Album countdown: No Substance

Part of the countdown to the release date of The Dissent Of Man on September 28,  here's the eighteenth topic dedicated to a single Bad Religion release. Today's release is:


Some reading:

• Discography
  
• Also, don't forget to rank the songs
  
• The Answer

Also check out Greg's commentary on badreligion.com on writing No Substance.


Previously:
Bad Religion EP (1981)
How Could Hell Be Any Worse? (1981)
Into The Unknown (1983)
Back To The Known (1985)
Suffer (1988)
No Control (1989)
Along The Way (video) (1990)
80-85 (1990)
Against The Grain (1990)
Big Bang (1990)
Generator (1992)
Recipe For Hate (1993)
Stranger Than Fiction (1994)
All Ages (1995)
The Riot (1996)
The Gray Race (1996)
Tested (1997)

Hands down one of the most UNDERRATED albums by the band ever , they have to not stray away from playing songs off this album and the album following they are so relevant to society today .

Absolutely love this album. This was the first BR album that I ever bought.

The ONLY crappy track on the album is Mediocre Minds. And the only other track I skip is the State of the End of the Millennium Address, obviously, since it's not really a song.

At the Mercy of Imbeciles is a proto-Process of Belief song. It totally would have fit on the album. Though I'm glad it didn't because it's a weak song... the 2nd worst on the album.

Voracious March of Godliness was a prototype for their huge, epic songs they started making later on The Empire Strikes first and New Maps of Hell. Great song, so fucking suspensful.

All Fantastic Images and Raise Your Voice are the only other mediocre songs on the album. Raise Your Voice pretty catchy but super fucking repetative, and that gets annoying real fast. The video, however, was probably one of their better videos. I think it's one of the few BR videos that actually adds to the message of the song - the whole part where everyone is blindly following each other committing suicide off a balcony, but at the end one guy decides to "raise his voice" and decides to take off the mask that represents his blind conformity.

 The album has a couple masterpieces. The main one being In So Many Ways, and the runners-up including Shades of Truth and Strange Denial.

No Substance is the other strong song on the album, but then again most title tracks are, except for The Empire Strikes First.

I really like this album, except Raise Your Voice which I usually end up skipping. Strange Denial, In So Many Ways, Hear It, Shades of Truth and The Voracious March of Godliness are the standout tracks to me.

I look at Raise Your Voice as an anthem .

My least favorite BR album (not including live albums and compilations) although I don't think it's a bad album, but  a decent one. I don't like Raise your voice, Mediocre minds, State, At the mercy of imbeciles ( the chorus is excellent but I can't stand the verse), Strange Denial and Victims.

I'm glad they made this album. It shows a different side of bad religion. And I don't get it that lots of fans and band members don't like this. I think a song like "shades of truth" is just as good as infected. I agree with neil davis that At the mercy of imbeciles could have been a POB song. Just like sowing the seeds isn't any different from a POB song.

The weakest BR album imo, but still not bad. What makes many people hate it i think is the less fast tracks than usual, and also that most of the fast tracks are the weakest part of this album. Most of the slow melodic tracks are great, but several of them get a bit repetitive with too many choruses or too long outros, and those songs would be great if they had been shorter or had one more different part.

I think the production-sound of this should be one of the best in br records. Clear sounding but still very alive, not losing it's energy or rawness (if it does sound like it at times it's probably some tracks being softer/slower that usual BR). Also some of the melodies here are very different than other albums and great, i can't say better or worse.

My ranking here:

I really like this album.  Again, the only song I'm not keen on is raise your voice, mainly because of the "fa fa fa fa" part.

I really love this album. Really, the only tracks I usually skip are Raise Your Voice, Hippy Killers and The State Of The End Of The Millennium Address.