Bad Religion @ Metropolis

October 28 2010 // Magazine // Concert Reviews

 
Bad Religion is one of the bands whose music was always in my non-Walkman-brand portable compact disc player when I was a suburb-living, black-t-shirt-wearing, skateboarding aspiring hooligan. When I learned that Bad Religion would play Montreal as part of the AUTUMN OF NOSTALGIA™ along with such bands as Millencolin, Anti-Flag, The Ataris, and Helmet, I of course had to go. 
 
I have seen Bad Religion once before, about six years ago at the almost always disappointing [silly shoe company]’s Warped Tour. They were okay, not great. The Empire Strikes First had been released a few months prior and it was also just okay. Based on this experience I was expecting this show, which sold out the Metropolis, to be of the same quality. It was very wrong to expect this, indeed.
 
 The show was opened by the Bouncing Souls, who did actually phone it in. A lot. This is their job, so whatever, but they don’t seem to quite have the spark that they did ten years ago. They played their big songs, played a few new ones, and a cover of a Hot Water Music song. 
 
Luckily Bad Religion was the opposite of all that. They came out strong indeed, marching on stage as "Pomp and Circumstance #1" was blared over the house system. Singer Greg Graffin and drummer Brooks Wackerman mimed playing baseball while other members (guitarists Brett Gurewitz and Greg Hetson and bassist Jay Bentley) joked with one another on stage. Without nerding out too hard, I’ll just say that the band brought the thunder for a full hour and change. 
This tour marks the 30th anniversary of Bad Religion. They are certainly getting older for punk rockers (the iconic Graffin is 45), but they also have a ton of material from which to draw. The set well represented each era of Bad Religion from the raw passion of No Control and Against the Grain to the more polished and aloof The Process of Belief. There were a couple songs from the recently-released The Dissent of Man which went off far better than I expected (definitely better than “Los Angeles Is Burning” from The Empire Strikes First). My favourites were definitely the three or four tracks from No Control. The entire audience belted out “It Must Look Pretty Appealing” like it was 1989. Other highlights included “Recipe for Hate”, “A Walk”, “You”, “Sinister Rouge”… basically everything. The band was tight, energetic, and worked the crowd very well. Graffin’s stage presence was as strong as ever, poking fun at the band’s age and encouraging the ‘action pit.’ They closed the set with an encore of “Sorrow,” which may have been the highlight of the night. 
So: go see Bad Religion. They are as lively as ever, and still love what they’re doing. Break out the skateboard and rip your jeans. I’ll high five you and we can get all anti-establishment.