These came out in 2004 – or at least that’s when I got them. Here’s what I said about them back then (with some minor editing):
THE SKINNY: Bad Religion are the undisputed iron men of SoCal punk — the last band standing after more than two decades in the trenches.
You couldn’t have predicted their longevity back in the ’80s, but you couldn’t mistake their greatness. With an uncompromising sound founded upon singer Greg Graffin’s hyperintelligent lyrics (“Phantasmal myriads of sane bucolic birth”) and guitarist Brett Gurewitz’s genre-bending musicality, BR raised the bar of punk. Hear for yourself on crisply remastered, budget-priced reissues of their first six albums (minus their disowned 1983 experiment Into the Unknown).
THE OLDIES: 1982’s raw How Could Hell Be Any Worse? (expanded here with three EPs) includes three versions of their eponymous anthem; 1988’s superior Suffer and 1989’s No Control are chock full of short, sharp, shimmering anthems like Give You Nothing, Forbidden Beat, You Are The Government, Automatic Man and Sanity; 1991’s Against The Grain and 1992’s Generator find the band getting stronger and writing longer tunes like 21st Century Digital Boy, Modern Man and Anesthesia.
THE GOODIES: Surprisingly, not much — just a couple of Generator leftovers. You’d think a few live cuts wouldn’t be too much to ask, especially since most of these discs clock in around the half-hour mark.
