Album released in 1998 by
punk rock luminosos
Bad Religion. While
ukyoCE was less then impressed by this album (see his excellent WU in the Bad Religion node}, I was more than happy most of the album.
Track List:
- Hear It
- Shades of Truth
- All Fantastic Images
- The Biggest Killer in American History
- No Substance
- Raise Your Voice!
- Sowing the Seeds of Utopia
- The Hippy Killers
- The State of the End of the Millennium Address
- The Voracious March of Godliness
- Mediocre Minds
- Victims of the Revolution
- Strange Denial
- At the Mercy of Imbeciles
- The Same Person
- In So Many Ways
True, it is what we have come to expect from the California punks. Lots of layered
harmony (the
oozin ahhs), solid drums and guitar riffs that seem to be slide around as effortlessly as the crowd at a
punk rock show.
My only real complaint is that two of the weaker songs (Shades of Truth and All Fantastic Images) are not only so early on the disc, but that they are back to back. Aside from that, the songs are sharp, the production is warm and just a hair shy of too slick.
But, then again, after 20 years you get good at what you do. And Bad Religion, by all accounts, aren't too concerned with remaining static to keep their fanbase happy.
The theme of this album is, as you might guess, about substance. Truth, reality, and all the other issues that BR have dealt with in the past. The album art features a televangelist, a phone sex goddess, a psychic hotline operator and a self-help guru all vying for attention as you turn the pages, which could be taken to mean that everyone, no matter who you think you are, is desperately looking for something in their life to make sense of it all and that, sadly, you will never find it with those people.