Bad Religion: True North

Bad Religion: True North

2013

Epitaph Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. True North  2. Past Is Dead  3. Robin Hood in Reverse  4. Land of Endless Greed  5. Fuck You  6. Dharma and the Bomb  7. Hello Cruel World  8. Vanity  9. In Their Hearts Is Right  10. Crisis Time  11 .Dept. of False Hope  12. Nothing to Dismay  13. Popular Consensus  14. My Head Is Full of Ghosts  15. The Island  16. Changing Tide

Bad Religion's 16th studio album. To me this album feels like the spiritual follow-up to "Against the Grain." It's fast, lean, catchy and surprisingly breezy. After listening to all the Bad Religion albums in chronological order these last couple weeks there's an effortlessness to this album that makes its immediate predecessors feel a bit belabored in retrospect.

And oddly enough for such an enjoyable album, it takes a few tracks for it to click with me, the first few seem solid but somewhat unremarkable, but once the album reaches "Fuck You," almost every single track works for me in a major way..."Fuck You" is a lot of fun...Graffin delivers a hilariously eloquent explanation as to why it's so satisfying to "fuck you."

Other highlights on an packed with them are the stair-step harmonies of "In Thier Hearts is Right," and the freakin' "Hell Yes!" break during "Nothing to Dismay," where the bass drops out, and the drums pound as Graffin shouts , "No! No! No Security!" So awesome! We also get a solo vocal performance from Mr. Brett in "Dharma and the Bomb." His voice is a little colorless compared to Greg Graffin's but the variety is always welcome...I can never understand why more band's don't trade-off vocals...I mean, all the great band's swapped vocals...the Beatles...the Kinks...the Stones..Kiss...O-Town...

 There's been lots of speculation that this is going to be the final Bad Religion album, although the band themselves have not confirmed this...Boy, I hope that's wrong...It just seems wrong to live in a world where Bad Religion aren't still  playing sweaty live shows and periodically serving us a new batch of  intelligent punk rock...Intelligence is something sorely lacking in music right now...the world, whether they know it or not, still needs these guys...But if this really is their last album, they definitely went out on an incredible high...To be honest it kind of blew past me the first time I heard it, but by the third listen I was hooked...Check this out and make sure you give it a chance...There's a ton of great stuff here....

Now, let's take a look back at the important events of 2013, the year Bad Religion released "True North...":

Well, yesterday I ate an egg for breakfast...

...and a piece of toast...It was a little dry because I was out of butter, which was a little disappointing but sometimes you've just got to pick yourself up off the ground and tell yourself, "You know, life is sometimes full of devastating setbacks, and just because you experience this insurmountable adversity you can't just roll over and die...I mean, there's starving kids out there who have never even seen butter, and...Oh nevermind...there it is..behind the  bottle of 1961 Chateau la Mission Haut Brion Pessac Leognan...whew...Crisis averted...

I also went to the local Hardware store and had copies of my keys made...You can never have enough copies of your keys...Sometimes at the end of the year, I hand out the extras as Christmas gifts...

Wow, what an exciting year! Let's listen to "Fuck you" by Bad Religion to calm ourselves down...