I am probably simultaneously the most qualified and worst person to review this album. I have been listening to Bad Religion since high school, and that was ludicrously late in the game given that they have been releasing albums since before I was born. Nonetheless, to this day Suffer is unequivocally my favorite album of all time, and if you held a gun to my head and told me to list my 10 favorite albums ever, at least half would be from Bad Religion's collected body of work. Like any band, they certainly had a rough patch (late 90's to early 2000), but even those albums were pretty alright. In recent years, the band's release schedule has certainly slowed from the one-album-per-year pace of the 80's and early 90's, but each offering has absolutely failed to disappoint. The Dissent of Man is no exception.
I like to look at musical genres as tool sets, with each genre containing a set of tools with which the artists must figure out what to do. Rock and roll is a classic hammer/screwdriver set in a neat little lockbox: simple, yet versatile in the hands of a marginally skilled craftsman. Electronic is a crate full of assorted brands of multi-tools: near limitless potential, provided you have a weirdly fetishistic love of multi-tools. Punk, on the other hand, is a rock and a stick wrapped in a bundle of cloth: any dipshit at all can pick them up and poke/beat out something that could be useful, but odds are you will just wind up with a discombobulated pile of broken material. I'll let you all in on a little secret: I don't actually like about 90% of the punk music out there. The Ramones were garbage, The Clash were mediocre at best, and don't even get me started on the fucking Sex Pistols.
"We will learn our instruments when there is nothing
left to shoot into our forearms."
But these complaints are what make me love Bad Religion all the more. With their punk toolkit of rock and stick, they manage to pull a mile ahead of the crowd with some of the most lyrical, melodic, and fast-paced music album after album. The vocal harmonies simply get crisper, the lyrics even more impressive,and the instrumentals tighter and more varied than ever. With The Dissent of Man, the group continues to experiment and bolster their sound, making for one of the most musically diverse punk albums (oxymoron?) I've ever heard.
The opening track, "The Day The Earth Stalled", is a minute and a half blast beat-backed kick in the teeth, which shocks you into listening right off the bat, and Greg Graffin's voice has never sounded stronger. "Only Rain" relaxes the pace somewhat in a manner reminiscent of some tracks from Against the Grain, but the intensity is there as Graffin warns the listener against misconstruing good and circumstance. The lyrics have always been what really differentiates Bad Religion from the crowd. While the Ramones yammer about getting the attention of their prostitutes so that they can depart (that's what Hey Ho Let's Go means, right?), Dr. Greg Graffin comes up with poetic gems such as his warning in "The Resist Stance" to educate yourself about an issue before attempting to debate it: "Passion unabated can be readily conflated with belligerence."
But hey, your phrasing is... good.
The album isn't all aggressive finger wagging. Songs like "I Won't Say it Again", "Cyanide", and "Won't Somebody" all seem to echo phases where the band focused more on melody and less on speed (Recipe for Hate, Stranger than Fiction), and the results are catchy as always, as well as suitable successors to The Process of Belief's hit track "Sorrow" (something the band has been searching for for awhile, but haven't seemed to be able to nail). Songs like "Wrong Way Kids", "Meeting of the Minds", and "Someone to Believe" harken back to those good old days of No Control and Suffer: short, infectious, and rife with their signature "Oozin' Aahs". The standout track, however, has to be "Pride and the Pallor". I could extol its virtues until the cows come home, but I will let this excellent, excellent song speak for itself.
There are a few tracks I didn't get to, but all you need to know is that they are at least "Great" with the exception of "Avalon", the only possible low point on the album, and even that song is "Pretty good". Listen to this album. It feels like a culmination of only their better efforts. Even if you don't like punk you may be surprised at how much musicality is contained in this small offering. There is influence from folk to country flavoring every track, and (I cannot stress this enough), Dr. Greg Graffin, PhD's lyrics are intelligent, flowing, and unlike anything else in the punk scene. Oh, and that bit about Graffin being Dr. Graffin? That wasn't hyperbole. Guy has a fucking PhD from UCLA. How many members of The Sex Pistols got THEIR doctorates?
Graffin, taking a break from his show to
count other people as awesome as him.
He counted himself and ran out.
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