From their earliest days on the riotous edge of the Southern California underground, Bad Religion have continually forged music that has so powerfully provoked an disquieted. Today, they stand among rock's most restless and probing bands, or, as New York Newsday recently called them, „one of the most articulate and adventurous voices in the socially conscious wing of the American punk underground." This distinction is further borne out in unrelenting fashion with the group's ninth album, „THE GRAY RACE."

It was after touring the world for endless months in support of 1994's acclaimed „STANGER THAN FICTION" - their most successful album to date - that Bad Religion rose to the challenge and further solidified their much-celebrated reputation for caustic lyrical insight and fully-amped mosh churners. „THE GRAY RACE" takes the group's poignant, exhilarating lyrics, cutting melodies, up-tempo guitar bite, and patented „downstroke derby" to a creative high ground.

To record „THE GRAY RACE", the band converged on New York's Greenwich Village and famed Electric Lady Studios. For this, their first studio work outside of Los Angeles, Bad Religion teamed with producer Ric Ocasek, the former frontman of the Cars and producer behind the Bad Brains' seminal punk cornerstone „ROCK FOR LIGHT" as well as the latest Weezer album.

Joining the cast of Greg Graphing, Jay Bentley, Greg Hasten, and Bobby Schayer, is new guitarist Brian Baker, whose punk MVP credits include such bands as Minor Threat and Dag Nasty, Baker signed on the summer of '94, following the release of „STRANGER THAN FICTION", when guitarist and original member Brett Gurewitz left the band to concentrate on the operation of Epitaph Records, founded by the group. Baker had become acquainted with the guys several years ago when Dag Nasty released its „FOUR ON THE FLOOR" album via Epitaph.

„THE GRAY RACE" had begun to take shape in early 1995, with Graffin writing songs in the midst of the nine-month „STRANGER ..." tour, which sent the group headlining across Europe, Japan and North America (where they also played a string of dates behind Pearl Jam as their invited guests). The still skeletal tracks got their first run-throughs when Schayer and Baker made a pre-production trip up to Graffin's in-house studio in Ithaca, New York. „That ultimately made a huge difference in the quality of the songs," says Graffin, the group's chief songwriter.

Working as producers along side Ocasek on West 8th Street, the group cut the album's basic tracks live, on the floor, as a unit. It was the first time Bad Religion had wholly gone that route since their 1992 Jim Mankey produced debut album, „HOW COULD HELL BE ANY WORSE." „In those days it was a matter of economics," says Graffin. „We didn't have the luxury of picking the best of several takes." „Playing together as a unit brought the energy and excitement of the songs back to the surface," says Hetson.

The creative momentum that typified work on „THE GREY RACE" has likewise generated the sounds that have defined a genre. The Trousers Press Records Guide, summed it up by saying, „In offering a heavy dose of the danger modern rock so rarely possesses, Bad Religion has become...one of the best current rock 'n' roll bands, period." At the group's heart is a fierce individualism that originally took root with the group's founding in 1980. As Bentley states: „We don't dress alike, we don't have to think alike, or talk alike. We don't hold to any party line. We don't fly a flag." That steadfast character has similarly resonated with the band's influential late-80s/ early 90s albums: „SUFFER" (1988), „NO CONTROL" ('89), „AGAINST THE GRAIN" ('90), „GENERATOR" ('92), „RECIPE FOR HATE" ('93), „STRANGER THAN FICTION"; (last year, Epitath Records released a compilation of the band's years with the label, entitled „ALL AGES.")

With „THE GRAY RACE," Bad Religion remains fist clenched, lyrically poised against society's grain. „THE GRAY RACE is a metaphor for the human race," says Graffin. It's the first time Bad Religion balances the two sides of the human dilemma. „If we are more successful in the world that we build around us, we are less compassionate and, therefore, less in touch with the one thing that makes us human...the ability to see things as shades of gray," he continues. From „Parallel" to „A Walk" to „Streets of America, „the album explores the topics of decay, alienation and human dignity. „Pity The Dead" challenges the notion of grief and its implications in a world that increasingly finds its citizens struggling through lives of pain and neglect. Perhaps more than any other, „Ten in 2010" encapsulates the lurking truths that have inspired „THE GRAY RACE." Based on a radio news report on world population projections, the song makes an unveiled promise. Planet Earth: 10 Billion People Served.

On „Punk Rock Song," the band has effectively created the definitive punk anthem or, if you prefer, a blunt incisive representation of the genre's ideal. „Punk is not about looking cool," wrote Graffin in a recent edition of Bad Times, the band's official/occasional newsletter. „It is not about being popular. It is a movement of relevant music that comes from determined musicians who question the prevailing dogma." „There have been a lot of times," says Jay on that same note, „when after we play a show and walk out of the club someone will ask us, „When is the band coming out?" It's funny that because of our name, the kind of songs we write, and the image created on our records, people expect us to be these militant vegans with high and mighty ideas." The reality is that Bad Religion is simply an extraordinarily talented but down-to-earth group of people with an uncanny ability to sift through the complexities of modern life in the formation of relevant and moving music.