BAD RELIGION: NO SUBSTANCE (1998)
1) Hear It; 2) Shades Of Truth;
3) All Fantastic Images; 4) The Biggest Killer In American History; 5) No
Substance; 6) Raise Your Voice!; 7) Sowing The Seeds Of Utopia; 8) The Hippy
Killers; 9) The State Of The End Of The Millenium Address; 10) The Voracious
March Of Godliness; 11) Mediocre Minds; 12) Victims Of The Revolution; 13)
Strange Denial; 14) At The Mercy Of Imbeciles; 15) The Same Person; 16) In So
Many Ways.
If I were Greg Graffin, I would think twice
before calling one of my albums No
Substance. Not only do you have to wait until track no. 5 before certifying
that he means America as a whole and not just himself as part of it, you have
to find a way to convince yourself that this next batch of same-sounding,
completely predictable, and, by now, thoroughly toothless Bad Religion slogans
somehow pretends to having more
substance than, oh I dunno, the Bill Clinton government, to give but one of the
many examples.
The thing is, No Substance probably represents the highest peak of Graffin's
political activism — at this point, he is not merely the «hardcore equivalent»
of Noam Chomsky, he is making every single effort he can to shove that fact
into our faces. Yes, there is nothing inherently wrong with politics in music,
and yes, Noam Chomsky has just as many rights to owning a personal musical
agent as Rush Limbaugh, but at this point, there is so little that is truly
«musical» about Bad Religion that I have no idea about the size of the
potential dividends.
The transparent culprit is clearly ʽThe State
Of The End Of The Millenium Addressʼ (yes, «millenium» explicitly printed with
one ʽnʼ — what else do you expect from the rotten imperialist swine at Atlantic
Records? guess they had to derail the message any stinky subversive way they
could, embarrassing Mr. Graffin before all of his educated college audiences):
over a threatening wall of feedback, you get to hear about how "The
Internet has expanded our ability to pacify average Americans better than ever
by offering fantastical adventures to every corner of the imagination",
etc. etc. Perfectly convincing, but the only nagging suspicion is — if just
about everything is part of The Plot, how about Bad Religion themselves? Where
do they come in?
Honestly, I have no idea, except that three
required listens to No Substance
have drained me of 135 minutes of time that might have been more effectively
spent planting bombs in the headquarters of The World's Most Evil Government,
wherever that one is. As usual, there are a few catchy choruses — there always
are at least a few catchy choruses on a Bad Religion album — but some of them
are hicky almost beyond belief, such as "fa fa fa fa, fa fa fa fa, fa fa
fa fa, raise your voice!": are we now relying on Sha Na Na methodology to
convey the message? Others are just
stupid (ʽThe Biggest Killer In American Historyʼ; ʽThe Hippy Killersʼ — both
songs designed simply to make the listener sing along to the title), and I can
only quote Mark Prindle on ʽMediocre Mindsʼ: "Next time Greg wants to
bitch about somebody with a «mediocre mind»" I'll ask him to kindly not
rip off the melody of ʽYummy Yummy Yummy, I've Got Love In My Tummyʼ in doing
so". Pretty much
summarizes my idea of the album, too.
Basically, what
makes the difference between a Suffer-type
album and a No Substance-type album
is that the former somehow tried to express frustration in the music, while the
latter invests 90% of the funds in the lyrics. All of these riffs, rhythms, and
solos are punched out on total autopilot — although you cannot get this
feeling by just comparing individual songs
(Bad Religion does not operate in terms of songs), you have to listen to the
albums from start to finish. There is no reason to doubt Graffin's sincerity,
but that is the typical problem of «The Disillusioned Idealist»: the fewer
people you see following your sermons, the more bitter you get about it, until,
at some point, you simply start living for these sermons, dumping everything
else. Well — if I want a sermon, I'll just download myself an audio book from
Noam in person, rather than listen to his «musical» lackeys. Thumbs down, all you brothers and sisters under
oppression.
Check "No Substance" (MP3) on Amazon
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