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.