Bad Religion – The Dissent Of Man (2010)
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 + 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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