The music has the furious beat and driving buzz saw guitars of classic punk rock, but when a vocal chorus cuts in, it is surprisingly harmonious and emotionally evocative, reminiscent of The Beatles or The Everly Brothers. This is a sonic contradiction that works to stunning effect. It is also a sound that has come to define one of the world's most original rock bands, BAD RELIGION. To call Bad Religion simply a punk band is akin to labeling the Who a mod band, or Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys surf mu   [ read more ]

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Another title for All Ages might be "The Best of Bad Religion Before Recipe for Hate." Which makes sense: Since the band's last two LPs, Recipe and Stranger Than Fiction, are owned and distributed by Atlantic, this is a great overview of the band's prior six albums for those who only got into the band since the major label got involved. Here's another good title Epitaph could have considered: "Embarrassment of Riches." Though it encompasses 23 pretty frickin' amazing, tuneful, punk/{   [ read more ]

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Punk veterans Bad Religion don't rely on bankrupt laurels, nostalgia, or a facade of long-expired cool. LP after LP, they just set vicious hooks, a blitzkrieg attack, and potent lyrics to soaring singer Greg Graffin's piledriving passion. It's easy to take them for granted, to view Recipe as just another red-hot LP (ho hum) by the last and best band to survive the '80s L.A. punk explosion. And on first listen, it's tarnished by their previous mild malaise: everything sounds alike, and some ex   [ read more ]

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It seems that Bad Religion's eighth LP is a rare case of selling out in reverse. Having signed to the big bad major wolf ("what big teeth you have, Grandma Atlantic"), the bandmembers seem too intent on showing their fans they're not going wimpy, so they turn their back on the advances of Generator and Recipe for Hate in order to bring back the naked aggression. Stranger Than Fiction is back to the go-for-the-jugular stuff, pretending that the wonderful modifications and variety of their rece   [ read more ]

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Talk about a return to form. 1996's misproduced, flat-sounding, disappointing The Gray Race (a good LP for most bands but a poor one for Bad Religion) had both critics and fans wondering if this U.S. underground institution could prosper despite the loss of key guitarist BRETT GUREWITZ, who'd written half the songs on the first eight albums, as well as provided much of the essential attitude. (Gurewitz had left the quintet in 1994 following an argument with bassist JAY BENTLEY, allowing "Mr. Brett" to bette   [ read more ]

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Based on only one or two listens to The Process of Belief, one would be tempted to retitle it The Process of Backsliding. It's like a batch of outtakes from their 1988 comeback LP, Suffer, or the amazing juggernauts that followed, No Control and Against the Grain. But successive immersions into the new LP's brute, lashing power and wild honey melodies disarms such critical impulses as efficiently as a martial arts master. Regression rarely feels this fresh or this welcome. For anyone who forgot how much had   [ read more ]

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In a world ruled increasingly by superstition and intolerance, Bad Religion's rousing wall-of-sound punk seems about as necessary now as ever before. It is the impassioned sound of reason, anthems of a bittersweet idealism and a guarded hope set to propulsive guitars and charging drumbeats. And while most groups with even half the artistic output have long ago morphed into stylistic self-parody, Bad Religion is currently surging forward with a renewed creative intensity. Their fourteenth album is both a nod   [ read more ]

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It's a testament to a band that their weakest work is still this great. There's no question that the loss of guitarist Brett Gurewitz hurts the band. Gurewitz had a hot, edgy sound, and wrote half the songs, including all four singles off 1994's stunning Stranger Than Fiction. Losing such an awesome talent would cripple most groups. Fortunately, the other writer, extraordinary vocalist Greg Graffin, remains. He too has penned so many of Bad Religion's most memorable songs, and one can now add   [ read more ]

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Todd Rundgren may seem like an odd choice of producer for Bad Religion, but as The New America illustrates, it was an inspired, even necessary, one for the veteran Californian punkers. Bad Religion painted themselves into a corner in the late '90s, adhering to the literate, hard-driving punk that marked their indie releases. That may have kept them pure, but as they grew older, they wound up repeating many of their musical ideas, while losing some of their focus. Rundgren blends his talents a   [ read more ]

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Suffer had already wound the meter on Bad Religion's Cali hardcore even tighter -- No Control simply and forcefully continued the shift, delivering a pummel of melodic songwriting made sharp by Greg Graffin's populist cynicism and the stinging barbs of a twin-guitar strike. The remastering for the 2004 version greatly amplified the album's volume. It might also strip away some reverb from the instrumentation, but the latter observation is mostly theoretical, as the later No Control really    [ read more ]

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The third in a flurry of releases that followed Bad Religion's 1988 reunion, Against the Grain found the band's edge honed sharper than it had been in years. Epitaph's 2004 remaster respects this. Increased clarity between mouthpiece Greg Graffin, guitarists Brett Gurewitz and Greg Hetson, and the rhythm section of Jay Bentley and Pete Finestone increases the inherent melodic tension and amplifies Graffin's righteous lyrical anger. "My path renewed/Against the grain/That's where I   [ read more ]

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This 2004 version of Bad Religion's 1982 debut takes the place of 80-85, which had previously accounted for the group's earliest output. Fully remastered (as Epitaph has done for a bulk of early BR releases), the set includes the first LP's full track listing, as well as the first three EPs. The expanded booklet features a full lyric sheet, reprints of the EP cover art, and a great photo collage that's as informative a scene history as any wordy liner retrospective would be. The energy in those    [ read more ]

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