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Anche i migliori sbagliano. Del resto, sono sempre esseri umani. Il primo fu un errore di gioventù, Anno Domini 1983, quando ripudiarono "Into the Unknown", che invece aveva (e ha tuttora) buone frecce al proprio arco. Il secondo è un errore fresco fresco di Brett. Mr. Epitaph ha, infatti, acquistato i diritti di distribuzione e di vendita di "Stranger than Fiction", "The Gray Race" e "The New America" per rimpinguare il ventre della sua major indipendente, snobbando il fiore all'occhiello del periodo Sony/Dragnet, "No Substance", sicuro di non far alcun torto ai kids, lobotomizzati dalla verve tamarra degli Escape The Fate.
"Lento. Noioso. Non panc. Commerciale." Dal Vangelo secondo i pischelli. Impossibile far capir loro che sono molto più ammiccanti al mainstream i (sublimi) treaccorditrè di "Against the Grain". E, comunque, ogni ipotesi di imborghesimento viene definitivamente fugata dal torrido rock ‘n' roll dell'opening, quella "Hear It" sospesa tra i New Bomb Turks e la West Coast, dominata dal virtuosismo osmotico di Baker e Bentley, in un continuo e palpitante intreccio di riff. Ma è un attimo. Improvvisamente, il basso punteggia un'atmosfera cupa e dimessa, pronta subito ad esplodere nel muro di chitarre di "Shades of Truth": è un muro armonioso, però, avvolgente e solare. Ricchissimo di sfumature. Delicato e potente. Si respira l'aria, la malinconia di "Two Babies in the Dark", lo sperimentalismo di "Generator". Uno sperimentalismo, strano, senza Brett. Ma la pausa è già finita. Subito la batteria riparte a rotta di collo, ad esplorare i lidi power-pop di "All Fantastic Images".
E' così, "No Substance". Zero punti di riferimento. Sghembo, fatto di schegge. Schizofrenico e difficile. Da suonare e da ascoltare. L'album grida la voglia irrefrenabile dei Bad Religion di provare qualcosa di nuovo, di inafferrabile. La voglia di uscire da un preconcetto, dalla confezione di un prodotto, dal sentito dire (emblematica, in questo senso, è "The State of The End of The Millennium Address"). Si percepisce, fortissima, la malinconia per la perdita dell'amico, del rivale, del compagno songwriter Brett Gurewitz e della splendida sfida con il Dott. Graffin (i testi, pur ottimi, mancano un po' di quell'approccio istintivo e disincantato proprio dell'ex chitarrista).
"No Substance" è lo splendido specchio di tutto questo. La tristezza si legge a chiare righe nella tematica cardine del disco: l'incomunicabilità, l'impossibilità di relazionarsi con il mondo e con le cose, l'illusione di scovare una sostanza oltre la forma. Una polifonia energica, radiosa. Un ottimo pop edulcorato e reso ancora più inimitabile dall'intrecciarsi delle doppie voci, dal continuo inseguirsi degli oozin' aahs, marchio di fabbrica del quintetto losangelino.
E' davvero difficile rinvenire una battuta d'arresto, un episodio sottotono: l'epica "The Voracious March of Godliness" e "Sowing The Seeds of Utopia" (brutta storia di ipocrisie e corsi e ricorsi storici) sono altri due piccoli capolavori che, per il chitarrismo perenne, la dimensione introspettiva dei testi, i repentini cambi di registro ritmico e le linee vocali (per non parlare del timbro vocale di Graffin, davvero simile a quello di Mould) sicuramente non faticherebbero a trovare posto in quella pietra miliare del rock che è "Warehouse: Songs and Stories".
Anzi, No Substance è il "Warehouse" dei Bad Religion. Un disco maturo, consapevole, ma anche sconsiderato, rischioso nel rompere gli schemi, nel sussurrare le sue personalissime melodie pop. Nel delineare un alternative rock esente da manierismi, vibrante di emozoni, che non disdegna incursioni nel suo passato prossimo hardcore ("The Biggest Killer in American History", "The Hippy Killers", "At the Mercy of Imbeciles", "Raise Your Voice!"). Ma sono echi composti, questi, quasi educati nella loro irruenza, deflagrazioni controllate cui i Bad Religion ci hanno abituato dai tempi di "Fertile Crescent": alcuni eletti, si sa, hanno l'innata qualità di alzare la voce senza urlare.
E' nella riservata dolcezza dei suoi brani mid-tempo, però, che l'album cala la mano vincente.
