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Los Angeles punk pioneers Bad Religion have been playing for nearly 40 years, but they haven’t lost their urgency: the band just announced they will release their 17th album Age of Unreason on May 3rd on Epitaph Records – an album that the band says directly addresses the “perilous times” the country finds itself in: “The band has always stood for enlightenment values,” co-songwriter and guitarist Brett Gurewitz said in a statement. “Today, these values of truth, freedom, equality, tolerance, and science are in real danger. This record is our response.”
The first single from the album, “Chaos From Within,” is a one-and-a-half minute indictment of the current American climate, singerGreg Graffin describing terror, racism, hypocrisy and fear: “Threat is urgent, existential!” he howls.
The band says the album references current events: racist rallies, Trump’s election, Colin Kaepernick and conspiracy theories. Graffin, who has a PHD in the history of science, said, “Throughout history, walls have been used to keep the barbarians out, but it seems to me the truly barbaric aspect of a civilization is the chaos that comes from within.”
“When I saw all these headlines about how terrible our world had become,” Graffin continued, “I started doing a lot of reading. I read about the French revolution, the American Revolution, the Civil War, and I started to recognize that this is a pattern of history and something we should never venture into. There are ample warnings against it. Every school child should know this but it’s hard to get people to read about these things. Maybe this album can help. Because right now, with social media, we are just playing a version of kill the guy with the ball.”
Age of Unreason Track List
Chaos from Within
My Sanity
Do the Paranoid Style
The Approach
Lose Your Head
End of History
Age of Unreason
Candidate
Faces of Grief
Old Regime
Big Black Dog
Downfall
Since Now
What Tomorrow Brings
The Profane Rights of Man (bonus)
