IN 1982 BAD RELIGION POSED A QUESTION WITH the title of their debut album, How Could Hell Be Any Worse? Twenty-five years later, Bad Religion provided an answer—albeit a pessimistic one—with New Maps of Hell.
The difference between the 1980s and the 2000s was that in the eighties the moral outrage propagated by the conservative right was sincere. In some respects, punk rockers and religious zealots were critiquing the same hedonistic decay. “Punk was both a musical and cultural movement,” Brett explained. “It was a reaction to disco. It was a reaction to the crappy music and fashion that was in the zeitgeist. ‘Fuck my hippie parents and their fucking coked-out disco parties!’ It was a youth movement, but there was also a sense of community with shared values.”
But on the twenty-fifth anniversary of “Fuck Armageddon… This Is Hell,” the war criminals in the White House could no longer lay claim to any moral high ground as they funneled tax dollars into a campaign of endless war in the Middle East and conned their base into voting against its own interests with an agenda that pandered to Christian fundamentalism. Progressive issues like a woman’s right to choose, gay marriage, and climate science went out the window as right-wing Republicans strove to hold on to power by any means necessary. Their hypocrisy was out in the open and Bad Religion was having none of it.
“I’ve always loved science,” Brett explained. “I was a punk rocker and a miscreant and a rebellious kid, but a big part of who I am is I’ve always had my nose in sci-fi novels. I’ve always believed that progress was possible and desirable, from reading Jules Verne when I was nine years old, to Arthur C. Clarke when I was twelve, and William Gibson when I was sixteen. I’ve also been interested in hard science and philosophy since I was a kid. I’ve always been very positive about science and natural philosophy, and against dogma, religion, and authoritarianism. These have been fruitful themes for Bad Religion. ‘New Dark Ages’ is about the anti-rational, anti-science view that the Republican majority espouses.”
For New Maps of Hell, Bad Religion went outside the band for a producer. Joe Barresi, however, wasn’t a total unknown. The Florida native was an experienced producer, mixer, and engineer who’d worked at some of the best music studios in Hollywood, had earned a reputation for being open-minded and willing to experiment, and had been nominated for a Grammy.
Barresi had produced the Melvins, who recommended him to Pennywise when they were looking for someone to produce Land of the Free? After working as an engineer for the High Desert rockers Kyuss for many years, Barresi was brought in by Queens of the Stone Age to produce their groundbreaking first album. Most importantly, Barresi was the engineer and mixer for Bad Religion’s previous record.
“The Empire Strikes First was the first one that we did with Joe Barresi,” Brett said, “and he’s a metal producer. Process of Belief sounded great, but a lot of bands have a comeback record and then they get wimpier. I wanted to get heavier. Joe’s records are heavy. That was the thought behind bringing in Joe, and that started a relationship with him.” Brett promoted Barresi from engineer/mixer to co-producer for the record.
Greg and Brett had been working on the album since 2005. They had generated so much material that rumors circulated on the Internet that Bad Religion’s follow-up to The Empire Strikes First would be a double album. This ended up not being the case. Another erroneous report that made the rounds was that the new record would be called The Ultra Tyranny.
Prior to recording, Brooks went to Australia to tour with Tenacious D, and Jay, Brian, and Hetson participated in the ninth annual Punk Rock Bowling tournament, which was held at Sam’s Town Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Recording started at Grandmaster Recorders in Hollywood in February 2007 and continued into April.
As with the previous album, New Maps of Hell had a more aggressive sound than the skate shredders of the late eighties and early nineties, as if the songs were written not for a basement or a club, but for the massive stages of the festival circuit. This is certainly true of the song “New Dark Ages” with its driving bass line, explosive drumming, ferocious pick slides, and layered harmonies. The song takes the temperature of the times and delivers an indictment of the human project:
Because we’re animals with golden rules
Who can’t be moved by rational views, yeah
The intelligence failures of 9/11, the mishandled elections, and an epically misguided war may have diminished the band’s optimism for the future, but they stoked their outrage at a system of government that consistently manipulated its citizens in bad faith. Although Bad Religion’s catalog was already full of anthems, in “New Dark Ages” they delivered a perfect strike.
