Bad Religion, Killing Joke, and renewed affection for music of your youth

No. 1314: Bad Religion - All Ages

It’s funny; as recently as five years ago, I wouldn’t have expected that Bad Religion would show up on Autobiographical Order. When I was younger, they were one of my favorite bands. Thirteen-year-old Jeff loved the hell out of Bad Religion, first won over by the radio hits like “Infected” and then digging backwards into Recipe for Hate (the album where they became an “alternative” band, essentially—I’m due for a relisten) and into their Epitaph-era skatepunk stuff. Every kid needs a punk phase, and I certainly had mine, but Bad Religion was the top of the heap for me. I wore my BR shirt all the time, and found them somewhat more interesting than the Epitaph class that they influenced and signed to their label. They were more serious than NOFX, more political than Pennywise, less mainstream than The Offspring, and Greg Graffin was in general a better singer than most punk vocalists and with a much broader vocabulary. Most of this stuff doesn’t really matter to me now; I like plenty of non-serious cretin-hop, though most of it without that certain So-Cal flavor. But as a 13-year-old who really wanted to believe he listened to the thinking man’s punk, sure, it had massive appeal. 

I’m not quite sure what brought me back to All Ages, their compilation of first-decade highlights, nearly three decades later. Maybe I heard some songs from No Control and reminded myself of how formative a document it was? Sure, makes sense. But relistening to it, it all kind of clicks. Well maybe not all of it, but a lot of it. 

All Ages is both a reminder that Bad Religion helped create the template for L.A. punk and proof that a lot of their best ideas were right there from the beginning. “21st Century Digital Boy” became a hit in 1994/95 but it was originally released half a decade earlier on Against the Grain. You also hear the back and forth between two-minute bursts of rancor and energy and slower, grungier, made-for-radio songs (though most of them probably weren’t played on non-left-of-the-dial stations). They had great vocal harmonies, blazing solos, a little bit of ham-fisted preachiness, but such is punk rock. 

I’ve changed a lot in twenty-something years and my tastes are far more eclectic now, but really, all I need is to hear them kick into overdrive on “I Want to Conquer the World” and I’m reminded of why, for a short time, I thought they were the greatest band in the world. Rating: 9.2

Listen: “I Want to Conquer the World”

No. 1315: Killing Joke - Killing Joke (2003)

A story from my budding career in music journalism and perhaps a warning for the trials and tribulations ahead. As a writer for my college paper, I frequently interviewed musicians, which was a dream come true for a kid who immersed himself in music more than homework back in his youth. (And sometimes in college, too.) So one day I get the opportunity to interview Jaz Coleman of Killing Joke, and it blew my mind that I even got the offer. I’d get to speak to other post-punk heroes of mine later on (Colin Newman was one that I almost couldn’t believe) but this was a first for me, and besides, didn’t they know I was just some clueless kid? Will they just let you talk to legendary musicians like that? Anyway, great chat, he’s an odd one but a quote machine, so we have a great talk about all kinds of stuff, music, Dave Grohl, Gang of Four, the state of the world, what have you. We wrap it up and I’m stoked. So I rewind my interview tape and… it’s blank. Didn’t record. Got absolutely nothing. 

Isn’t that the way it goes sometimes? I think about that moment often, because it made me double and triple check my mode of recording from that point on. It’s much easier not to mess it up now, but at the time digital was still kind of primitive. But that’s what I think of when I hear this record. It’s a funny story now, even though at the time I was frustrated, dumbfounded, kicking myself and my lousy technological failure. 

In any case, I do like the record in spite of that, and in spite of the fact that Johnny Depp for some reason covered one of its songs? (I’m not even going into that but barf.) This was the album they were promoting when I did the interview, and it was a critically acclaimed comeback of sorts. They already had another comeback of sorts in the ‘90s with Pandemonium, but this brought them into the 21st century, thanks in part to drums recorded by Dave Grohl (I’m guessing a burying of the hatchet over the whole “Come As You Are Thing”). In fact, Dave Grohl did drums for a lot of bands at the time: Queens of the Stone Age, Nine Inch Nails a couple years later, but not Foo Fighters! (Pretty sure Taylor Hawkins was in the band at the time?)

