What: Bad Religion will perform with Rise Against and Four Year Strong.
When: 7:30 p.m. April 11.
Where: Rose Garden, 1 N. Center Court, Portland.
Cost: $29.50-$33.50.
More Information: www.rosequarter.com, 503-797-9619.
Some say Bad Religion should be in the same rock and roll club as the Ramones and AC/DC. Like with those famous groups, the running joke is that every Bad Religion album sounds the same.
Bassist Jay Bentley, singer/guitarist Greg Graffin and guitarist Brett Gurewitz are Bad Religion’s three remaining founding members. Bentley admits that the group bears the blessing and the curse of being stuck with such a singular sound.
“You can’t be David Bowie, where you reinvent yourselves with every album cycle,” Bentley said. “But, then again, you try not to get locked into … the same song over and over again.
“We do steal from ourselves because that’s just what we do,” he said. “So if we sound like Bad Religion, then great, we’re doing our jobs.”
What: Bad Religion will perform with Rise Against and Four Year Strong.
When: 7:30 p.m. April 11.
Where: Rose Garden, 1 N. Center Court, Portland.
Cost: $29.50-$33.50.
More Information: www.rosequarter.com, 503-797-9619.
Despite the similarities that characterize nearly all 15 albums Bad Religion has made over its 30-year history, the group still sounds passionate and current. It has never even remotely threatened to become a parody of itself.
With its latest CD, “Dissent Of Man,” the band has created yet another classic-sounding Bad Religion album — in other words, a hook-filled, sharply written collection of hard-hitting, harmony-laden tunes. At the same time, Bad Religion has also nudged its sound in new directions by going for more of a straight-ahead rock sound on several songs and toying with guitar tones and other sonic elements.
Perhaps the biggest contrast with the past was simply in the outlook of songwriters Graffin and Gurewitz when the new songs were written. Bentley said the previous two albums were created with pointed messages in mind.
“Those two albums were in very specific time frames,” Bentley said. “With ‘The Empire Strikes First,’ we were super pissed off about the wars and what was going on. … So there really was an urgent need to get in there and put our money where our mouth is and write a very political, national album, which was something we really hadn’t done in the past.”
And the left-leaning band’s “The New Map” was in part a response to George W. Bush’s election to a second term in office, he said.
Bad Religion simply wasn’t in the same place going into “Dissent of Man,” although the album is hardly carefree and light.
“There were personal things that happened that sort of shaped how the band felt,” Bentley said. “Brett had a baby, so he sort of had this new smile on his face. And Greg was busy writing a book.” (“Anarchy Evolution” is Graffin’s look back at Bad Religion and how punk rock shaped his life and his academic pursuits; he has both a master’s degree and a doctorate).
If the group, which now includes guitarists Greg Hetson and Brian Baker, and drummer Brooks Wackerman, takes its music and message seriously, the same can’t be said of the musicians themselves.
‘Addictive joy’
Bentley is modest when he reflects on how it feels to be in a band that has lasted three decades.
“I honestly don’t think that much about it. I never really thought about it until this year when we started talking about it,” he said. “And even then, it’s hard to fathom 30 years.
“It’s just something where, even in the beginning of the band, we never had any long-term goals,” Bentley said. “I think our longest-term goal was, we’re going to write six songs, get in the studio and make a demo tape. And we’ve been like that for 30 years. We just don’t have a lot of pressure on the band to be something, to make us happy or anything.”
What also hasn’t changed is the excitement about making music, especially playing live.
“Being on stage and playing hasn’t really changed for me,” Bentley said. “I’m a little more comfortable out there now than I was when I was 15 (his age when Bad Religion started). But I think, in terms of the excitement of playing and the strange addictive joy that everybody talks about (with) playing live music, that hasn’t changed at all.”
