No Control
I still remember exactly where I was when I heard this album for the first time. As an emigrant family, a lot of people from "home" would come and stay with us. Often people we didn't know.
I still remember exactly where I was when I heard this album for the first time. As an emigrant family, a lot of people from "home" would come and stay with us. Often people we didn't know. Friends of friends. Fourth cousins. Uncle's hairdresser's dog-groomer's physio. Anyone who wanted a bed and would scratch my parents' itch when it came to speaking and feeling Swedish, really. One of these visitors decided when he was travelling to really stock up on CDs. One of them was Bad Religion's No Control. I didn't know what to expect, but loved it immediately. This was coming off the back of just having discovered No Fun At All, so it all came together in a perfect raging storm of 90s (I know No Control was released in '89, but it was ahead of its time) punk.
Lyrically deeper than many other punk albums around at the time, and with vocabulary expanding lyrics (to the point where someone has assembled a "Bad Religion Lexicon"), No Control delves into, and at times criticises, nihilism, fatalism, religion, politics, and society in general.
Aside from an breather in the middle with Sanity, No Control is intense from start to finish - the average track length is a smidge over 100 seconds (yes, I ran the numbers). The energy is contagious, and the spirit of the album really gets you.
An inspiring album.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
