Bad Religion
Age Of Unreason

Musically, they are incapable of making bad records. They play by heart for nearly forty years, regularly proving wrong the detractors waiting for them at every turn. Then, "Age of Unreason" is particularly cool because it opens up more to melody, to that folk tradition that unites the soul of very different realities, from Simon & Garfunkel to Hüsker Dü. It brings to mind the underrated "The Dissent of Man" - also with its edges softened (and that's a compliment) - with "Candidate" and "My Sanity" and on a high note. What can you say to someone who writes you "My Sanity"?

That aesthetic (euphonic?) is not enough. If you're Bad Religion, you also need content, which here seems to be lacking. Because, adjusting for compulsive citationism, the only big revelation left by "Age of Unreason" is that Donald Trump is a big fascist. That's fine, but then wouldn't any Casualties have been enough?

I don't know, all the (beautiful!) songs leave me with an aftertaste of speech impediment, almost as if they were a personal challenge from Graffin to let us know he's educated. Indeed, that's pretty much how it goes: "Oh insipient plethora (Hobbes quote), you are morally unaesthetic (big claim) if you garner electorally usable support (Paine quote) to magnates of Teutonic origin with marked conservatism" (end). Such a display of erudition should have involved deeper reflections, if only because the latest from Bad Religion could hardly redeem the average supporter of Golden Dawn.

But there's more.

Punk, in any of its variations, should give voice to the defeated, to the lives permanently relegated to opposition. It is David, not Goliath.

Precisely for this reason, I find it was euphemistically inappropriate for the heralds of melodic hardcore to openly support then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, painting her – in 2016 – as "the great change. After all, we've never had a female president. And one of the principles of punk rock is still to challenge the established authority" (G. Graffin). Apart from the laughable rhetoric that a woman, being such, is better than a man, calling the support for Hillary Clinton a challenge to the established authority is paradoxical, if not ridiculous: sponsored by the most influential lobbying groups and always an ally of the top ranks of the U.S. and global financial system, the senator should be among the main targets of the L.A. band. Just for due diligence, let's point out that the person in question voted for military intervention in Iraq; gave her placet to sending sarin gas to Syrian rebels; was the secretary of state who, after yet another imperialist misdeed in Libya, performed that chilling parody of Caesar (what an excess of pietas!); let us know she "expressed appreciation" for the verdict that acquitted Amanda Knox, much to the distress of Montesquieu and the principle of sovereignty; has repeatedly declared support for the death penalty; used Bikini Kill's songs for her campaign without paying royalties.

In short, "Goliath" Hillary Clinton is anything but a challenge to the established authority and the support for her expressed by Bad Religion can only be traced back to the inspiring undercurrent of "Age of Unreason," given its strictly political slant. Needless to say, such a relationship is at the very least grotesque: the ideals of the Enlightenment - the founding values of our band's latest effort - are antithetical to the ones promoted in practice by the ex-president in pectore, despite waving democratic flags.

This present hiatus, moreover, is nothing but an effective paradigm of the inexorable distance between words and deeds of the Left (U.S. and global), a void rhetoric that has flung open the doors to the current reflux of fascisms.

Precisely in reference to this profile the greatest shortcoming of Age of Unreason becomes apparent: having chosen an easy and immediate target (the rich fascist of the moment), deliberately setting aside a constructive and bold critique of those who betrayed the ideals of the Enlightenment as a self-proclaimed champion, tracing an ever-deeper rift between the real country and campaign slogans.

Moreover, the barricadero coefficient of Bad Religion is now almost at the house band level of Gazebo is certified by the single "The Kids Are Alt-Right". A sterile and bored mockery of right-wing kids, it reiterates that it's easy to talk about social equality from a Bel Air penthouse, less so from the suburbs of Flint.

Sure, it's even harder to denounce how the inefficiency and hypocrisy of democratic forces have massively contributed to erode the political hopes of the youth and marginalized, handing them over to the reactionary right. But Bad Religion, at least on an ideological level, should always dare. Something that this "Age of Unreason" does not do.