Consumer Guide Album

Bad Religion: No Control [Epitaph, 1989]
Like a good rapper, Greg Graffin is once again singing his own tune--no matter how the three chords play themselves out on the (probably nonexistent, but never mind) lead sheet, the natural drone of his voice adds a music of its own. And he's still finding naive new truths in disillusioned hardcore truisms. "Culture was the seed of proliferation but it has gotten melded into an inharmonic whole" is bad writing; so's "Prescience was not lacking and the present was not all." Yet propelled by the drone and the three chords, they clobber you with the life-probe that's always been rock and roll's secret, excuse, or reason for being. B+