Rock, Metal

Bad Religion - True North (2013)

2013-02-01T17:27:08Z

Bad Religion - True North (2013)


01. True North (01:56)
02. Past Is Dead (02:39)
03. Robin Hood In Reverse (02:53)
04. Land Of Endless Greed (01:53)
05. Fuck You (02:14)
06. Dharma And The Bomb (02:00)
07. Hello Cruel World (03:50)
08. Vanity (01:02)
09. In Their Hearts Is Right (01:59)
10. Crisis Time (02:39)
11. Dept. Of False Hope (02:40)
12. Nothing To Dismay (02:07)
13. Popular Consensus (01:53)
14. My Head Is Full Of Ghosts (01:46)
15. The Island (01:28)
16. Changing Tide (02:18)

Greg Graffin – Lead vocals
Brett Gurewitz – guitar, backing vocals, Lead vocals on "Dharma and the Bomb"
Brian Baker – guitar
Greg Hetson – guitar
Jay Bentley – bass, backing vocals
Brooks Wackerman – drums

There's a fine line between honing a very specific sound that can define a band, and creating redundant and stale music. For more than 30 years, Bad Religion have proven that age is merely a number, and relentlessly churned out legendary records. The band's latest offering True North serves as a culmination and retrospective of their storied history.

The title track starts the record with an instant melody that could never be mistaken for anyone but Bad Religion. The urgent beat converges with the soaring harmonies of the chorus, triggering memories of Recipe for Hate, credited by most as the band's best major label release. "Land of Endless Greed" continues this theme, with vocalist Greg Graffin pushing himself to deliver just the right key.

True North continuously finds Bad Religion not just accepting their past, but fully embracing it. "Nothing To Dismay" displays everything beloved about the band's sound. The marching cadence is complimented by Graffin's urgent vocal delivery of the verses, leading right into the call and answer chorus and wailing guitar solo. Aside from the production, the song could easily be mistaken for an outtake from 1989's No Control.

Many view 2002's The Process Of Belief as the band's unofficial "return." It marked not only a return to Epitaph Records, but also reintroduced founding guitarist Brett Gurewitz, whose songwriting partnership with Graffin is nothing short of legendary. True North shares a similar feeling of rejuvenation, but pulls more directly from the past in a very demonstrative manner. Both "The Island" and "Past is Dead" immediately recall memories of 1990's Against the Grain, and its follow-up Generator. "Robin Hood in Reverse" borrows from 1994's Stranger Than Fiction, with Graffin's direct social commentary and uncanny vocabulary arsenal ever present.

Scattered throughout the record are moments of new direction in sound. "Fuck You" draws more from previously existent folk influences, legitimizing a song that could easily be written off as campy purely for the title. "Dharma and the Bomb" recalls influences from the band's early days with a sinister melody reminiscent of Agent Orange or the Dead Kennedys.

True North is nothing short of a celebration of Bad Religion as a permanent fixture in music history, and maybe more importantly, a testament to a timeless history of influence and epic releases. Nothing comes off as stale or self-serving. It's easily the band's best release in the last 10 years, and with time it will garner more appreciation in the overall catalog. I don't look forward to the day Bad Religion calls it quits, but if True North is their final offering, it would unquestionably be the perfect ending. --- sickboi, punknews.org

Bad Religion to zespół, który przyczynił się do powstania jednej z najbardziej irytujących odmian rocka: pop punku (czyli połączenia punk rockowej prostoty z popową przystępnością). Można to jednak wybaczyć członkom zespołu, w końcu Bad Religion nigdy nie był przedstawicielem tego nurtu. A na uznanie zasługują przede wszystkim za genialne melodie, jakiś nie brak na ich albumach - zwłaszcza na wydanych w połowie lat 90-ych "Stranger than Fiction" i "The Gray Race". W kolejnej dekadzie także udało im się zabłysnąć kilkoma świetnymi longplayami (zwłaszcza "The Process of Belief" z 2002 roku), jednak ostatnie ich płyty nie należały do najlepszych. Jak zatem prezentuje się najnowsza, "True North"?

Większość utworów to proste, melodyjne czady, z których w pamięci najbardziej zostają: tytułowy "True North", rozpoczęty spokojnym wstępem "Past Is Dead", "Robin Hood in Reverse", singlowy "Fuck You", "In Their Hearts Is Right" oraz "Popular Consensus". Wyróżnia się na pewno "Hello Cruel World" - jedyny utwór na tym albumie trwający powyżej trzech minut. Bardziej rockowy, niż punkowy, z niesamowicie chwytliwymi harmoniami wokalnymi, oraz konkretnym gitarowym solem. Kolejnym świetnym kawałkiem jest "Dept. of False Hope", brzmiący już jednak bardziej typowo dla zespołu, chociaż i tutaj pojawia się solówka, może nawet trochę lepsza od tej w "Hello Cruel World".

