Bad Religion
Suffer

THE REVIEW

But are we truly free? Do we have the sacred right to get pissed off? Apparently yes... But we are still victims of rites of chance and titles to respect... And then here is this album "endure, bear, suffer" Suffer in a word, which tells the life of the streets but here it’s not made of prostitutes, pushers, and gangsters but of tranquil streets and boring suburbs, all identical to each other, the green lawn, the kid throwing the newspaper and maybe the American flag near the porch. Even here suffering pulses, among the kids who are searching for their own identity.

Freedom can be expressed in 1000 or more ways, like the fools born every day. Or for example in the '60s with the rise of youth movements among teenagers, there grew a desire to demonstrate that, unlike past generations, they were free. And so while The Who sang that famous phrase, Syd Barrett embarked on his famous trips, the young "dissidents" emancipated themselves with hits of LSD to open their doors of perception and were wildly making love after centuries of imposed Christian chastity. Did anything really change? No, unfortunately, The Who saw the number of their members halve and Syd Barrett now rests in his home in Cambridge, he has become a myth but has forgotten what that word means. On a lesser global level, the youths of that time did not benefit at all; for the most part, they fried their brains. This is to explain that what was once considered a way to escape over time turned into a ritual (sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll) of great and unattainable rock stars repeated and performed by small fans just to resemble their poster idols a little more, conformism.

Nonconformity, a significant characteristic of this Band that in the trumpeted ‘80s contributes, along with other bands, to build the philosophy and sound of hardcore from which grunge will descend. Nonconformists because, while groups like Guns’n’Roses reigned, they made no apology for drugs and gave no importance to image, and they told you about the "Land Of Competition" where kids head towards Southern California to imitate the plastic idiots.
"Tell me what you need to make you happy? Really, is it out of your reach?" Good question, it would be interesting to ask many people we reserve the right to judge different but who, in the end, have nothing different from others, discovering this reality is very disappointing. With "Do What You Want", it reaches a kind of "Do The Evolution" of Bad Religion; the words are different, but the subject is the same. And with the guitar progressions of the opener "You Are (The Government)" they explain how things are that everything depends solely on us. Bad Religion shows us their way to freedom while breaking the fundamental beliefs of rock.

In short, uncompromising, raw, and socially engaged. In this album dated 1988, the features of hardcore appear for the first time, guitars at full blast, and choirs. The rhythms are very tight; no frills are allowed, much less arid virtuosity à la Jimmy Page, so to speak, resulting in a hard but not edgy sound, instead fluid, flowing colorful like a lava flow. Sure, someone might argue that the songs all sound the same, but who cares? Here, the importance is given to the lyrics, the message, the substance over form. This is enough for me to give a solid 5. Personally, I believe the best song on the album is "Give You Nothing". Excuse me if I’ve been nauseatingly pseudo-intellectual. Bye