Gray Race

Bad Religion: Greg Graffin (vocals); Greg Hetson, Brian Baker (guitar); Jay Bentley (bass); Bobby Schayer (drums).
Recorded at Electric Lady Studios, New York, New York in October and November 1995.
With their ninth album, this Los Angeles-based hardcore band continue their distinctive recipe of slashing, frenetic guitar, inviting vocal harmonies and socially-conscious lyrics. THE GRAY RACE showcases Bad Religion's chaotic, two-guitar punk, which is driven by an intense, high-strung urgency; each track provides just the right amount of unapologetic melodicism along with Greg Graffin's rough-voiced yet lucid vocals.
The band's sound is loud, fast, and basically simple, in contrast to the broad, complex themes they tackle. Many songs are a variation on the "think for yourself" motif, including "A Walk," a defiant rant against the system ("Who the hell are you to tell me what to do?/You can't even tie your own haggard shoes/Your closet is a mess, and your backyard's falling down"). There are also brilliant feats of multisyllabic rhyming here, betraying Graffin's striking intellect as a lyricist, as on "Them And Us": "Despite that he saw blatant similarity/He struggled to find a distinctive moiety/All he found was vulgar superficiality."