"The Same Person", la stessa "No Substance", "Victims of the Revolution" e "Strange Denial" sono la massima espressione del "Bad Religion sound" inaugurato con "Generator" e "Recipe for Hate", il quale trova la sua gemma più fulgida in "In So Many Ways", elegia serena e triste, in cui riecheggiano i versi ora non più disperati, ma stoicamente rassegnati, di "Suffer".
Elenco tracce testi e video
01 Hear It (01:49)
Like a morning crow and his unwelcome song
Or a worn-out broken record that keeps skipping along
Mountains of instructions you keep piling on me
Resound like a cacophonous symphony
But I don't wanna hear it anymore
No, I don't wanna hear it anymore
Let's go
Priests and politicians pretend they're your friend
And police speak to you like you're children again
Blanket statements cover you like a rug
And they tell me maybe I'm acting a little too smug
But I don't wanna hear it anymore
No, I don't wanna hear it anymore
No more
Every day we hear the secrets of life
Reduced to cheap jokes, poetry, and friendly advice
They'd rather see us all pusillanimous
Absorbent in their chorus of correctness
But I don't wanna hear it anymore
No, I don't wanna hear it anymore
I said, I don't wanna hear it anymore
No, I don't wanna hear it anymore
02 Shades of Truth (04:01)
here inside this quiet room there's direction
outside in the sultry noon-time reflection
a million people scurry
they're looking for advice
none willing to lend charity, just exercise their
shades of truth and partisan conventions
shades of truth between disparate lines
shades of truth interpret my intentions
you don't know I'm alright
you don't know I'm alright
who authored the blueprints and made us captains?
someone proclaimed creation, people listened
while children by the millions are thrown into this zoo
the so-called gift of clarity! oh what was God up to?
shades of truth and lenient conventions
shades of truth between disparate lines
shades of truth interpret my intentions
you don't know I'm alright
you don't know I'm alright
yeah!
so many walk in parallel and pull their blinders tight
so few offer apology and accept others' rights
and nothing absolutely can be cherished in the end
but can't we all accept that it will all happen again?
shades of truth just partisan conventions
shades of truth between disparate lines
shades of truth interpret my intentions
you don't know I'm alright
you don't know I'm alright
just shades of truth and partisan conventions
shades of truth between disparate lines
shades of truth interpret my intentions
you don't know I'm alright
you don't know I'm alright
03 All Fantastic Images (02:08)
England seemed like such a beautiful place from afar
Until one day I went and saw how miserabely how things really are
All Fantastic Images they only are apparent
Propagated just by hope and desire to share it
Beauty was the allure that brought me close to you
Loneliness was the bond that made me stick like glue
All Fantastic Images they only are apparent
Promoted by desperate hope that things are somewhere better
I don't have a thing against fantasy
But to chase it down just don't make sense to me
If you're only hope is simply peace and love
You end up discarding most of what you're made of
All Fantastic Images they only are apparent
Promoted by desperate hope
And the need to share it
05 No Substance (03:04)
History doesn't make something right
Consensus is not a fact-based exercise
You're tied and bound to this self-indulgent enterprise
We call America
A brush with a star, a token of love
A name in the sand, enough is enough
A diet of air, a face on the net
A fish in your palm, your television set
Once you convince yourself
The universe falls into place
You've got your ideas
And your posse of friends
You all make up rules
And the fun never ends
But still there's a problem that leaves you gasping for air
You look for some meaning, blank smiles are all that's there
And still water stales a soft summer breeze
You cling to your hopes while you drop to your knees
There's no substance!
Once you convince yourself
The universe falls into place
You've got your ideas
And your posse of friends
You all make up rules
And the fun never ends
But still there's a problem that leaves you gasping for air
You look for some meaning, blank smiles are all that's there
And still water stales a soft summer breeze
you cling to your hopes while you drop to your knees
There's no substance!
07 Sowing the Seeds of Utopia (02:01)
We all know politicians only go
Just half-way there
Just half-way there
The innocence of youth needs protection not abuse
But no one seems to care
Yet no one seems to care
And you sit there adn watch the world go around
From your pseudo-benevolent vantage point
While we who've been left to pick up after you
Try our best to make some sense for those who
Come next
Now what have you done to foster the truth
Besides just hide hide the lies?
Besides just hide hide the lies?
