Description
Bad Religion – Against the Grain – Vinyl Record
“Modern Man” gets Against the Grain underway at a speed that would make most bands simplify what they had to say. Greg Graffin fits a dense set of words into the space the guitars open up, and the backing voices give the lines a point of arrival. That combination is already established within the first two minutes of this 1990 album.
Bad Religion wrote a remarkably varied set of songs around that quick delivery. “Blenderhead” is over almost as soon as it makes its point. “Anesthesia” lets its vocal melody stay in the air longer, and the first side closes with “Faith Alone,” a song willing to spend more than three minutes on a question about the limits of belief.
“Flat Earth Society” makes a compact joke out of the certainty with which people defend a position. Its tunefulness leaves room for the joke to register amid the acceleration. The album repeatedly finds this connection between the shape of a song and the kind of argument it is making.
The original recording of “21st Century (Digital Boy)” is here, several years before the band revisited it on Stranger Than Fiction. It fits into a second side that begins with “Entropy” and gives the title song, “Operation Rescue” and “God Song” only as much time as each needs. “Walk Away” gets the last word.
The Epitaph LP carries all seventeen songs across two sides. This sits in the run of albums following Suffer and No Control, when the band was working out just how much melody and language it could put into fast Southern California punk without crowding out the guitars.
Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic
Track Listing
- A1 — Modern Man
- A2 — Turn On the Light
- A3 — Get Off
- A4 — Blenderhead
- A5 — The Positive Aspect of Negative Thinking
- A6 — Anesthesia
- A7 — Flat Earth Society
- A8 — Faith Alone
- B1 — Entropy
- B2 — Against the Grain
- B3 — Operation Rescue
- B4 — God Song
- B5 — 21st Century (Digital Boy)
- B6 — Misery and Famine
- B7 — Unacceptable
- B8 — Quality or Quantity
- B9 — Walk Away
