- Californian political punk legends Bad Religion are back with Age Of Unreason – astonishingly, their 17th studio album.
Fans of the band will be reassured within 30 seconds of album opener Chaos From Within that all the familiar Bad Religion ingredients are present – fast skate punk riffs, group harmonies, and a chorus that rhymes “existential” with “elemental”.
Nobody will claim that this album is breaking new ground musically, and to be honest even with every track clocking in under three minutes, the album does lose a bit of momentum towards the end of its 14 songs. But the band still sound great, and lyricist Greg Graffin continues to amaze with his ability in time off from his day job as a college professor to turn out endless dense political mini-essays in song.
Some would see the present social reality in the US as perfect inspiration for political punk. But Bad Religion have the advantage of a wide-lens view. The band have lived through seven presidents since they formed back in 1980 with Jimmy Carter in the White House. As such, the songs here don’t settle for easy answers or targets. On an album full of songs about politics, current events are rarely referenced directly. The analysis Bad Religion offer instead is a political idea with roots going back to the age of enlightenment and the American Revolution – the importance of rationality and reason.
Age Of Unreason does feel a bit like these punk rock grandpas trying to offer some advice to the young rebels. It’s hard not to get that impression with lyrics like “Hey kids of the right and left, do you feel dispossessed?” or “though recent developments seem like bad news for humanity, self-pity is always a case of mistaken identity”.
Whether this advice will be taken on by those on the barricades empowered by the certainties of youthful naivete is another question. Social change, like great music movements, is often energised by the rejection of what has gone before. And in many ways Bad Religion feels transplanted from another time – the days when a bunch of white men jumping around on stage to melodic punk rock could feel revolutionary.
And yet Bad Religion have defied the passing of time, the waves of fashion, the pressures of day to day life to still - almost four decades after their formation - be releasing an album that is musically vital and has interesting things to say about the times we live in. How many bands can you honestly say that about?
- Andy Paine.