The Empire Strikes First

What's two minutes long, full of choppy, tuneful guitars, and much, much smarter than you? Every Bad Religion song ever written. There's not much variety in the BR catalog, but there's a reason their formula has been copied by two decades' worth of punk bands: It works. For their latest, the simple sonic palette is merely a backdrop for Ph.D. frontman Greg Graffin's socio-political dragon-slaying. The big villains here are religion and war, and the totalitarian overtones connecting them. Christianity takes a beating ("Sinister Rouge," "God Is Love," "Live Again"), as does the Bush administration, particularly in "Let Them Eat War." However, Graffin occasionally puts his degree to overuse: "Ratiocination is a practicable way to derive/An attitude of altitude and probity by which to abide/Or maybe a theophany of flaming creosote in disguise" sounds more like a dissertation subtitle than song lyrics, but sometimes it takes more than "Gabba gabba hey!" to make your point.