Niestety, na albumie są też zdecydowanie słabsze, po prostu nijakie utwory (np. "Land of Endless Greed" czy zbyt prosty "Vanity"). Mimo że album trwa niewiele ponad pół godziny, ostatnie utwory nużą, bo nie wnoszą już nic nowego. Zabrakło tu chociaż jednej ballady, z których przecież Bad Religion także słynął. Odpowiedź na pytanie postawione w pierwszym akapicie brzmi zatem: dzięki takim utworom, jak "Hello Cruel World", "Dept. of False Hope" czy "Past Is Dead", album "True North" jest nieco lepszy od wyjałowionego z przebojów "New Maps of Hell", ale trochę słabszy od - także najlepszego, ale bardziej zróżnicowanego - "The Dissent of Man".

"True North" ma być podobno ostatnim albumem w dyskografii Bad Religion. Szkoda by było, żeby taki zespół, kończył karierę tak przeciętnym - jak na swoje możliwości - longplayem. Z drugiej strony, słucha się go bardzo przyjemnie, jeżeli akurat ma się ochotę na coś mniej ambitnego. --- Paweł P., pablosreviews.blogspot.com

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Bad Religion ‎– The Dissent Of Man (2010)

2018-12-30T15:43:58Z

Bad Religion ‎– The Dissent Of Man (2010)


1 	The Day The Earth Stalled 	1:23
2 	Only Rain 	2:43
3 	The Resist Stance 	2:32
4 	Won't Somebody 	2:42
5 	The Devil In Stitches 	3:28
6 	Pride And The Pallor 	2:56
7 	Wrong Way Kids 	2:43
8 	Meeting Of The Minds 	2:06
9 	Someone To Believe 	2:38
10 	Avalon 	3:28
11 	Cyanide	3:55
12 	Turn Your Back On Me 	2:24
13 	Ad Hominem 	3:27
14 	Where The Fun Is 	3:04
15 	I Won't Say Anything 	3:22
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16	Finite 		3:54
17	Best for You	2:09
18	Pessimistic Lines	1:15
19	How Much Is Enough		1:32
20	Generator	3:16

Backing Vocals [Oozin' Ahs] – Brett Gurewitz, Jay Bentley
Bass – Jay Bentley
Drums – Brooks Wackerman
Guitar – Brett Gurewitz, Brian Baker, Greg Hetson
Percussion – George Drakoulias
Vocals – Greg Graffin
+
Guitar, Soloist – Mike Campbell (11)
Steel Guitar [Pedal] – Steve Fishell (11)

Celebrating three decades of influential, thought provoking and groundbreaking punk rock, Bad Religion have released their fifteenth studio album, The Dissent of Man.

Produced by Joe Barresi (Queens of the Stone Age, Tool), The Dissent of Man finds Bad Religion pushing the boundaries of their music as much today as they did in their formative years as a genre defining punk band. Over the course of making the album, primary songwriters Greg Graffin and Brett Gurewitz’s songwriting was informed by life changing events, with Graffin writing his forthcoming book “Anarchy Evolution” and Gurewitz embarking on parenthood again.

“These are some of my favorite songs I’ve ever written,” says Gurewitz. “A few of them took me way outside my comfort zone as a writer to a place I haven’t gone since Recipe or Stranger than Fiction.”

The result is one of the band’s most forward thinking and musically varied albums ever. The Dissent of Man is not only a snapshot of the band’s personal experiences of the past years but also of their continued maturity in songwriting, capturing an array of styles ranging from blazing punk rock songs like the opener “The Day That the Earth Stalled” and “Meeting of the Minds” and classic rock-tinged cuts like “Cyanide” and “Turn Your Back on Me” to radio rock ready hits like the first single “The Devil in Stitches.”

“I feel like the last couple of records have been amongst our most conservative, never straying too far from a Bad Religion sound,” adds Gurewitz. “Whereas on this one we’re taking the songs to a lot of different places, exploring our influences and trying out some new things in a way we haven’t done in years.”

