Bad Religion
Christmas Songs

THE REVIEW

Boh.

On October 29, Bad Religion released "Christmas Songs", an EP consisting of eight covers of classic Christmas songs (including "O Come All Ye Faithful", which would be our "Adeste Fideles", and "Angels We Have Heard On High", i.e., "Gloria in Excelsis Deo") and a final touch consisting of the andywallacian remix of the immortal "American Jesus".

An eyebrow is raised.

You listen to the album. The other one raises as well.

Because it's like tasting an Iranian dish for the first time. You know some of the ingredients, the flavors aren't too distant from the usual ones, yet there is a slight feeling of disorientation. A sort of "out of context". In other words: what the HELL is a band that is not only a punk legend but also has the "crossbuster" as its symbol doing with Christmas, a concentration of religion, traditional values, and capitalism, which is everything a mohawked punk would curse against?

Then you read an interview Rolling Stone did with the genius Graffin, and you discover certain things you maybe didn’t know or hadn’t noticed. For example, that Greg sang in a choir as a child which later became an ineliminable influence—and how many times have we made love with Bad Religion's choirs? That Graffin not only celebrates Christmas but appreciates it strongly. That it is certainly an album filled with a certain irony, directed, however, against contemporary secularization and the fanatic aspects of religious interpretation. Ok, fine, let’s go back to listening to it.

Finally, you realize that "Christmas Songs" actually mirrors the interview, just like the interview mirrors the album. Bad Religion tells us: okay, we take these traditional songs and transform them into bastard creatures filled with our punk, which if your bigoted great-grandmother hears them, she donates her million-dollar inheritance to the Ursulines; but we don't mind Christmas, and playing these covers is not a betrayal of our ideals; in the end, anyway, we hit you with one of our anti-republican and anti-nationalist anthems, so we eliminate any remaining doubt you might have had: we're still as cool as ever.

However, I can't help but be perplexed. Please, I'm a sentimental punk, and in my sick mind, I have often imagined, to name one, a children's choir waving candles and singing "Wasted", so this EP doesn't necessarily displease me. The opening of "White Christmas" sounds like a Ramones piece, and then you have a laugh, and some experiments have turned out remarkably. And yet... maybe because I remember, wrongly, "How Could Hell Be Any Worse" and "Suffer", maybe because my little punk in the brain is too harsh... but I repeat: boh. 

(here is the link to the album; if nothing else, by purchasing it you will help SNAP, an organization for victims of priest sexual abuse. A sort of irony this too, but certainly more bitter.)