Flush It Friday: Hey, Blenderhead
You ask so many questions.
If we want to think—which, admittedly, we don’t have to do—about Punk, Hardcore, and Metal as three discrete genres (or even families of genres in the great musical taxonomic rank), then it’s at least passingly interesting to then think about the order in which you found your way to and through them. I started with what would be broadly called “Metal” before parsing my way through the different genres and finding what worked best. During that, I found my way more quickly than one might expect to “Hardcore,” though perhaps I was simply just the right time and place for it. Punk, though? That came, quite oddly, last. (Let’s not quibble over hardcore, punk, hardcore punk, etc., just for the sake of getting through this Flush It Friday post.) It’s a quirk of my own listening history, the result of which, by this point in my life (and even more pressingly the point in my life today on this particular Friday morning) where the only manifest outcome of this is that I have totally incommensurate opinions on many of the Biggest Bands in Punk History. Since most of it wasn’t what I would maybe call formative, I haphazardly found my way to certain bands and either ignored or outright did not get the appeal of others. This, I realize, is immensely tedious! But it’s tedious in a way that at least invites some charged conversations. Without bogging us down with any of the bands I simply cannot stand (ahem The Clash ahem), let’s just move straight to the point of this whole pointless exercise: while everyone else is having a Chappell Roan Summer, I am having myself a Bad Religion Summer. I even ordered myself a new crossbuster tank top for the dog days of August and September.
What is fun, of course, about having a Bad Religion Summer, is both honing in on my usual go-to albums, while texting friends about their particular go-to albums. When I texted two of my BFFs who happen to be brothers about this particular turn of events, the older of the two went immediately for 1993’s Recipe for Hate and the younger slammed on 2000’s The New America. Both representative choices! Of course, the former has “American Jesus” and was the first band’s major label debut, while the latter is considered the moment when the band figured out how to be a major-label punk band and is also the second-to-last actually great Bad Religion album, with 2002’s The Process of Belief being, more or less, the last album from Bad Religion you can listen to from start to finish without getting embarrassed. (I mean, my god, there’s an attempt at rapping on “Let Them Eat War” from 2004’s The Empire Strikes First.) As another friend and I discussed on Monday, after 2002, a lot of punk was kind of a homogenized Not My President mess, where the difference between Bad Religion and, say, Anti Flag, shrank to an infinitesimal degree. There is absolutely a place in my heart for Die for the Government and maybe still a little bit of room for some Underground Network, but you don’t want those two bands overlapping. If Bad Religion is releasing Anti Flag records, something is wrong. (It should be noted that that friend’s go-to Bad Religion album is 1994’s Stranger than Fiction, which, I admit, shocked me. The first few tracks, particularly the the title track, are top-tier Bad Religion tracks, but “Infected” and “Television” are easily two of the worst Bad Religion songs ever recorded, and I also kind of really hate “The Handshake.” But! Still, what fun.)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Bad Religion’s best run is Suffer into No Control into Against the Grain. These three albums, released back to back to back from 1988 to 1990, comprise almost the entirety of 1994’s great best-of All Ages (with a couple tracks from 1982’s How Could Hell Be Any Worse? and 1992’s Generator) and represent the band at its absolute best. I used to consider Generator in this run of perfect albums, but I’ve sort of grown cold on an old favourite. I find it, now, to be uneven and stumbling. I think there’s a case for any of these three to be The Best, and I’m not sure there’s a wrong answer. For me, and this has been the case since I belatedly got into the band and remains the case to this very week, Against the Grain has been, is, and will forever be, my Bad Religion go-to. It simply doesn’t miss for 17 songs, and I really do think “Anesthesia” might be the band’s best song. The dub breakdown is so unexpected and yet hits so hard. Gurewitz and Graffin are perhaps never more in sync leading the band than on Against the Grain, which is just ever slightly more melodically charged than its two predecessors without becoming cloying (as happens in the Atlantic years) and still retaining the power, punch, and vigour of that classic 80s feel. The run of tracks from “Faith Alone” to “Entropy” to “Against the Grain” in the middle of the album is an immensely difficult feat for any band, surfing a couple towering crests when many albums with that many tracks would be trying to dig themselves out of troughs to salvage the album in the latter half. The album could end there, and we’d still be satisfied, but then we get the undeniable earworm classic “21st Century (Digital Boy)” before the blistering trilogy of “Unacceptable,” “Quality or Quantity,” and “Walk Away” with the band ratcheting up the aggression to close out the album.
But, hey! That’s just me. And, for whatever reason, it continues to be and doesn’t seem to be stopping any time soon. So let’s get to Flushing before I keep Yammering.
Stick brought us heat on Monday. Roldy kept the oven broilin’ on Tuesday.
365 gave us an inside peek at his own wardrobe with these totally cool and definitely wearable Morbid Angel baseball jerseys.
Iron Goddess of Me(rcy) brought you the kind of death metal mosh you’ve come to expect from Pneuma Hagion.
Exclusive Track Premiere: Pneuma Hagion’s “The Temple Fires”
Toilet Radio 507 is about a bunch of pathetic losers who run a sticker company.
Iron Goddess of Hello, Me, It’s Me Again. premiered a new track from Monument of Misanthropy that made us bang our heads but also a little uncomfortable!
Exclusive Track Premiere: Monument of Misanthropy’s “Vile Postmortem Irrumatio”
Aaron turned our attention to a Palestinian aid fundraiser as organized by our own BSG via Mother Anxiety and other great PNW bands. Go give your money!
What a week! Make sure you go click through this week’s posts, leave a comment, and let the contributors know what you think of the shit they’re slingin’. That’s the whole point of this, right? Community! And after you’ve done that, slap those BGUs on us and lemme know what your go-to Bad Religion record is and why. All my love to you all but especially even more of all my love to those spending their time with us in the comments. You’re not the real MVP (that’s still Kevin Durant’s mom Wanda), but you are the team around the MVP that makes it all possible. Kisses!
