Great review by Mathieu 'Enforcer' Petitpas

I was at the Bad Religion show in Montreal on 2004-11-02.

The show was held at the Metropolis, which is an actual concert and show venue, with a second-floor balcony. The show started at 8:00 PM, and Bad Religion came on stage around 10:00.

Some of the songs they played surprised me: I was not expecting them to play both Epiphany and The Defense, and Man With a Mission and Beyond Electric Dreams came totally out of nowhere. Tim from Rise Against did the spoken-word portion of Let Them Eat War that Sage Francis does on the album.

Greg and Jay were in fine form, and made a number comments between sets:

-Perhaps commenting on the Quebec separatist movement, Greg said that to Bad Religion, Montreal was not part of Canada, but another world altogether. He also thanked the crowd in French multiple times during the show.

-November 2nd being the big American election day, Greg commented on that, saying that he got up in his home in upstate New York the morning of the show, and that the first thing he did was to file a lawsuit in order to ensure that his right to vote was respected. He said that that's how it worked now in the United States; you had to sue in order to be able to vote. Jay called those lawsuits a "premptive strike." Greg then thanked everyone who called their relatives south of the border to tell them to vote for John Kerry. He decidated the next song, Recipe for Hate, to George W. Bush, saying that it was hopefully "his [Bush's] exit song".

-The two previous Montreal shows were held in an indoor tennis court, and a hockey arena, respectively. Greg mentioned their last Montreal show, and said something about bad echoes in the tennis court. Jay mimicked echoes by saying "what" repeatedly in his microphone.

-Greg mentioned Canadian female pop singers Avril Lavigne (the crowd booed), Shania Twain, and Celine Dion. He made a few more jokes about Celine Dion, but I couldn't hear what he was saying over the din of the crowd; Celine Dion is always a target of Greg's when Bad Religion plays in Montreal. He proceeded to dedicate You to Celine Dion.

-At some point in the show, Greg changed his microphone, and made a comment about him preferring cord microphones as opposed to cordless ones.

-Before they played God's Love, Greg made a remark about the people in the balcony, calling us "the people in the cheap seats". He then talked about going to the opera by Puccini, "Tortellini" and "Fettucine", and sitting in the cheap seats at those (or something along those lines, I couldn't hear the comments very well over the crowd noise). He then talked about playing a typical Bad Religion love song before they started God's Love.

-Around the end of the main setlist (perhaps before Generator?), Greg tried to make the crowd believe that the previous song was the last one. Jay added "There's never a last song with us. We have 262 songs to play tonight! So we'll be here until Thursday." Of course, the crowd cheered that, even though they knew he was joking.

-One of Jay or Greg (can't remember which) said that "Man With a Mission" should be be John Kerry's theme song.

-American Jesus was the last song before the encore. The band left the stage after the song was over, and came back after two minutes or so. Greg said that they had to leave because a limo was waiting for them outside to take them to the airport so they could fly out of town. He then said that they forgot not one, but three songs. They then proceeded to play the encore without a break, and left the stage for good afterwards.

The setlist (in order):

Overture + Sinister Rouge
All There Is
No Control
Supersonic
Social Suicide
Los Angeles Is Burning
Modern Man
Kyoto Now!
Recipe For Hate
Epiphany
Let Them Eat War
Suffer
God's Love
The Defense
Beyond Electric Dreams
Man With a Mission
You
Come Join Us
I Want to Conquer the World
21st Century Digital Boy
Generator
Infected
Fuck Armageddon, This Is Hell
American Jesus

Do What You Want
We're Only Gonna Die
Sorrow

Thanks to Mathieu 'Enforcer' Petitpas for this news!