Album Review: Bad Religion, True North

by Poppy Reid

Bad Religion have lived and recorded through five U.S. administrations, and the now fifty-something-year-olds are still waxing lyrical about political injustices and socialism without an assumed tired reiteration.

 

Albeit, a meaty 16-strong tracklist can be off-putting, but when you’re only just getting warmed up and you’re three songs in on the 35-minute ride, it’s clear the band aren’t resting on their laurels. Interestingly, they’ve taken cues from Tom Waits for album #16; naming the record after Waits' Bad As Me single True North and mapping it on the indelible artist’s plans to write a record of two and three-minute songs. Some tracks are as short as 1:02 (Vanity), the longest track falls just shy of four minutes (Hello Cruel World), and each is a feverish bombast of past grievances (and some new re: the Occupy movement), except there’s a difference: this time they’ve taken a playful stance to their delivery.

In tracks like True North, the band show they’re still gusty but without the grit, the gorgeous harmonies are a welcome surprise from the punk rock magnates. In album highlight Robin Hood In Reverse, vocalist Greg Graffin is less lecturing and more story-telling, and the fast-paced, rap-rock of Land Of Endless Greed marks the record’s swindler – pure enjoyment overrides the message of America’s shame and a disgust in humanity. Bad Religion have fun with this record, the ethical standpoints, pointed warnings and altruistic relevance are all there, but it’s a step-up from a list of objections doused in aggressive percussion; this time it's a play on everything: genres, double entendres and Graffin’s vocal melisma.

While nothing can top Suffer and Stranger Than Fiction, it’s easy to forget Graffin has been offering his two-cents on U.S. government since he was fifteen, and co-founding member/Epitaph Records owner Brett Gurewitz since he was just seventeen. Presidents, policies and opinions have changed but Bad Religion have owned a sense of immediacy for 34 years.

Although political punk has taken the back burner since the everlasting ascent of bubblegum punk - whose leaders top alternative charts and sing about girls and disowning their parents - as long as bands like Bad Religion exist, those in their formative years may toy with the idea of insurrection and vigilantism, which is infinitely more interesting than floppy hair, auto-tune, and the artists who perform the President’s inauguration.