“That was a pretty big hit for us,” Brett said. “It got a lot of airplay. I like how surfy it is. I like the vibe. That might be my favorite song from that album. It means a lot to me.”
Bad Religion played material from New Maps of Hell for the first time during an encore at Santa Monica Civic for a Heal the Bay benefit. Bad Religion released two singles from the album. The first, “Honest Goodbye,” came out in May, a few days after they’d played the KROQ Weenie Roast in Irvine, California. “Honest Goodbye” was inspired by Truman Capote’s 1965 international bestseller, In Cold Blood, an account of a quadruple murder in Kansas by a pair of ex-cons. Although Capote came under fire for manufacturing scenes to fit his version of the story and crafting a sympathetic portrait of the killers, In Cold Blood launched the true crime genre.
Bad Religion’s short set at the Weenie Roast included the first single as well as the second track on the album, “Heroes & Martyrs.” The show served as a warm-up for the 2007 Vans Warped Tour. Although they were limited to playing nine or ten songs a night, by early July, the band was rotating new songs off the album into their set. “New Dark Ages” quickly became a fan favorite and was released as the second single in October.
The Warped Tour lasted from late June until the end of August, and for many band members it was a welcome break. Many fans assume that when their favorite band goes out on the road, they hang out with the musicians they’re playing with, and in this manner form lasting friendships that get rejuvenated each time their paths cross. That’s not how it works.
But the Warped Tour was different. The sets were short and everyone had the same travel schedule. “Warped Tour is the same story every time,” Brian recalled. “We’d wake up, shake off whatever we’d done the night before, and set up camp. The experience of being on the tour left a much bigger impression than the actual concerts. I met so many people because we were basically hanging out in a parking lot with a hundred musicians every day. It was a traveling circus, but no animals were harmed.”
Bad Religion released a deluxe version of New Maps of Hell the following year. This version included two discs: a CD with all of the material from the original release, plus acoustic versions of seven Bad Religion songs and a DVD packed with videos and bonus material. The acoustic versions included some old and new favorites, such as “God Song” from Against the Grain, “Skyscraper” from Recipe for Hate, “Sorrow” from The Process of Belief, and “Dearly Beloved” from New Maps of Hell. Two of the songs, “Adam’s Atoms” and “Chronophobia,” were exclusive to the deluxe edition, and “Won’t Somebody” was a sneak peek of a song that would eventually appear on their next album, The Dissent of Man.
The DVD featured videos for “New Dark Ages” and “Honest Goodbye,” a free all-ages show presented by MySpace at the House of Blues in Las Vegas that had been recorded the previous summer, and two behind-the-scenes videos about the making of the album and the acoustic EP. With the twenty-fifth anniversary of their first album and the thirtieth anniversary of the band’s formation looming in the not-too-distant future, Bad Religion was focused on their fans. By mixing nostalgia over their long career with emerging technology, Bad Religion continued to surprise and delight fans with innovative features, engaging reissues, and arresting shows.
In 2009 Bad Religion went on the Warped Tour in the United States for the fifth—and final—time. The band wrapped up its touring for the year with a return to Australia. The light schedule—if playing the Warped Tour can be considered light—was consistent with their years in between albums, and 2010 was shaping up to be a huge year for the band.
In the late eighties and early nineties, Bad Religion released a new album every year. As they became more popular, this moved to every other year so that they could take advantage of opportunities to play all over the world. After their return to Epitaph, they shifted to releasing an album every three years. The band would spend two years promoting a new release and a year getting ready for the next one.
Bad Religion celebrated their thirtieth anniversary as a band by playing a series of club shows at the House of Blues in Anaheim, San Diego, West Hollywood, and Las Vegas. Each night the band performed a new set list of thirty songs from across the spectrum of their thirty-year career. These shows were recorded, and the best performances were handpicked for inclusion in Bad Religion’s second live album, 30 Years Live, which was distributed on May 18, 2010, as a free download to fans who’d signed up for the band’s mailing list.
