Bad Religion – Age of Unreason

I got this as a preorder on mango vinyl. Not, like, vinyl made out of mango pits or something. It’s just orange colored. Less environmentally conscious, better for audio fidelity. 

I actually hadn’t listened to it until today. I’d heard the album on Spotify a few times (I thought), and it didn’t resonate. Something not quite right about it. 

Then, over the weekend, I got tickets to go see Bad Religion when they come through town with Alkaline Trio, a band I would be close to 0% on naming any tracks from. I’m leaving that sentence, but I want you to know that I know that it’s a weird, possibly incorrect, construction. We know this together. I’m not dumb, I’m lazy.

Bad Religion is a band I absolutely love, but I’ve only seen them once. Montreal in 200X. They played with Less Than Jake and Hot Water Music. On the Process of Belief tour, the internet would have me believe. I guess this was March of 2002. They played the Uniprix Stadium (now called the Stade IGA). 

Less Than Jake put on an incredible show, and we were way up front for it. They came out with some staticy, Saturday morning cartoons-ish thing on an otherwise dark stage. When the lights kicked on and they crashed into their set, I moved up twenty feet in about five seconds. The surge of kids behind me was incredible. 

It was around 20 degrees outside (F not C), but the inside of this place was lit up like a bonfire. 

Bad Religion played an excellent set. At one point, Greg challenged “any of [us] fuckers to a game of tennis” (quote approximation). For some reason that’s reminded me of a live set from BR that I used to listen to all the time. It was a European festival in some German-speaking region.

“What’s the [locality] word for water?” [Yelling.] “Wasser? Makes sense. Consistent with the rest of western civilization. What’s the one that makes no sense? L’eau. What the fuck is that?”

After we left the tennis stadium, we walked back to my car in the freezing ass cold. Some French Canadian dude behind us saw my Florida plates and just said, “Gainesville. Rock city!” I didn’t actually know that much Less Than Jake at the time, so I had to have it explained to me by my friend.

Age of Unreason is a lot better than I remembered. I dislike Lose Your Head, and it spoiled me on the rest of the album. It feels over processed and over thought. It’s a blip in the tracklist, though, and the rest of the album is excellent. I had a similar reaction to Tyler Childers’ Country Squire album. I heard one song that sounded like someone convinced him to try his hand at a top 40 hit and got turned off. Then, after hearing some of the songs live, I gave it another go and loved a lot of it.

I’m going to run Unreason back tomorrow and see which songs really jump out. I ended up being a big fan of True North after not loving The Dissent of Man. I’m hoping Age of Unreason continues to grow on me like the former. 

I guess I should also listen to some Alkaline Trio songs? I must know a few of these things, right? Hold on. Yep, nope. I have no idea what any of these songs are. That’s on me. Sorry A3, or however your fans abbreviate that so that they don’t have to write alkaline a ton off times. 

I’ll let you know how the concert goes. I’m taking a tennis racket.