Tonight I headed to the Academy in Bristol to
check out Bad Religions first show in Bristol
in well over 5 years and I have to say it was
one hell of an amazing experience and a much welcome
return to Bristol for Bad Religion.
We got to the venue just after 8pm whilst the
local support act was playing, I never managed
to catch the name of the support act or much of
their set as by the time we got a drink and battled
through the crowd it was time for them to leave
the stage so then we all had a 30minute wait for
the roadies to do their job setting up the stage
for Bad Religion.
At just gone 9pm the lights dimmed and Bad Religion
took to the stage to the English national anthem
as the band walked on in a line one after another
striking random poses and waving to the crowd
before taking their place behind their instruments,
the first thing that I noticed was that Brett
Gurewitz was not on stage but then again it is
rare for him to tour with Bad Religion these days
due to his Epitaph Record label taking up the
majority of his time and to be honest it seemed
like most of the crowd didn’t notice this
as Bad Religion were tight sounding from start
to finish.
 Bad Religion played a massive 26 song set that
went on for just under 1hour and 30minutes and
it featured all their hits and fan favourites
as well as a couple of new songs, the set started
with the extremely short ‘Do What You Want’
which got the crowd fired up straight away with
many people tossing their drinks in any direction
in a mad frenzy so they didn’t miss any
of that all important moshing time.
From the start of the set right until the end
front man Greg Graffin who to me looks like the
coolest most sensible front man I have ever seen
had both the audience and the other band members
eating out of his hand, if he wasn’t pleasing
the crowd with his fast paced punk vocals and
witty humour then he was signalling for the relevant
band members to come in and stop with his hand
signals which to me is signs of a top frontman
who knows his game all so well.
 The set featured many great songs such as ‘Flat
Earth’, ‘Before You Die, ‘Sanity’,
‘Atomic Garden’ and the big fan favourite
‘Personal Jesus’ amongst others, but
the highlights for me was hearing ‘Fuck
Armageddon, This Is Hell’ and ‘Generator’
played back to back, it was so good to hear such
a fast paced track followed up by a slow number.
Normally I’m not to keen on between song
banter from bands but Bad Religion were quite
unique when it came to talking to the crowd they
had a little chat after every five or so songs
but they kept it short, sweet and pretty fun with
Greg talking about this July being the hottest
July in history before playing ‘New Dark
Ages’ and talking how coming to a Bad Religion
gig is like going to see your Nan and Gramp in
the way that next time they might not be around,
and also talking about England and America at
the world cup before, however this chat didn’t
go down to well and ended with Jay Bentley being
whacked in the face with a member of the crowds
skate shoe, luckily he took it well and gave the
shoe back but moments later a second shoe hit
the stage with Jay announcing “Fuck it we
are keeping this one” whilst promptly moving
on to the next song ‘Germs Of Perfection’.
 Considering that the majority of the band are
in their 50’s they played an energetic show
with guitarist Greg Hetson letting off the most
energy jumping and running across the small section
of the stage he was situated in with Brooks Wackerman
coming in a close second in the energy stakes
smashing the hell out of his drum kit.
The set finished with a double whammy of ‘Sorrow’
and ‘Punk Rock Show’ and when the
band left the stage and the lights came on the
crowd stronger chanted “we want more, we
want more” but sadly the show was over and
the security proceeded to kick people out but
I imagine that the majority of the crowd left
pleased knowing that after 30 years Bad Religion
still have it.
4/5
Review By Trigger
|
