Bad Religion 30 Years Live

Bad Religion’s presence has loomed large over the punk world since the band’s inception in 1980. In addition to providing a key blueprint for Southern California’s now-ubiquitous pop-punk sound, with its brisk highly melodic approach, the band’s founder and frontman Brett Gurewitz simultaneously founded Epitaph Records, the genre’s flagship label. Bad Religion’s 30 Years Live acts as a tidy summation of its career and accomplishments; that the recordings are taken from its 2010 tour of the House of Blues only adds to the band’s status as elder statesmen -- one that, for better or worse, helped push punk out of the underground and into the mainstream. Though hardly a farewell, the album actually anticipated a new studio album, to be released later in 2010.

Abstract by Nate Knaebel