When I was 15, my mom dutifully escorted me three hours across I-96 to see Bad Religion in Detroit. Conscious even then about how un-punk this was, I spent weeks trying to convince anyone I knew who had a car to give me a ride to the show, to no avail. And so it was that with great embarrassment my mom and I arrived at the front door, where I promptly wormed my way to the front of the floor and spent the entire show.
In retrospect, even the shame of going to a punk-rock show with my mom was worth getting to see a band that possessed the two qualities I most enjoyed in music as a 15 year old: (1) angry, political lyrics, and (2) three-part harmonies on the choruses. Times have changed; I have moved past my punk-rock phase, the world is being brutally sodomized by fundamentalists of two different faiths, and the Pistons are the NBA champions. Yet through it all, Bad Religion still make records featuring roughly the same ingredients as those that meant so much to me in the suburban bedroom of my adolescence. And why not? Now, more than ever, America needs a band like this. And that is what is so disappointing about this record.
2004 is chock-full of potential targets for Bad Religion's ire, and yet the first real song on the album ("Sinister Rouge") is a cheap-shot against perhaps the easiest target of all: the Catholic Church. Seriously. For a band like Bad Religion, this kind of stuff is the equivalent of a power ballad. Other "too-easy" targets include Los Angeles ("Los Angeles is Burning") and organized religion in general (again and again...).
The album is not a total loss, however. When Bad Religion turn to more interesting subject matter, the results are more than worthwhile (the title track and "Let Them Eat War" are both standouts). And of course, Bad Religion are still sonically more-or-less the same band they've always been (lineup changes not withstanding), catering to the 15 year old in all of us.
P.S. Thanks, mom. Punk RAWWWWWKKK!!!
When I was 15, my mom dutifully escorted me three hours across I-96 to see Bad Religion in Detroit. Conscious even then about how un-punk this was, I spent weeks trying to convince anyone I knew who had a car to give me a ride to the show, to no avail. And so it was that with great embarrassment my mom and I arrived at the front door, where I promptly wormed my way to the front of the floor and spent the entire show.
In retrospect, even the shame of going to a punk-rock show with my mom was worth getting to see a band that possessed the two qualities I most enjoyed in music as a 15 year old: (1) angry, political lyrics, and (2) three-part harmonies on the choruses. Times have changed; I have moved past my punk-rock phase, the world is being brutally sodomized by fundamentalists of two different faiths, and the Pistons are the NBA champions. Yet through it all, Bad Religion still make records featuring roughly the same ingredients as those that meant so much to me in the suburban bedroom of my adolescence. And why not? Now, more than ever, America needs a band like this. And that is what is so disappointing about this record.
2004 is chock-full of potential targets for Bad Religion's ire, and yet the first real song on the album ("Sinister Rouge") is a cheap-shot against perhaps the easiest target of all: the Catholic Church. Seriously. For a band like Bad Religion, this kind of stuff is the equivalent of a power ballad. Other "too-easy" targets include Los Angeles ("Los Angeles is Burning") and organized religion in general (again and again...).
The album is not a total loss, however. When Bad Religion turn to more interesting subject matter, the results are more than worthwhile (the title track and "Let Them Eat War" are both standouts). And of course, Bad Religion are still sonically more-or-less the same band they've always been (lineup changes not withstanding), catering to the 15 year old in all of us.
P.S. Thanks, mom. Punk RAWWWWWKKK!!!
1. Overture
2. Sinister Rouge
3. Social Suicide
4. Atheist Peace
5. All There Is
6. Los Angeles Is Burning
7. Let Them Eat War
8. God's Love
9. To Another Abyss
10. The Quickening
11. The Empire Strikes First
12. Beyond Electric Dreams
13. Boot Stamping on a Human Face Forever
14. Live Again (The Fall of Man)
More about: Bad Religion
