No Substance

Bad Religion - No Substance

No Substance
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CD Details

Artist: Bad Religion
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2012-02-28
Music Label: Atlantic Label
Soundtracks:
  1. Hear It
  2. Shades Of Truth
  3. All Fantastic Images
  4. The Biggest Killer In American History
  5. No Substance
  6. Raise Your Voice!
  7. Sowing The Seeds Of Utopia
  8. The Hippy Killers
  9. The State Of The End Of The Millennium Address
  10. The Voracious March Of Godliness
  11. Mediocre Minds
  12. Victims Of The Revolution
  13. Strange Denial
  14. At The Mercy Of Imbeciles
  15. The Same Person
  16. In So Many Ways

Music reviews of No Substance

Music Review: A Convenient (and Necessary) Amnesia
Rating: 4 Stars

So it's Saturday night, I'm psyched coming down from Bad Religion's last show on the "30 Years" tour, and I'm hitting up YouTube for clips of the previous shows, when I stumble across a live version of "Sowing the Seeds of Utopia". It's brilliant, I'm scratching my head wondering why I've never heard of it, and then it clicks:

Oh yeah, it's because it's from "No Substance", and I HATED that album when it first came out. I used to live in a place with music stores that let you preview any album you wanted (new or used), as long as you wanted. I had listened to half of the album, was instantly repulsed by the pop, and consigned it and "The New America" to a dustbin labeled "let's pretend that didn't happen". (In fact, those 2 and "Into the Unknown" were the only BR albums I didn't own.)

Fast forward 12 years: I'm going through Bad Religion's Web site, clicking through previews of every song on "No Substance" that it'll let me stream, and wondering if I've made a serious error in judgment. Having bought and listened to the entire thing repeatedly over the past few days, I think the answer depends on the context.

If you judge the album on the basis of being a pop/rock record, it's ABSOLUTELY brilliant. Hooks on top of hooks, polished 3-part harmonies, infectious (albeit mid-tempo) energy, and razor sharp lyrics.

If you judge it on the basis of being a *Bad Religion* record ... well, imagine a world where "The Process of Belief" and "The Empire Strikes First" never happened. Because that's EXACTLY what you would've gotten, had "No Substance" been wildly successful.

You can argue about whether Brett would've rejoined if BR hadn't been on the skids, but I would argue it doesn't matter, because their sound would've been radically different. Imagine entire BR albums built around the sonic premise of "Raise Your Voice": no more hard/fast/loud punk stylings, every song built around simultaneously catchy and irritating pop hooks that you loathe, but can't stop listening to.

Now imagine that "No Substance" had been released as a Greg Graffin solo album ... say, "Greg and the Drunken Barbershop Penguins". I don't know that it would've sold any more copies -- but it would've been a LOT easier to like, because it wouldn't have carried the implicit threat of "if you like this, then the sound of Bad Religion that you grew up with, will go away forever."

Well good news: it's 12 years later, Bad Religion's out of the major-label thicket, "The Process of Belief" DOES exist, and you are now free to enjoy "No Substance" on its own merits. Which granted, you may still not want to -- but it would be your loss. "No Substance" may not be underrated as a BR album, but it is most DEFINITELY underrated as an example of ultra-sharp pop/hard-rock songwriting. Freed of genre constraints, Greg gets to pair his densely solid lyric stylings with a flood of pop hooks, surging melodies, and more 3-part harmonies per minute than any previous BR album (yes, even "Stranger Than Fiction"). The themes of "concensus" over truth, surface over substance, rich over everyone else, fantasy over reality, resound as an indictment not just of 1998, but of the current times.
More No Substance free music reviews:
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Description of No Substance

No Substance by Bad Religion

This product is manufactured on demand using CD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.

Punk ain't dumb. Not with a creative lineage that includes everything from the Clash to Nirvana. Bad Religion has been part of that history since 1980. Whatever they lack in instrumental virtuosity is made up for here in singer Greg Graffin's urgent two-minute manifestos on society and world politics. As on other Bad Religion releases in the '90s, No Substance preaches militant social consciousness to the punk masses, imploring the youth to "raise your voice!" There was more variety in Bad Religion's sound when guitarist Brett Gurewitz was still in the band, but the band has taken their relatively simple musical formula to a sophisticated level here, crafting tight, intelligent nuggets of punk. --Steve Appleford

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