The new BR album has finally arrived. Greg Graffin earlier said that the recording style would go back to Suffer-No control style, I'm not sure I'm willing to agree on that. It's more like a step forward, a new creation. BR hasn't changed its sound significantly since the reunion (apart from "Recipe for hate" which I consider to be a very successful experiment), but "No substance is clearly extricating from "The gray race" as well as all previous albums. It doesn't even sound like the new recorded songs for "Tested".
It's more well produced, and the songs seem to have been written with greater afterthought. It's more complicated, like all members push themselves to the limit of their capacity and really try to make the most of their instruments. In general "No substance" is slower but still more energetic than earlier albums. That is not said that there's no exemptions. Like all albums this one has it's high's and low's. I'd say that "No substance" contains some of the best BR songs ever written, like "Shades of truth", "The biggest killer in American history" and "The hippy killers". I've heard almost every BR song ever recorded and I've never heard any bad songs, only less good songs, one of those are "At the mercy of imbeciles". It's clear (at least to me) that Greg has found a new way of writing his music since "American lesion" (his solo album), some of the songs on "No substance" seem to have been written for "American lesion", like "No substance", "Sowing the seeds of utopia" and "the voracious march of godliness". When I say they sound like american lesion songs I mean that they are played with more complicated guitar riffs, use less open chords and sound more like "acoustic songs" (nothing negative, I love american lesion too.). Finally I'd say that this is one of the best albums ever (at least the best since "Generator"). It's slower (not all through, but in general), has more feeling and is more well done. It's 42 minutes of pure pleasure, a fantastic album all through. It didn't disappoint me.

Jonatan Fried