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defrogGet out yr thesauruses – Bad Religion is back with their 16th studio album.
Or, if you prefer, they’ve recorded the same album and released it for the 16th time.
I kid.
I do like Bad Religion a lot, but it’s fair to say they’ve stuck to the same formula for so long that the albums are musically interchangeable.
Granted, in this case Greg Graffin has fresh material from the 2012 election cycle to work with (and trust him to work “Corporations are people” and Citizens United references into a song lyric). Other than that, though, it’s really more of the same.
Whether that’s good or bad, as always, depends on yr existing opinion of the band (not to mention politics in general). For me, I think it’s okay. It delivers what you’d expect in a Bad Religion album – breakneck tempos, lush background vocals, intellectual lyrics with occasionally hard words you won’t find in the average Pitbull song. (Precariat! Meta-cognition!)
The problem, as always, is that it’s hard for songs to stand out when you stick that closely to a proven formula. And there’s not very many here.
Let’s put it this way: the first time I listened to True North, I accidentally had my MP3 player set to “shuffle”. So I listened to the songs out of order. It made absolutely no difference whatsoever.
Anyway, here’s a couple of highlights for me.
Listen.
My north is true,
This is dF
Or, if you prefer, they’ve recorded the same album and released it for the 16th time.
I kid.
I do like Bad Religion a lot, but it’s fair to say they’ve stuck to the same formula for so long that the albums are musically interchangeable.
Granted, in this case Greg Graffin has fresh material from the 2012 election cycle to work with (and trust him to work “Corporations are people” and Citizens United references into a song lyric). Other than that, though, it’s really more of the same.
Whether that’s good or bad, as always, depends on yr existing opinion of the band (not to mention politics in general). For me, I think it’s okay. It delivers what you’d expect in a Bad Religion album – breakneck tempos, lush background vocals, intellectual lyrics with occasionally hard words you won’t find in the average Pitbull song. (Precariat! Meta-cognition!)
The problem, as always, is that it’s hard for songs to stand out when you stick that closely to a proven formula. And there’s not very many here.
Let’s put it this way: the first time I listened to True North, I accidentally had my MP3 player set to “shuffle”. So I listened to the songs out of order. It made absolutely no difference whatsoever.
Anyway, here’s a couple of highlights for me.
Listen.
My north is true,
This is dF
