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, singer Greg 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)