Category: | Review - Internet | Publish date: | 1/19/2013 |
Source: | presstelegram.com (United States) | ||
Synopsis: |
True North
If you've been waiting for Los Angeles punk rock pioneers Bad Religion to slow down, do an electronica album or just plain give up the ghost completely, well, keep waiting.
For their 16th studio outing since 1979, the elder statesmen of the mosh pit make a conscious effort to pare down their already economic songs further down to the bone.
What remains are concentrated bursts of tightly coiled energy such as the howling fury of "Land of Endless Greed," the stinging riffs of "Dharma and the Bomb" and the soaring attack of the title track. None of those three exceeds two minutes.
At almost four minutes in length, "Hello Cruel World" seems overblown by comparison, its slower tempo a decided departure from the rest of the album's headlong rush.
"True North" still finds room for the band's knack for intelligent wordplay amid the maelstrom, working in a Sham 69 reference on "Robin Hood in Reverse" and warning us that "popular consensus doesn't make it right" on "Popular Consensus."
"My Head Is Full of Ghosts" and "In Their Hearts Is Right" sport clever song structure vocal interplay, and "Nothing to Dismay" has the album's most fist-shaking sing-along chorus.
Bad Religion packs all of this and more into 16 tracks in just over 35 minutes, and the band has never sounded crisper, more focused and more efficiently devastating. The supercharged "True North" arrives on Tuesday, with the band making a rare network television appearance on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" on Jan. 30.
3.5 / 5
- Sam Gnerre