AS;OIFH; AIE I HAVE THOUGHTS.

Which, on the surface, is a statement indicating nothing more than that I have strong opinions on this album.

BUT if I were Bad Religion it would be a defiant assertion of my rationality in the face of this AGE OF UNREASON.

So this came out May 3, 2019, must have been at like midnight or something because I was up into the witching hour trying to finish a report of some kind and I’d been drifting between albums and artists and genres for the last TWO DAYS because I was in that awful limbo period where everything is BORING and I’d have killed a man to have something NEW but luckily it didn’t come to that because this popped up in my feed and I downloaded it instantly.

First impression on my fatigued brain: Meh. Sounded way too poppy, way too Green Day, way unlike their past efforts, and therefore awful because everyone knows that different = BAD. But that’s because it was 3 AM and I was hungry and exhausted and more importantly an IDIOT.

The second listen was a more positive experience. It struck a chord with me. I heard the disillusionment. I heard the dispossession. I heard the dis-in-fat-u-a-tion.

I also heard Chinese Democracy just before this album, whoops.

With Bad Religion being Bad Religion, and the whole album being called Age of Unreason, I guess it’s obvious (to Americans, anyway) that it’d be about American politics. See, with Bad Religion you never really have to guess what they’re singing about. Track 3, “Do the Paranoid Style”, has “American politics” in the lyrics of its chorus. They have an ode to one’s sanity, entitled “My Sanity”, featuring a short vignette in which the narrator is in a rocky relationship with his sanity, plagued by the homewrecker that is alternative facts. Cute, right?

But then they also have another song called “Lose Your Head” in case that wasn’t enough of an assurance to you that there’s some crazy shit going down in this country right now, and that you are perfectly sane for suspecting that . Honestly though, I do need to hear that. As many times as I can hear it.

So the lyrics are bold and brazen, as always. I can’t think of how better or more efficiently to support this than simply copying their lyrics here, so here are some of my favorites:

“Believers, dupes, and clowns, I want you all to gather ’round, to glorify ignorance and fear/I dispense misinformation to a post-truth generation. My darlings, don’t shed a tear/For I am your candidate” – from “Candidate”

“Just to think that not so long ago was a man who received the seal/He peddled blatant lies and brought back tyranny to divide his people with zeal” – from “Age of Unreason”

“Big cyber weapon, little traitor-in-chief/He’s got a big black dog on a leash” – from “Big Black Dog”

“Since when was it just a fallacy of tainted memory/(Since when?) To believe that things were really all right/Since when were the qualities of wisdom and knowledge/(Since when?) Equivalent to mere facts online?” – from “Since Now”

What’s also impressive (and was utterly overlooked by my sleep-deprived senses) was the spread of genres they managed to incorporate here. You’ve got the classic short-and-sweet speed-punk bangers like “Chaos from Within” and “Do the Paranoid Style”, some poppier melodic tunes like “Downfall” and “What Tomorrow Brings”, straight-up ballads like “Lose Your Head”, and whatever kind of swingy jam “Big Black Dog” is.

All wonderfully energetic, supplying their charged lyrics with the requisite momentum to penetrate the listener’s understanding. Their polysyllabic verbiage is never easy to catch on the first listen, but the urgency with which Greg Gaffin unloads them into your ears is enough to let you know that they’re Very Important.

Overall, cool album! Definitely topical, but I guess that’s only to be expected of a band like Bad Religion. What’s way more important is that it actually sounds good, and is one of my new favorites by the band. So there’s one good thing that the Trump presidency brought us.

ALSO they’re on tour in support of the album right now!! Yay! Go look it up here.

 

Oh, and don’t lose your head.

-Mans