Ka Leo O Hawaii

Issue date: 11/15/07 Section: Mixed Plate

Media Credit: Courtesy of www.badreligion.com Bad Religion will perform this Friday at Pipeline Café.

Media Credit: Courtesy of www.badreligion.com Bad Religion's newest album, "New Maps of Hell'," relates to their views of the streets in L.A.

Formed in the San Fernando Valley, Bad Religion is one of the few remaining bands which emerged from the '80s Los Angeles punk scene. While most hardcore punks agree that their 1988 release, "Suffer," is the best album, it is their eighth one, "Stranger than Fiction," that they are widely known for. Songs such as "Infected" and "21st Century (Digital Boy)" catapulted them into the mainstream.

Bad Religion's early songs had the same anarchist spirit as their current tunes, but Greg Graffin's voice sounded nothing similar to what you hear today. While Graffin charges through songs like the eloquent and distinguished UCLA professor that he is, he once had a whiny, cracking voice, evidence of the teen angst and painful pubescent years that haunted punk rockers 25 years ago.

Their latest release is a salute to their first album, "How Could Hell Be Any Worse?" Both CD covers contain pictures of the urban sprawl that they always had a love/hate relationship with. As kids growing up in the smog-filled streets of Los Angeles, they wrote honest, politically inflected lyrics surrounded by a nihilistic haze.

The songs "We're Only Gonna Die" and "F**K Armageddon ... This Is Hell" captured their essence. They were basically rebellious middle-class white kids who knew something was wrong with this place called Earth, but they did not yet know what to do with that beautiful rage that pulsed through their blood.

With their current album, "New Maps of Hell," they still agree that hell is synonymous with Los Angeles, but they now know that music is a means toward offering people some hope. There are 16 songs, with each one so high-pitched and fast-paced that they leave the listener feeling like they ate a bowl of candy at the finale.

"Requiem for Dissent" sounds like troops shouting as they fight on the battlefield, with Graffin crying out, "Bring the dissident from slumber/Bring the rebel from its grave." They may be in their 40s, but it doesn't mean they still can't wish for a revolution to occur.

The album is entertaining but mostly sullen and disturbing. Any band that repeats the lines, "These are the new dark ages/And the world might end tonight," is bound to conjure up such feelings. Yet their songs bring up some important questions for punks and non-punks alike. If hell is already the world we live in, then how can it get any worse? And if their probably won't be a tomorrow when we die, then why not make the best of today and try to change things now?

In concert this Friday
Pipeline Café, 7 p.m.
$28, http://www.ticketmaster.com/

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