At the tail end of punk’s first wave, Bad Religion combined the catchy, no-frills simplicity of The Ramones and the social conscience of The Clash with the sound and spirit of their LA predecessors, The Germs, and OC contemporaries, The Adolescents. Songwriters Greg Graffin and Brett Gurewitz were as versed in Carl Sagan as they were three-chord thrash when they perfected their melodic polemics on ‘No Control,’ released in November, 1989.
There is arguably no better example of short, fast, aggressive bursts of melodic punk music than ‘No Control.’ At 300 bpms, the album speeds along with stripped-down song structures akin to early rock 'n’ roll and thought-provoking lyrics more likely to send fans to the library than the liquor store. Thirty-four years later, ‘No Control’ sounds as vibrant, and as immediate, as ever.
When they played their first show more than 40 years ago, in November, 1980, nobody in Bad Religion was old enough to vote. Gurewitz was 17 when he wrote his first batch of punk classics; Graffin was 15. The vocal harmonies and driving beat that would become their signature were already there on their debut album, 1982’s ‘How Could Hell Be Any Worse?’ The bizarre prog-rock follow-up, ‘Into The Unknown,’ was a keyboard-heavy misstep, but Bad Religion came roaring back to form in 1987 with a record called ‘Suffer.’
‘Suffer’ had already wound the meter on Bad Religion's Cali hardcore even tighter; ‘No Control’ simply and forcefully continued the shift, delivering a pummel of melodic song writing made sharp by Greg Graffin's populist cynicism and the stinging barbs of a twin-guitar strike. The remastering for the 2004 version greatly amplified the album's volume. It might also strip away some reverb from the instrumentation, but the latter observation is mostly theoretical, as the later ‘No Control’ really just sounds louder. This is welcome, as it makes the band sound that much more direct. ‘No Control’ is not a bad record, in fact I would go as far to say that of all the bands extensive catalogue it is this record that I will listen to when I get ready to go out to a show. Its speed is relentless and when the band slow things down to a still pacey half-time chug the next speed fuelled riff is only a minute or so away.
Singer Greg Gaffin as well as delivering a faultless vocal performance on the whole album penned the best line on the track No Control itself as well “Questions that besiege us in life are testament of our helplessness”. It’s a great albeit brief observation that sums the record up for me. It simply shows how grounded the band are, how un rock star a group of individuals in a band can be. They know that no matter how clever their sloganeering, no matter how corrupt politics and religion is in America, nothing they can do with Bad Religion will change that. Music can change an individual’s life but whilst the majority of the world do not listen to nor care about messages in popular music a world shift in political and religious thinking is an unrealistic and foolhardy dream. As if just to nail the message home the final song informs us that “The world won’t stop without you” A pessimistic outlook maybe but never has a truism inspired me so much as to try and make at least some kind of difference with my life.
