0:52, 1:26, 1:27: Those are the respective lengths of the first three tracks off the seminal punk veterans’ 14th effort. None of the songs breaks four minutes, and gut-punch guitars and righteous anger pervade. In other words, the return to form marked by 2002’s The Process of Belief rolls on.
At first, anyway. After 27 years of breakups, drug problems and major-label meanderings, there comes a point (precisely halfway through Hell) when youthful idealism gives way to world-weary disdain. For every hardcore pummeling of “New Dark Ages”’ “The world might end tonight ... We’re animals with golden rules who can’t be moved with rational views,” there’s the clichéd “Whoa-o” choruses and modern-rock mediocrity of “Honest Goodbye”’s “Always on the edge/Causing such a fright/Oh to be forgiven/But it wouldn’t be right/God, it feels like an honest goodbye.”
Elsewhere there are cries to “Raise the rebel from his grave,” disclaimers that “I ain’t one, no prodigal son” and laments that unrelenting scrutiny results in shaky beliefs and hesitancy to commit to much of anything. When “Dearly Beloved” admits, “I can’t relate to you,” Bad Religion seems to speak less to Capitalist Pigs than to former versions of themselves, not to mention the younger punk bands they’re unconvinced will pick up where they’ve left off.
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Bad Religion
New Maps of Hell
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