering of the entire Bad Religion catalogue is planned for Epitaph.

True North (2012) is yet another small-but-great album for a band that by now has nothing left to prove to anyone. The forays into electronics that were the (bitter?) bread and butter of Empire Strikes First back in 2004 are therefore a thing of the past, making room once again for the anthemic choruses ("Fuck You", "Land Of The Endless Greed") that have defined much of the band's career.

If anything, you can sense an attempt on the production side to make everything more current, catchy and competitive with that mainstream scene of which Bad Religion could, by now, be considered the standard-bearers — unlike the pathetic ¡Uno! ¡Dos! ¡Tré! from those washed-up Green Day ("Hello Cruel World", "Nothing To Dismay", "Popular Consensus"). The sounds here are certainly among the best found on a record bearing the names of Graffin and co., and they flow by, as always, with an unmatched ease (just listen to the one-two punch of "Vanity" and "In Their Hearts Is Right" or, more generally, all the tracks clocking in at a minute or so).

If there's one flaw, it might be certain riffs or certain metal-oriented tunings ("Crisis Time") on the more structured tracks. It's "fashion" dictating this, and if even Converge fell for it, we don't see why it should be a big deal for Bad Religion, who have always been pop-ulists at heart anyway. Still, the album as a whole has no real dips in quality and passively rides on Mr. Graffin's well-known knack for communication.

Even if the glories of the past are likely gone for good, we can only consider ourselves lucky if new generations can still choose Bad Religion as a possible gateway into the world of music, rather than not. The fact remains that their punk'n'roll, so melodic and catchy (yet never banal), wins people over today just as it did twenty years ago. They know how to be sad and joyful, engaged and rowdy, all within a couple of songs, and they know how to convey all the feelings that an etymologically punk record ought to convey.

Then they made us wait a bit longer than usual. Six years, instead of the usual three or four that pass between one Bad Religion album and the next. But we knew they'd be back, ranting as only they know how, on this Age Of Unreason. Pouring venom and melody over Trump's America, walls so fashionable among nationalist-populist governments, and so on and so forth. In short, for these Californians, already prone to controversy by nature, railing against these times is like shooting fish in a barrel.

The sound Greg Graffin — now the band's sole, tireless permanent ringleader — has chosen this time is the one the band feels most at home with: the classic blend of pop-punk and immediate melodies, at the expense of the slight psychedelic or metal detours of recent works. At times there's almost too much melody, which waters down the force of tracks like "Lose Your Head" or the title track itself. But when the balance between melody and riff is spot on, out come straightforward, effective songs like "My Sanity", capable for a few moments of recalling the thrills the band stirred up back in the late '80s.

The best tracks, though, are the shorter, scrappier ones. Obviously the machine-gun lyrics of "Do The Paranoid Style" and the Clash-deep bass of "End Of History", but also the fun hard rock detour "Big Black Dog".

Contributions by Giorgio Moltisanti ("True North") and Michele Corrado ("Age Of Unreason")

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google