Review Summary: A Bad Religion Christmas: Someone Lost a Bet
Since 1979, Bad Religion front man Greg Graffin has spent his life building up a band that stands up against social norms and conformity, all the while valuing individual’s freedom to express their religious views. Nearly 35 years later, without the help of any of the original members of Bad Religion, Greg has cashed in the name that is sacred to many hardcore punk fans around the world. In 2013, Bad Religion joined the ranks of NSYNC, Justin Beiber, Celine Dion, Reba, Elvis, and nearly every country artist in existence with the release of a Christmas album. The album came out with a fair margin of success; the album peaked at number 7 on the U.S. holiday billboard charts, received generally favorable reviews from most music reviewing websites, and somehow got a 3.8 review on this site. The question I ask is why?
Bad Religion flies through eight Christmas songs with no attempt of reinventing what has already been laid down for years to come. With guitar riffs that follow the same lines as the church organ at the Christmas Eve service, and punk rock drumming thrown on top, this album is really just a thin layer of distortion different than every Christmas album you have ever heard. The songs on this album are tame enough for any fifty year old caucasian mother to hear and think that she is hip because she likes what her son is listening to. For a band that has worked so hard to revolutionize the hardcore punk scene, it is ironic how dull this album is. This album is the stunt that 80’s Bad Religion would have kicked its own ass for even thinking of pulling.
Lastly, there is the elephant in the room. After listening to Greg soar through “Oh Come all Ye Faithful” and praise Jesus for 14 minutes, most would think that Greg had changed his entire life message and converted. Any shred of humor towards the topics presented in these hymnals or any angst towards the capitalistic season is all but existent. However, guitarist Brett Gurewitz insisted, “Clearly, it's a satire. We were rolling on the floor a lot of the time...it felt like a Monty Python skit to me.” I feel as if I have cracked the code to this poor excuse to an album. The goal was to record an album that is accessible to literally everyone, then throw in a remix of “American Jesus” so all the fans could jump on how ironic and genius the album is. They played both sides of the aisle and came out looking like chumps. Just one more squeeze of the utter on the cash cow.
