Bad Religion Concerts Setlist

Bad Religion, formed in 1980 in Los Angeles, is a seminal punk rock band known for their thought-provoking lyrics on religion, politics, and society, and everything started with a bunch of high school kids who decided to start a punk band that would tackle religion, politics, everything else that they pretty much felt like doing. That's Bad Religion, and more than 40 years later, they're still making suburban kids reach for dictionaries between mosh pit sessions. Their early years were pure punk rock hustle - dropping their first EP in '81 and asking "How Could Hell Be Any Worse?" in '82. After a brief breakup (hey, even punk rockers have drama), they came roaring back with 1988's "Suffer," an album that would help write the blueprint for melodic punk rock. Those three-part harmonies? That was their secret weapon.

When they signed with Atlantic in the '90s, some called it selling out. What it really did was help them sell their smart-bomb lyrics to a wider audience. "Recipe for Hate" and "Stranger Than Fiction" proved punk could have both brains and commercial success. Even Brett Gurewitz's departure (he was busy running this little label called Epitaph) couldn't slow them down. The 2000s saw them return to Epitaph and their roots, dropping albums like "The Process of Belief" and "The Empire Strikes First" that showed the old punks still had fire in their bellies. By 2013's "True North," they were finally cracking Billboard's top 20 - not bad for a band that started in a garage!

Even the 2019 pandemic couldn't completely silence them - they just switched from stages to streaming new tracks like "What Are We Standing For," like other rock bands also did. From high school philosophers to punk rock professors, Bad Religion proved to the whole rock universe that sometimes the smartest kids in class end up starting the best bands.

Through lineup changes (only Greg Graffin's been there since day one), label switches, and four decades of chaos, they've never stopped questioning authority or dropping SAT words into punk rock anthems. Not bad for a band named after their favorite target.