Where intellectualism, religion, and randomness coalesce. Will they form something new?

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Bad Religion: an update

So, after giving a few spins on the BR album (hey, a hard drive spins, doesn't it?) I can get a better grasp of what to say. Having heard pretty much all of their albums one way or another, New Maps of Hell is indeed something of a divergence and sounds something a bit more like late Pennywise or even (dare I say it) Sum 41 (ooo-er! That hurt!). The sound they have is "fuller" if that's a word. In albums like Suffer and Generator, they were clearly punk albums.Somewhat lo-fi (but still better than a lot of punk bands), and just... you know they didn't really try with the production side. NMOH, and the last two don't suffer (har!) from that. As I said, BR's time with Atlantic really helped them with their sound, despite all the hate that's been going around against their Atlantic records.

Onto the juicy part: the songs. Again, no song-by-song because that's not my thing.

My two favourite songs would be Grains of Wrath and New Dark Ages. Those two really exemplify THE BR sound. Lots of harmonies (aka the oozin' aahs), simple catchy melodies, and the topic material is the standard BR attitude towards religion and thinking. They'd sound awesome when stripped down to acoustic, because like many BR songs, they're folk-influenced and generally composed on acoustic. Easily the most memorable songs from this album.

Some of the songs are eerily similar to earlier BR songs. "Scrutiny" sounds like "Prove It" from Process of Belief, for example. Also, some songs' intros don't match the songs. The intro from "Prodigal Son" sounds a lot like some sort of depressing power metal intro, but the song is all poppy and happy-sounding.

In any case, I hope this gives you a better picture of the new album.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Finally, a true update! New Bad Religion album

I'm finally updating! There's too much I want to update about, so I'll focus on one topic:

Bad Religion's new album, New Maps of Hell

Hell yeah. While their last two albums, Process of Belief and Empire Strikes First, could be a throwback to their golden age (Suffer, Against The Grain), this one has more of their Atlantic era. It's poppier, fist-pumpier, and has more vague interpretations. Also, unlike Empire, they aren't as focused on current affairs, as much as Graffin's style of making generalizatons and odd referemces (one song is about a book, rather than anything a punk band would write about).

I'm not a music reviewer, so I don't know what would be appropriate to write.

Now for those who have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, BR is a punk band that's been around since 1980. To put them in a nutshell, they're an issues-based, but semi-philosophical agnostic punk band whose music is more folk-based. Yep, try playing a number of BR songs in acoustic or piano and they all translate really well. They also use big words in their choruses making sing-alongers all tongue-tied.

Strangely, despite their agnostic views and despite the songwriters' beliefs (atheist), I've gotten more about God than most books I've read in the whole Christian book industry.

In any case, I won't do a song-by-song analysis since i have no clue what the hell I'm talking about. As a whole, the album flows better than many of their earlier stuff. True, much of their favourite songs come from 1989-1992, but the flow isn't as good. It's after they went over to Atlantic (1993-1994) that the flow started to pick up. By the time Process came around, it was good.

And finally, let no one say these guys are losing energy because of their age (40+). Age is not a factor at all.