Substance over style
The truck carrying the band's equipment tonight is almost as big as the venue itself. A tiny shack of a club, Linda's Doll Hut in Anaheim, California is an appropriate enough place for Bad Religion to kick off their mini-club tour, being that it's only a few miles from where the band played their very first gig--inside some random warehouse--18 years ago. Warming themselves up before heading out on this Summer's biggest alternative road trip, the Warped Tour, the band treats the 200 or so fans to an hour-and-a-half set that slips back to the first album and offers a handful of tracks from the new Bad Religion disc, No Substance.
At times it seems like a throwback to the old days, with lead singer Greg Graffin and guitarist Jay Bentley squeezing around one mic to offer any kind of backup vocals and Graffin taking a few moments to chat up the crowd and point out friends hanging out in the audience. Other moments seemed all too current. This crowd isn't full of moshing punkers from 1980 (which is a good thing, since too much movement would have upset the delicate balance of people, equipment and beer that clogs the club). These folks are more the bobbing-and-dancing type; girls are actually shimmying and smiling. "Hey, this ain't no punk show!" I think to myself.
Then I remember, like it or not, that Bad Religion don't care about being a "punk band."
Since they learned how to play their instruments, Bad Religion have been a punk band with a bunch of great pop songs just struggling to get out. But after coming of age in the SoCal punk rock circles and being founders of the biggest and most influential independent punk rock label of all time, Epitaph Records, Bad Religion have had to answer a lot for all that poppiness.
Whereas most casual fans view the band's signing to Atlantic Records three albums ago as a turning point from punkers to sellouts, Bad Religion have always gone beyond the simple three-chord guitar chug that drags throughout the entire genre of punk rock. Lest you forget, this is the band that put out the synth- and folk-heavy Into The Unknown--to the disgust of many of their fans--as they were climbing the punk rock ladder of success. Now, with a 13th album under the band's belt, Graffin knows exactly how to address the situation.
"With No Substance, Bad Religion fans are going to recognize a very natural and spontaneous-sounding Bad Religion album that I think sounds better than any of them since Suffer," says Graffin. "And even then it sounds a lot better than Suffer, in the way that Suffer really woke people up and made people rediscover Bad Religion. I think this will do the same thing for the Bad Religion fan. For people who have never heard us, I think they'll be pleasantly surprised that Bad Religion is so melodic and has such a good sensibility of what pop music is. There's something for them in that, too."
Guitarist Brain Baker is slightly less literal and more relaxed about the band's musical footing. "The music is still simple and the guitar solos only exist to give Greg a breather," he says. "Our music just doesn't really have any of those rock trappings. Live, we're still sloppy as shit. I think the attitude in which it's played is how you should characterize it."
For the most part, No Substance is a great post-punk rock record. Featuring Bad Religion's most successful synthesis of rock and punk music, it contains more harmonizing and guitar solos than ever as well as plenty of historic-sounding moments of intense chord rock, with Graffin's red-faced rage and Ph.D.-educated background chugging forth in sync. Overflowing with Graffin's view of an overweight, deteriorating society betrayed by the false hopes of capitalism, not to mention more than a handful of his 25-cent words (Confused? Check out the on-line Bad Religion lexicon at www.cyberspc.mb.ca/~goombah/lexicon.htm), No Substance is firmly in line with Bad Religion's history of intelligent social criticism. The band's always been more about what's being said than what's being played. Graffin puts it clearly enough: "I think that's our best contribution, anyway: what we're saying."
From the Henry Rollins-style sermon "The State Of The End Of The Millennium Address" (somewhat of a sequel to "The Voice Of God Is Government" off Bad Religion's collection of early works, 80-85) to the sharp pop-rock structure of "Biggest Killer In American History," "Hear It" and "The Hippy Killers" and the simplistic anthems "Raise Your Voice" and "Mediocre Minds," No Substance moves along with an easy ebb and flow, offering something most punker-than-thou bands can't: diversity.
The album's variety comes from the way the it was created. After the departure of co-writer (and Epitaph president) Brett Gurewitz three albums ago, Greg wrote each album in his home studio and sent demos to the rest of the band to learn. This time around, however, the band went into the studio together, combining their 10-some-odd years of musical knowledge.
"I wanted to bring it together like we did in the old days and have everybody just get in the studio and arrange the songs together as a group," explains Graffin. "I think the freshest thing about it is that we got out a lot of our old records from 1980 and listened to the music that inspired us. We listened our old records and Stiff Little Fingers, Sham 69 and X and what was going on in L.A. at the time with the Adolescents and the Circle Jerks. We were listening to those records thinking, 'Music has gotten so far away from this great stuff that inspired us. And even we, in our race to keep up, have gotten away from it. Let's make a record that's real natural and based on what we do best.'"
Baker agrees that the strategy worked. "This time when Greg would have an idea in his head that he's never translated to instruments; we got to be there for that translation. That opens up room for a lot more experimentation and input from the rest of us. I'm proud of how it came out, musically. I still get goosebumps when the transitions come for 'Sowing The Seeds Of Utopia.'"
No matter where Bad Religion are musically, what keeps fans coming back for more is the band's honesty and loyalty, to both their fans and themselves. Besides the preview club tour, the band will further connect with fans when they host a pirate radio station during the Warped Tour. They're also putting their money where their mouth is, giving birth to the Bad Religion Research Fund, a $3000-to-$5000 scholarship program to support field-oriented investigations in cultural and natural science.
With numerous lineup changes, a successful move to a major label and the unlucky 13th album out of the way, there seems to be nothing that can stop Bad Religion.
"The thing about Bad Religion and the albums is that it takes time to really enjoy everything about them and about the band," asserts Baker. "I think the records and band get better once you get more familiar with them. Which, you know, is contradictory to the singles-oriented rock that most people look toward today. I think there's something great about that in this band."
JR_Griffin