Album Review: Bad Religion – Age Of Unreason (Epitaph)

After a six year hiatus, Bad Religion is back with a new set of blistering, politically-charged songs.

It’s hard to believe that Bad Religion will be celebrating their 40^th anniversary next  year. That’s right, Brett Gurewitz, Greg Graffin and Jay Bentley formed the band while still in high school back in 1980. Both Gurewitz and Bentley have left the fold and then returned over the years and now, in addition to guitarist Brian Baker, who’s been with them since 1994, they are refreshed by two new-comers, drummer Jamie Miller and guitarist Mike Dimkich.

There may be a couple of new faces in the group, but the sound is still pure Bad religion…hard, fast and angry.

And, with the state of US politics being what it is, it’s not difficult to imagine where they are aiming their anger. In fact, a new Bad Religion album was looking doubtful for a while, but it seems the 2016 Presidential election has given the group renewed inspiration.

So, there’s something you can thank Donald Trump for.

Age Of Unreason contains 14 songs, most clocking in under three minutes, a few under two.  They seem to come in two separate modes…the very angry and the slightly hopeful.

Among the former is End Of History, where Graffin spits out lyrics such as, “nostalgia is an excuse for stupidity” and refers to a “president that puts kids in cages”.  Or, Candidate, where the listener is urged to “gather round to glorify ignorance and fear”, while the candidate in question boasts, “I dispense misinformation to a post-truth generation”.

On the other hand we have songs like the title track in which the singer looks forward to a world where “we can live as one in perfect harmony”, or album opener Chaos From Within, that begs for restraint and reason”.

Musically, it’s a punk rock tour-de-force with the three guitarists firing off riffs left, right and centre, with just about every tune featuring a solo played at break-neck speed.

Sure, some listeners will be reaching for their thesaurus when they come across lyrics that include “apocryphal popular mythology” and “a plutocratic strategy or technocrat conspiracy”. It’s a long way from “Gabba gabba hey”, but that’s what happens when your singer is also a university lecturer.

Bad Religion have given us exactly the record we would have expected them to make at this point, and they’ve proven that there’s still plenty of bite left in their bark.

Marty Duda