Preeminent punk band Bad Religion are back with the new Epitaph Records album True North. In a world still brimming with rampant anti-intellectualism, inequality and oppression, the band’s signature brand of sonically charged humanist dissent seems as relevant as ever. On their newest record, the storied band deliberately revisits and refines the powerful and melodic Southern California sound they helped to define. 

“We went back to our original mission statement of short concise bursts of melody and thought,” co-songwriter and guitarist Brett Gurewitz explains. “The intent was to record stripped down punk songs without sacrificing any conceptual density.”  

With 16 songs clocking in at just 35 minutes, the band obviously succeeded in paring down the songs to their furious essence. The album’s first single is a propulsive anthem succinctly called “Fuck You.” As the band’s singer and co-songwriter Greg Graffin explains, “If any band should have a song with that title, it should be us. It just sounds like a perfect Bad Religion song.”  

Produced by the band and Joe Barresi (Queens of the Stone Age, Coheed and Cambria, Tool), True North celebrates the stirring power of cogent punk in the face of pain and adversity. The result is one of the band’s most emotionally accessible albums to date. LP also contains CD of the full album.

1.  True North

2.  Past is Dead

3.  Robin Hood in Reverse

4.  Land of Endless Greed

5.  Fuck You

6.  Dharma and the Bomb

7.  Hello Cruel World

8.  Vanity

9.  In Their Hearts is Right 

10. Crisis Time

11. Dept. of False Hope

12. Nothing To Dismay 

13. Popular Consensus

14. My Head is Full of Ghosts

15. The Island

16. Changing Tide