So this self-titled Killing Joke record is different from the other Killing Joke self-titled record, for a lot of reasons. It’s heavier, louder, more metal. “The Death and Ressurection Show,” for instance, is an absolute beast. One of the best songs they ever wrote. But it just keeps on being a gnarly force of nature from there. Truthfully, I don’t think about The Interview That Didn’t Record when this is playing, because all I can think about is how much it rocks, but of course that memory of a snafu still haunts me at times. If nothing else, I have this to play loud when I get frustrated about it all over again. Rating: 9.1

Listen: “The Death and Resurrection Show”

No. 1316: Cocteau Twins - Head Over Heels

Becoming a Cocteau Twins fan is like Ernest Hemingway’s description of going bankrupt in The Sun Also Rises: “gradually, then suddenly.” That’s how it was for me, a kind of wading into the water with Heaven or Las Vegas, their most accessible album (and one of their best!) and then Treasure, their most singularly innovative (and also one of their best!), and then a whole flood of the rest of their records afterward. They’re a fascinating band because they’re known for their otherworldly dream pop, as well as their more pop-friendly ‘90s records, but it kind of gets lost that they made some great post-punk records in the early ‘80s and some ambient-y stuff in the mid-’80s. And one of these days I’ll probably have to pick up the recent reissue of their record with Brian Eno collaborator Harold Budd.

In any case, the goth/post-punk stuff of the early ‘80s is never the thing that comes up first in conversations about Cocteau Twins, but those first two records are amazing. I’ve already gone on record to discuss my infatuation with their debut, Garlands, which is maybe the closest they’ve ever come to releasing a Siouxsie and the Banshees record. But Head Over Heels is the other perfect 10 in their catalog, along with those first two I mentioned. It’s a little unsettled, which makes it fascinating to me. It’s not as monochromatically dark as their debut nor as fully crystallized in delicate shapes like Treasure. But that really doesn’t matter, because all the songs are amazing. It’s funny, as a critic, I understand the logic in having an album be aesthetically uniform, for lack of a better word. Obviously, not all the songs on Heaven or Las Vegas sound the same, but they’re all a similar type of song. That’s not really the case with Head Over Heels, which features both pop weightless pop (“Sugar Hiccup”) and driving post-punk (“In our Angelhood”), plus proto-Twin Peaks noir-jazz-punk (“Multifoiled”), and abrasive, doomy dirges (“When Mama Was Moth”). It’s a lot to digest, but I have a new favorite every time I listen to it. That’s the sign of a great record to me—one where you find a new reason to love it every time you hear it. Rating: 10.0

Listen: “My Love Paramour”

No. 1317: Undeath - It’s Time… to Rise from the Grave

In Richmond, it’s not hard to find a great metal show to go to. Just last year I went to a whole bunch, including a festival with Thou, Inter Arma, Pageninetynine and a lot of other great bands. I’ve said a few times to friends that, while I often wait in vain for the arty underground bands to swing by (and sometimes they do, but you can’t always count on it), at the very least you know the death metal band you like will probably show up. 

In fact, Undeath has been here at least once per year since I moved here; they’re due for a show this year, now that I’m thinking about it. And yet, I’ve missed them every time? I think I was out of town once or twice, but the other thing is that they were all five- or six-band bills with headliners I didn’t really like, and that’s always a dilemma I struggle with. So I suppose I should fix that one of these days, but in the meantime, this record rips.

Undeath are just a death metal band. Not tech death, not prog death, not brutal death, not deathgrind, not deathcore, not blackened death, not avant garde death, not dissonant death. Just death metal. Big riffs. Songs about heads exploding. You know the drill. And they’re amazing at it. There’s a reason that Pitchfork chose them as their token metal band of the year in 2022 (there’s always one, and honestly good for Undeath, get that bag), and it’s because you hear this and you just want to start tearing phonebooks in half. It’s all guitar and growls and aggression, and it reminds you why you love death metal. Or why I do, anyway, because it whips. Rating: 9.0

Listen: “Rise from the Grave”

No. 1318: Devil Master - Ecstasies of Never Ending Night

Metal always has a new band to be mad about. It’s rarely for a good reason, but sometimes it is, like for instance, Sleep Token is bad. If you like them, I’m happy for you, but I, friend, do not. But a lot of the time it’s entirely trivial, like indie kids like Deafheaven, therefore they are bad. (Dear reader: They are not.) I was under the impression that Devil Master fell into that category at one point, back around the time they released their first album. (Which I love.) 

