Against The Grain - Epitaph 1990

10 / 10

No Control freaks have apparently been known to complain that this is where Bad Religion started to "change." Well they ain't changed much! The speed is the same. The production is the same. The only new wrinkle on this one is the concept of "guitar interplay," displayed proudly in the beautiful title track, the gorgeous "Anesthesia," and ... oh, that might be all. But the others are still top-of-the-line hardcore speedpunk all the way through; it doesn't get weak near the end, or at any other point. And how about those lyrics? "Let's gather 'round the carcass of the old deflated beast / We have seen it through the accolades and rested in its lea / Syntactic is our elegance, incisive our disease / The swath endogenous of ourselves will be our quandary." .....You don't say! (Most are better.) There's a brilliant realist response to Save The Earth fanatics called "Entropy," as well as intelligent attacks on anti-abortion groups and the Flat Earth Society. And probably others too!

All good. All the time. If you get bored, just wait about thirty seconds and a better melody will come along. And it's all... very, very fast.

- Mark Prindle