A selfish campaign never justifies the gain
But the means are verified
Yeah the means are verified
And you sit there and insist you are right
From your popular psychological podium
While those who rely and depend on you
They wilt because you don't accept we need
Each other
Whule sowing the seeds of Utopia,
You invoked a convenient amnesia
You forgot how to care, you forgot how to provide,
You forgot how to work toward a meaningful life
10 The Voracious March of Godliness (02:27)
Since the start of the 17th century
There's been the scent of unseasoned wood burning in the air
And the conquest of nature meant nothing at all
While we betray exception we take all that is there
Motives are transcluent in the reflection of shame
The actions ghostly remnants of our ancestral ways
And unwittingly, you just take your place in this parade
The voracious march of godliness makes us all the same anyway
Since the dawn of our human family
There's been concentrated sepsis blowing in the breeze
And we turned on each other with ferocity
Desperation, forced, without reprieve
But the missions were misguided and the trammeled led astray
The air resounds with thunder as the victors seized the day
And the haunting voice of history lives ignored but not betrayed
The voracious march of godliness will get us close to heaven one day
11 Mediocre Minds (01:56)
Look around the country, an abundance you'll find
Of mediocre minds
Sift through the fodder as sane justice declines
Because of mediocre minds
Shrouded under cover, the most flamboyant guise
Hides a mediocre mind
You got yours but you can never bend mine
With your mediocre minds
When they cry foul you had better watch out
Because you never know which aptitude they're griping about
Don't act too smart for their stenoscopic ways
You'll be discarded away
Reason's not to be what the privileged define
With their mediocre minds
So many sighted people are so helplessly blind
From their mediocre minds
If you want attention then you'll be asked to bend
But the surest insurrection is enlightenment
Then you can live outside inharmoniously
Without friends, an enemy
They wanna keep me locked away
Cuz I've an overactive brain
Leaders, presidents and the nightly news guys
Cater to mediocre minds
Reason's not to be what the privileged define
With their mediocre minds
You got your but you can never bend mine with your mediocre minds
The only natural thing that I really despise are mediocre minds
13 Strange Denial (03:02)
A mutinous enemy carved a nascent country
Sweat, blood, and valor
Forms the grit of our history
Beqeathed to everyone:
Chance and free expression
Substance was restrained
And the spirit was broken
I feel a strange denial
Rythmic as a change
Constance as time
Lonely
Insistent whispers
Somber as a wave bye bye
Searching for solution, without constitution
Blackcoats by our sides
Promising salvation
Advocating dogma as tickets to hereafter
Mortals in their prime
With their desperate hands in the air
Daunting
Complex and burning
Rythmic as change
Constant as time
Conflicts
Craving approval
Weighted as a murder trial
Oh I feel a strange denial
Correct is Consensus
Everything else, nonsense
Forward is the hope
Forget recompense
Peace and tranquility is only for the wealthy
Dearth for the massses
And inequality
I feel a strange denial
Rythmic as change
Constant as time
Lonely
Insistent whispers
Dissipating in the night
Like a lone forgotten light
And no one is helping me
It's a strange denial
15 The Same Person (02:49)
You want prosperity
For yourself, but not for me
Somehow you just can't see
We're in this collectively
You think that freedom is
A drastic severance
From your past relations
Just a quest for new bargains
We're not the same person
We're not the same person (Don't even wanna know)
Wooohhh
Don't need no good advice
Nor shoddy merchandise
I'm the suspect device
Beaten down, unable to strike
We're not the same person
We're not the same person (Don't even wanna know)
Wooohhh
And the sun comes over us again
We lament, we pine, and we rescind
And we ask for understanding
But arent't we the stingy ones indeed
When it's needed from us in the end?
We watch the days go by
Compete and then we die
So few ever ask why
But so many just abuse the design
We're not the same person
We're not the same person (Don't even wanna know)
Wooohhh
16 In So Many Ways (03:04)
I can see the shadows on the wall
drifting as the leaves start to fall
unfazed by rugosity, the objects yield to gravity
and depict the destiny of us all
no one really knows why we die
no one gets a break so we try
ignoring mortality, we worship mediocrity
and wait to see what happens up on high
in so many ways we live to follow the sun
in so many ways we exalt and fail as one
in so many ways we want so bad to be done
in so many ways we show our pain in unison
something in you is busy counting days
catapulting you through the haze
blind to virtuosity, ignorant of your sanctity
revealing you in so many ways
in so many ways we live to follow the sun
in so many ways we tend to rise and fall as one
in so many ways we want so bad to be done
in so many ways we show our pain in unison
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