Bad Religion Review

For my twin brother's bachelor party, I planned since the HOB shows were announced to come out Vegas with all our friends for the sole purpose to see Bad Religion.  Really, could you ask for a better way to celebrate?

We got to the HOB not too long after the doors opened, around 5:30PM but the first band, Off With Their Heads didn't go on until almost 6:45ish. It turns out they showed up at the last minute and were forced to use The Adolescens gear.  Both bands rocked hard, but it was obvious that everyone was counting down the seconds till Bad Religion.

About 15 minutes before Bad Religion went on, they started a little slide show of various LP, EP, and VHS/DVD covers, starting with Recipe for Hate, How Could Hell Be Any Worse, and a ton more.  I can't remember te exact order, but they had art for the Atomic Garden single, the American Jesus single, the Along the Way VHS/DVD cover, the Punk Rock Song single, and some various flyers.  They did not show any of the Atlantic album covers and sadly left out Into The Unknown.  As pictures switched, people cheered for their favorites, with the album that evoked the biggest reaction was Suffer.  It was clear by this point that the energy and anticipation in the air was palpable.

Finally, the slideshow ends and some canned fanfare music comes on an opaque backdrop falls to the ground, revealing the awesome and huge Crossbust back drop, with a collage of album art behind it.  People are going crazy as all the band members take their places on stage and without saying much of anything, Hetson kicks into the opening chords of Do What You Want, and the show kicks into full gear as a concert long pit forms and begins to sustain itself.

After Do What You Want, Baker starts to pick out the beginning of Overture, and when Brooks comes in, the entire crowd starts singing the choir part, and the band seemed to get quite a kick out of it.  When the band finally kicks in to Sinister Rogue, everything is in full effect.

Bad Religion then begins to lay down an hour and a half assault of music that made the crowd easily the most energetic and lively I've seen in person.  For me, it was fantastic to see a good amount of fans who really knew the far majority of songs.

Things were going amazing until Requiem for Dissent was played.  The beginning of the song was great, but when it was time for the guitar solo, Greg Graffin rips out his in ear monitors and starts to pick up a water bottle and hurls it as hard and fast as he can off the side of the stage, with a look of intense anger on his face.  In rapid succession, he throws 4 or 5 more with all the same passion.  He then pointed at someone and kept making motions for them to get the fuck out of there.  Greg managed to sing the song fantastically, but every chance he got, he'd look over to the side and keep telling someone to leave.  It made a lot of us in the audience look at each other and wonder "What the fuck is going on?" My guess is that the sound for the in ear monitors was horrible and loud because soon, the rest of the band pulled theirs out and once the song was done, Graffin smiled and commented on how loud the show was.

After that little bump in the road, the rest of the show was flawless.  I thought they comboed some songs in an awesome way, like Recipe For Hate (my favorite live song) into Them and Us, and for popular old school fans, Fuck Armageddon into We're Only Gonna Die.  It was fantastic to hear rarely played songs like Materialist and Germs of Perfection, as well as older lesser played songs like Best for You, Pessimistic Lines, How Much Is Enough, and The Handshake.  On those songs, it was clear to see who the hardcore fans were by the way we were all belting out the lyrics.  It was also great to hear the non-festival version of Generator (no slow intro ala Tested), since that's all they seem to play when I've seen them live.

One of the best parts of the night was when Bad Religion played their new song Resist-Stance.  It was awesome to see the fans who have seen the fan shot YouTube videos of the song and were singing along with it.  It also didn't hurt that Graffin tweeted the lyrics the night before to help us obsessed fans out.  It cracked me up seeing Jay look out and smiling at people who already know the song.

The night ended with a great encore of Infected, Los Angeles Is Burning, and Sorrow to get all the fans, casual and hardcore alike, to rock out one last time.  People left the show with huge smiles on their face, talking about how it was the best show they've ever seen.  It was great to see so many strangers come together and have fun and interact, and that's a testament to the power of BR.

I know this review was long-winded, but I wanted to share this amazing experience.  I am going again tonight and am pumped to see how the set list varies.  If it's anything like how it was last night, in terms of energy and brevity, then all will be right in the world.