The Dissent of Man is a testament to why Bad Religion has remained relevant for the better part of three decades. Already having cemented their place in history as a groundbreaking band who helped create a movement in Los Angeles with classic releases like How Could Hell Be Any Worse?, Suffer, Recipe for Hate, Stranger Than Fiction and Process of Belief, Bad Religion continue to inspire and create with a unique style that continues to cross boundaries and transcends genres. ---epitaph.com

It’s a fair testament to their dogged perseverance that these legendary SoCal punks must’ve outlasted just about every spiky-haired teenager they ever inspired to risk life and limb on a skateboard or pester their parents to drop them off at a Warped Tour gig. Along the way they’ve weathered pop punk’s many peaks and troughs, seeing the wax and wane of early peers like the Adolescents and the Circle Jerks, signing to a major label with roughly a bajillion others in the post-Green Day boom of the 90s, and playing understudy to a slew of snotty unit-shifting whelps they laid the ground for.

Perhaps more surprising than their longevity is the fact that – hushed-up 1983 prog blip Into The Unknown aside – in their 31-year existence the band’s style and sound has remained largely intact with precious little by way of variation or experimentation to be found along the way. Frontman-cum-primary mouthpiece Greg Graffin continues to weave words of four or more syllables into smooth-flowing three-part vocal harmonies while socially-conscious tales are told with four chords and nursery rhyme simplicity; all, give or take the odd slip into placid MOR navel-gazing, is generally right with the world.

The Dissent of Man follows a post-millennial streak of "back to their heyday" stormers, and while the opening volley of fast-paced punkers looks set to continue this trend it’s not long before both the pace and the quality begin to falter. Tracks like Won’t Somebody adopt the mid-paced jangle of similarly-longstanding peers Social Distortion while Cyanide tosses in some hokey slide guitar and Where the Fun Is languishes in plain ol’ cheesy rock territory. While these elements might have peppered the band’s back catalogue they usually took the form of the occasional dud number, but the ratio of misses to hits chalked up here is rather hard to swallow given their previous form. This should have been a fiery celebration of three decades of waving the ragged punk rock banner; instead, it’s a laurel-resting plodder. ---Alex Deller, BBC Review

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Bad Religion – Christmas Songs (2013)

2013-12-19T16:53:25Z

Bad Religion – Christmas Songs (2013)


1. "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing"   	Felix Mendelssohn, Charles Wesley 	1:59
2. "O Come All Ye Faithful"   	John Francis Wade, Frederick Oakeley 	2:04
3. "O come, O come, Emmanuel"   	Traditional, John Mason Neale 	2:07
4. "White Christmas"   	Irving Berlin 	1:49
5. "Little Drummer Boy"   	Katherine Kennicott Davis 	2:04
6. "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"   	Traditional 	1:39
7. "What Child Is This?"   	William Chatterton Dix 	1:53
8. "Angels We Have Heard on High"   	Traditional 	2:07
9. "American Jesus (Andy Wallace Mix)"   	  	3:19

Band members:
Greg Graffin – vocals
Brett Gurewitz - guitar
Jay Bentley – bass
Brooks Wackerman - drums

Who better to help you celebrate that most wonderful time of the year than holiday favorites Bad Religion? Bad Religion have threatened to record an album of seasonal classics for years, and now they've gone and done it, tackling eight chestnuts in their classic punk rock style. From "White Christmas" with its nod to pioneers The Ramones, to the glorious choirboy intro to "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," Christmas Songs is the record you need to get your holiday household's toes tapping. ---amazon.com

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Bad Religion – Operation Holland (1992)

2009-10-10T11:30:18Z

Bad Religion – Operation Holland (1992)


1 - Turn On The Light
2 - Suffer
3 - Generator
4 - Anesthesia
5 - Get Off
6 - Too Much To Ask
7 - Operation Rescue
8 - Along The Way
9 - Do What You Want
10 - Change Of Ideas
11 - Heaven Is Falling
12 - The Answer
13 - Modern Man
14 - No Control
15 - Fuck Armageddon
16 - Two Babies In The Dark
17 - Tomorrow
18 - You Are The Government
19 - Automatic Man
20 - 21st Century Digital Boy
21 - We're Only Gonna Die

Greg Graffin - lead vocals 
Brett Gurewitz - guitar 
Jay Bentley - bass 
Greg Hetson - guitar 
Bobby Schayer - drums.

Recorded Live at The Paradiso, Amsterdam, Holland - April 18, 1992.

Bad Religion is a punk rock band that formed in Los Angeles in 1979. Bad Religion is considered one of the most successful independent punk acts, selling over 5 million albums worldwide, and charting two singles on the Mainstream Rock charts and seven singles in the Top 40 of the Alternative Songs charts. The band has also enjoyed success outside of the United States; they had three charting singles in the U.K., while "21st Century (Digital Boy)" and "Punk Rock Song" charted in Sweden in 1995 and 1996, respectively. "Punk Rock Song" also charted in Finland and Germany.

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