Bad Religion: The Dissent of Man

Bad Religion: The Dissent of Man

2010

Epitaph Records

Format I Own it On: Compact Disc

Track Listing:  1. The Day That the Earth Stalled  2. Only Rain  3. The Resist Stance  4. Won't Somebody  5. The Devil in Stitches  6. Pride and the Pallor  7. Wrong Way Kids  8. Meeting of the Minds  9. Someone to Believe  10. Avalon  11. Cyanide  12. Turn Your Back on Me  13. Ad Hominem  14. Where the Fun Is  15. I Won't Say Anything


Bad Religion's 15th full-length studio album finds the band easing the pace for the first time since 2000's "New America,"  while maintaining their upswing in quality. Really, this is probably my second favorite of the three-guitar era of Bad Religion (coming in second to "The Process of Belief" and just a tick ahead of "True North")...and that's pretty high praise...I think we're currently in the midst of an incredible run of albums by the band..

.Fans of "Recipe for Hate" (of which I am one) will be thrilled to hear all the mid-tempo anthems the band has here. The steel guitar last heard in "Man on a Mission" even makes a surprising return on the folk-punk "Cyanide." The single "The Devil in Stitches" is pretty awesome too...To be honest it took a few listens before that song fully kicked my ass...but once it happened...wow! I love it...It seems like a more mature version of the type of folk-punk they had nailed on "Stranger Than Fiction."

The album closer "I Won't Say Anything" has really grown on me too...It's actually a catchy jangle-pop song, that I can't really imagine fitting on any of their previous albums..Hell, I never imagined putting the words jangle-pop and Bad Religion in the same sentence, but here it is...and I love it!  It's probably even too laid back for "New America." Great nonetheless...

Lyrically and musically this comes off as a little more personal.  Did Bad Religion go soft? Well, yea...Kinda...but what's wrong with that for once? This is the B.R. album I turn to when maybe I don't feel much like throwing my furniture around the living room...Maybe I'd like to sit in it for a change and nod my head to some good tunes...

Way off subject here (Y'know, I'm off subject so much that at some point it's probably time to retire that disclaimer)...but I was recently going through some old photo albums and scanning them into my computer to preserve them a little better... I thought I'd share a few of my favorites today...

 Here's one of me, circa 1991, rocking out in my garage with a My Pet Monster arm sticking out of my pants, as my friend Josh (wearing a wig) watches on...If you look really closely at the boxes in the rafters there's some pretty cool stuff there...I see a Captain Power box, for example..

Back in the day before digital cameras, double-exposed pictures like this were pretty common...There's a lot of good stuff here...I think I see my Brother Todd, a cat and a duck...I'm sort of in love with this photo...I think I might use it somewhere in my next record...

I think it's a snow man we made of the Pillsbury Doughboy...

Here's a cover of a TV Guide that my friend Tony Jansen drew on that I thought was so freakin' hilarious I've managed to save it all these years...

Here's a picture of the Meat-man at the local supermarket, circa 1998...Me and Jens took this photo at about 3 am one night..Or morning I guess...That's technically morning...Anyway, the Meat-man  was pretty cool and posed with the meat for us...and he had an awesome "Chevy" belt-buckle too...I can't find the photo but I remember us taking pictures of a couple of Policeman that night also...and the cops came over and told us it was illegal to take photos of the Police...I wondered for years if  that was really a law...hmmm...

Alright, I'm not going to bore you with any more of  my slide-show..Let's kick back and listen to "Cyanide" by Bad Religion...(which I just realized kind of reminds me of the Wallflowers..Oh well..Rocks anyways...)