Bad Religion - "True North" (Official Video)

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When old punk bands position themselves as some sort of youth thing, it becomes seriously fun and fascinating to parse the results. Case in point: SoCal lifers Bad Religion’s new video for “True North,” the title track from their new album. The video consist of a young punk kid, with circa-1982 show flyers all over his walls, throwing on the new Bad Religion record and engaging in a vigorous air-drumming session. At one point, we see the kid’s iPhone, so we know that it’s a present-day kid; Bad Religion didn’t somehow send their record 30 years into the past. So apparently that kid printed out all those old flyers? He didn’t just put up a bunch of flyers for shows that he actually went to? There’s nothing weird about the idea that a younger punk would be into an older band. Bad Religion were considered an old band in 1994, when they released Stranger Than Fiction, which means I was (a much uglier version of) that kid at one point. But when I was banging the new Bad Religion, I had, like Total Chaos and A.F.I. posters on my wall, not painstakingly recreated flyers from shows I’d never been to. So Bad Religion aren’t really doing themselves any favors here! They’re showing that the kids who like their new album are the ones bizarrely focused on past punk scenes! Which would’ve been like if the teenage Bad Religion members, rather than forming Bad Religion, had gotten really obsessed with Bill Haley And The Comets! Anyway. Watch the video at Rolling Stone.