But I might be totally off on this one. A quick look at the r/metal subreddit suggests that even the gatekeepers of Reddit like this band, which means they must pass the test. Who knew? But part of the reason I got the impression they were on the wrong side of the gate is that, despite being outwardly Satanic (they say they’re practicing Satanists but my knowledge of Satan worship in the year 2025 suggests they’re just, like, Socialists having a laugh with normies), they’re more of a punk/deathrock band with screaming than a proper black metal band. They definitely borrow heavily from Venom and Mercyful Fate and early thrash, but there’s also some goth-rock and garage and whatnot. For me, it’s a winning combination. In fact, the Redditors’ description of the band are all pretty great, from “Sisters Ov Mercy” to “the most evil surf rock song ever.” 

Their second album is a little more polished than their debut, a little less play-faster-than-your-hands-can-move DIY punk. They add disco beats, more cinematic instrumentals, an overall solidification of their sound that sounds more, well, professional? I don’t mean that to sound backhanded. Because in spite of this being an objectively better sounding album, I still think I like the first one just a hair better. But they’re both amazing. And apparently clear of anti-hipsterdom gatekeeper ire. Chalk one up to being fun enough for none of that stuff to matter.

When this came out I saw the band live at a venue in Richmond called The Warehouse. It’s exactly what it sounds like—a warehouse in a district of warehouses, no air conditioning, sweaty and gross as hell in the summertime (and in the winter too, against all odds). Devil Master was my first show there and it was exactly the kind of thing you want to see in a room with exposed beams, cooled by an industrial fan. Punk AF, but you know, metal. Rating: 8.9

Listen: “Acid Black Mass”

No. 1319: Scientist - Rids the World of the Curse of the Evil Vampires

I’m fairly certain I’ll never buy as many reggae albums as I did in 2020-2021. I’m not sure what the number is, somewhere on the order of several dozen, everything from The Upsetters to Bob Marley, and from time to time I still pick up some dub record I’ve gotten into, but regardless, it’ll never be the kind of binge I had four years ago. Mostly because I had only a few prior to that, so they were ripe for the picking. 

But 2022 was sort of an appendix to that binge, and one of the records on my must-buy list that took a while to find was Scientist’s Rids the World of the Evil Curse of hte Vampires. Scientist is a pretty entertaining dude who gives all his records themes, from aliens to the World Cup, and this is the one that sounds like a weeded-out Halloween record. It’s everything you’d possibly want from a dub record—deep bass, lots of echo, some trippy voices fading in and out like ghosts, plus Scientist’s own monster-voice toasting. The difference between this record and his others is really just a matter of window dressing, but these productions perhaps go the deepest, creating a festival of spooky-ass vibes that I’ll gladly put on year round. Rating: 9.2

Listen: “Cry of the Werewolf”

No. 1320: Getatchew Mekurya - Ethiopian Urban Modern Music No. 5

Ethio-jazz is, like Afrobeat, a genre that came to life through one artist, and as such, the observable universe of peers of that artist, is quite limited. For Afrobeat, that’s Fela Kuti. And for Ethio-jazz, it’s Mulatu Astatke. Now, Mulatu Astatke is a legend, one I’ve been lucky enough to see perform live, which was truly a “holy shit, this is actually happening!” kind of thing. And he had some peers and collaborators, like Hailu Mergia, whose music is also fantastic, and who will appear again here. There’s a handful of others, though there’s undoubtedly more imitators in the present day than there were early pioneers. (And like, it’s cool that some Swedish guys that are making contemporary Ethio-jazz, I guess? But that’s not really what’s doing it for me.)

Getatchew Mekurya is someone who was there in the early days, and this record, a set of music that’s been reissued in various forms in different track orders over the years, is a must-have for fans of Mulatu and Hailu. In recent years labels like Awesome Tapes from Africa have been putting these records back in print, and there’s a bunch of European labels who have done likewise; this is on Heavenly Sweetness, which also released a Mulatu Astatke record (the best one). Mekurya plays sax, and that’s the focal point here, so it lends an extra hypnotic element to the whole thing. It’s hard to single out particular songs because 1. It’s hard to remember the track titles, particularly as a non-Amharic speaker and 2. They’re all amazing regardless. 

Here’s the wildest part. This was basically Mekurya’s sole studio album for decades until 2006, when he collaborated with Dutch post-punk band The Ex. The results of which are almost certainly The Ex’s best album. (No slight to them, but c’mon.) Rating: 9.1

Listen: “Ambassel”