It's been nearly 15 years and a million record sales since Bad Religion began pressing the homemade 7-inch records that helped spawn mosh pit icons Green Day and Offspring. What's strange about these California power punk veterans' major label debut is that their slammin' riffs, tersely punctuated guitar solos, and ambitious harmonies remained underground for so % long. If they were more preoccupied with the state of rock than the state of the world, you might think that Fiction was a Cheap Trick album—and the latter's best in a decade.
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- Deborah Frost