Bad Religion
How Could Hell Be Any Worse?

THE REVIEW

Punk is the ultimate young people’s music, combining the energy of youth with an approach to notes and staves that is not yet mature. In the 80s, hardcore further lowered the average age threshold, bringing both pros and cons. Many works, in fact, even with interesting songs, suffer from themes treated with sterile slogans or in a superficial manner.
However, few works, alongside their energetic music, offer messages that are not filled with prejudices or useless rhetoric, but are deeply honest in the themes they describe: Minor Threat, Black Flag, Germs, Descendents, to name a few.
The album "How Could The Hell Be Any Worse" by Bad Religion belongs to the second group, and what is most striking is that the average age of the members is around 17-18, except for the guitarist Brett Gurewitz. In short, some pretty smart young people, like the singer Greg Graffin, who at 16 founded Epitaph, which even the most acne-ridden bedroom punk knows what it is and understands its importance in the punk of the 90s.

Now look at the cover. No compromises: a photo of a peaceful city on a fiery red background that couldn't be a better fit, the title How Could The Hell Be Any Worse? standing out in the sky, with Gustave Doré's etching of the Inferno from the Divine Comedy on the back. Welcome to hell, guys. Not in places where hunger and sadness rage, but where the most sordid opulence and plastic smiles reign. And it’s not a statement made by spoilt, bored teenagers under hormonal overdose, no, no, this is truly hell. The obtuse conservative mentality, pollution, that damn American Dream, hypocrisy, the arrogant and self-destructive nature of the human race, all consequences of religion, of dogma in which the suburb believes blindly. The Bad Religion, that of money, cleverly hidden under the Christian one.

The 14 songs of this album are bleeding wounds in this desolate landscape. Among them stand out the opening "We’re Only Gonna Die", "Latch Key Kids", "Fuck Armaggedon…", definitely the best, "White Trash (2^ndGeneration)", although it seems unfair to make distinctions between pearls of equal beauty. Bad Religion sounds like a cross between the apocalyptic and nihilistic Black Flag and TSOL and the irreverent rascals Circle Jerks, all sprinkled with tempo changes and the pedal to the metal, as hardcore demands, although there isn't yet the "wall of guitars" that characterizes the group's production from '88 onward. The lyrics, moreover, are something truly exceptional. Graffin and, to a lesser extent, Gurewitz, write tracks of exceptional quality, free of useless rhetoric, political overtones, cliches, and Fuck! scattered here and there, lyrics from which all musical groups should learn an important lesson.

The group, after this masterpiece (let's be bold, damn it, it’s warranted), loses a bit of its edge. A synthesizer is given to Graffin, and he tries to do something different, and two years later, "Into The Unknown" is released, whether it's good or bad, you decide, but the fact is that the group is embarrassed by this experiment and does everything to hide the mistake, recording two years later the EP "Back To The Known" that marks a return to their origins but also the end of the first period of Bad Religion, which will return to the scene in 1989 with the LP "Suffer" and inaugurating the typical Bad Religion sound. All this unnecessary babble to tell you that the album has been reissued with the subtitle "80-85", containing all the songs from the indicated years except, of course, the LP "Into The Unknown".