When 30 Years Live came out, Bad Religion was in the studio working on their new album, The Dissent of Man. The title fuses Greg’s ongoing interest in evolutionary biology—Greg was now teaching a course in evolution at UCLA during the winter quarter—and the band’s politics of protest. “One of Charles Darwin’s most famous books is called The Descent of Man,” Greg explained. “The Dissent of Man is a play on words.”
The band was poised to leave for an eight-week 30th Anniversary European Tour in early June, which left less than a month to make the record. They hadn’t planned on being so busy. “Offers came out of the woodwork to tour because it was our thirtieth anniversary,” Greg said.
The Dissent of Man is less frenetic than the two preceding albums and picks up where the acoustic EP leaves off, with folksier-sounding songs such as “Won’t Somebody,” “Turn Your Back on Me,” and “I Won’t Say Anything,” but it keeps the spirit of punk protest alive with rippers like “The Resist Stance” and “Someone to Believe.” The goal of the album was to show the evolution of Bad Religion’s sound over the course of thirty years. “The most insightful dissent is usually satire,” Brett said. “That’s what I try to do and that’s really the difference between Greg’s style and my style. Greg’s more of a documentarian. He has an idea and he puts it forth. I tend to be a little more political, but also more ironic and sarcastic.”
The Dissent of Man is one of Bad Religion’s longer records: fifteen songs in just under forty-three minutes, with six songs longer than three minutes and only one under two: “The Day the Earth Stalled,” which opens the album. Bad Religion typically selected one of their faster, shorter songs for the opening track as a way of reassuring the band’s oldest and most loyal fans that, no matter how much they’d evolved, they would always remain true to their roots as a hardcore band.
The first single, “The Devil in Stitches,” was released in July while the band toured Europe. The album came out at the end of September and was followed by a six-week tour of North America that coincided with the release of their second single, “Cyanide,” which once again features Mike Campbell on guitar. Fans who pre-ordered the album received a free digital download of four live tracks that were recorded during the band’s thirtieth anniversary club tour but not selected for 30 Years Live. These included “Generator” and three songs from Suffer: “Best for You,” “Pessimistic Lines,” and “What Can You Do?” The download also featured “Finite,” one of Greg’s songs that had not appeared anywhere else.1
Bad Religion celebrated its thirtieth birthday with a bang: the release of the 30 Years LP Box Set. This massive vinyl reissue of all fifteen studio albums the band had released between 1980 and 2010 included Into the Unknown—much to the astonishment of hardcore Bad Religion fans. This was the first time in twenty-seven years the record was made available. The box set was limited to three thousand editions and the records were pressed on red vinyl. The first five hundred fans to order the set also received a free Bad Religion flag. The box set was a huge hit and quickly sold out, despite an asking price of $224.99.
Even after thirty years, the band was still crossing new thresholds and achieving new milestones with the Southern Continents Tour, which included Bad Religion’s first show in Jakarta, Indonesia.
It was a time of new accomplishments for Greg as well. The Milwaukee Brewers baseball team invited Greg to sing the national anthem at Miller Park—a thrilling moment for the Wisconsin native and a highlight of Greg’s musical career that didn’t involve Bad Religion. Greg also published his first book, Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God, in October of 2011. Cowritten with science writer Steve Olson, Anarchy Evolution explores many of the same themes Greg had addressed in his songwriting, but through the lens of evolutionary theory. Through a mixture of memoir and science, Greg draws comparisons between punk rock and evolution and makes connections between the two. Anarchy Evolution reads like a fusion of class lectures and tour stories told over the course of a long road trip. Unlike his dissertation, which Greg made available to fans through his website, Anarchy Evolution was published by Harper Perennial.
Bad Religion had settled into a comfortable three-year album cycle and had proven to record stores, radio stations, and festival organizers that they were still in high demand. Being on Epitaph allowed them to call their own shots and tour if they wanted, when they wanted, for as long as they wanted. The band had outlasted most of their peers in the scene and they had moved into the elder statesman phase of their careers.
As punk rock veterans, the members of Bad Religion could be forgiven for thinking they knew the drill and had a good idea what the future held in store for them. But unbeknownst to the band, storm clouds were gathering on the horizon that would shake up Bad Religion.
Footnotes
1. The third and final single from The Dissent of Man, “Wrong Way Kids,” wouldn’t be released until the following year.