Despite it being the least favorite album of most people, I've found that The New America is the best intro to BR you can give someone who isn't already used to punk music. Its mellow, for BR, but yet still loud and melodic and catchy to people who aren't familiar... TESF is a great album for BR fans, but I don't think it stretches much beyond that. Might be one of the reasons I don't like it as much as other albums.

i really like the album. its by far NOT my favorite album of theirs, but it is good once you give it a few listens. I think the major problem with this album is that it was truly written for the fans. Its definitely not an album I'd recommend to BR newcomers... I think you already have to love BR, as all of here at this site do, to really like this album. That's not to say that it is in any way "bad", its just the way it was crafted is not very welcoming to people who aren't familiar with the style. i'm sure it wasn't on purpose, but I personally found this album harder to get into at first than any other BR album, and I own everything they've ever released, so I have a pretty good understanding of what they're capable of. From this reviewers perspective, all of the stuff he said was true. Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. Obviously he's ignorant, but this album isn't very friendly to outsiders.

what an asshole , he is just a stupid wannabe writer who just start to talk about a band that he obviously doesnt know a shit and start to write some bullshit that even he cant believe it.

Fuck this asshole. I could accept bad critics if they were based in something that could be explained, but he doesn't know anything about what he's talking about.

"Greg Graffin writes a banner song, puts it on a bore of an album." cant believe people bothered to read more, brett wrote that song, what an idiot.

Obviously Village Voice was short-staffed and someone slipped up, giving the BR review assignment to a guy who has never heard any other BR albums, didn't read the lyrics, and probably just fast forwarded through most of the album - or half-listened to it while he was jerking off to kiddy porn at his office computer.

It's obvious this guy just doesn't like punk music, in which case he shouldn't be reviewing a BR album.

I like the pic scrapes!!

if i didn't know better i woulda thought the article was written by someone who a) doesn't know a damn thing about bad religion, and b) hasn't even listened to the record
but what do i know?

Kind of odd that they put the words "someone imitating Mike Campbell" when it was actually him, that they write it off as a stereotypical punk album when they created the stereotype, that even "LA is Burning"'s lyrics are tired, and the protest fails early when it couldn't be farther from the truth. The guy couldn't see a good punk album if it slapped him with a hot crack pipe.

It is interesting that he says 'Los Angeles Is Burning' is the best and only good track while there are several better tracks on the album.

That was an awful review. Jeers to a really cool newspaper for printing such a horrid piece of writing.