Forgotten albums: Bad Religion's "Into the Unknown"

From the moment I first heard about this mysterious, disavowed album from punk/hardcore legends Bad Religion, I've been intrigued. In the liner notes to the early years compilation, 80-85, guitarist Greg Hetson makes reference to the Into the Unknown, first making sure to say he and bassist Jay Bentley had nothing to do with its creation. Apparently, this album -- only their second full LP -- pretty much broke up the band for a minute.

Scouring their Wikipedia page many years later, I was reminded again of this lost record's existence. Bad Religion's...PROG ROCK album?! Seemed too weird to even be true. I also was kind of bummed out that they only produced 10,000 copies of this album and it would most likely be a difficult and expensive find/listen.

Enter badreligion.com! You can stream all their albums on the site, including...INTO THE UNKNOWN! Today was an exciting day for that reason only, my friends. Excuse my nerddom.

So...I giddily pressed play to hear this travesty of an album. The record opens with a keyboard swell, immediately signaling a change in direction that must've freaked out a hardcore kid or two back in 1983 on the heels of their savage classic, How Can Hell Be Any Worse?

Funny part is, though, as someone who became a Bad Religion fan a decade-plus into their existence (with Stranger Than Fiction in 1994), the music doesn't seem all that out there. Hell, if you took out the startling keyboard flourishes in some of the songs, it wouldn't sound so different from some of their 90s output.

So, I tried to put myself in the position of someone who had bought that first record and saw their shows at the time. The contrast to the first album is, indeed, shocking. Slower, mid-tempo tunes. Greg Graffin singing for the first time with that inimitable voice that's become their trademark -- instead of the raspier half-yell of the first album. And, of course, longer song lengths. Perhaps the most pleasant surprise of this album is Brett Gurewitz's lead guitar work. The dude does some heavy rock guitar shredding here. I suppose, though, in the days where anything resembling slow, excessive, '70s arena rock was reviled by a lot of people, these new (for Bad Religion) sounds were not welcome.

The keys seem to be what make this a "prog" record (along with the spacey album cover). There aren't, however, the twists and turns of time signatures or ultra complex riffery and drum patterning that define most progressive rock music. That's probably a good thing.

Also included on the page for this album are two short, but great interviews with Brett and Greg -- the masterminds/criminals behind the weirdest album in the Bad Religion catalog.

In the aftermath of Into the Unknown, Bad Religion would regroup, releasing a more "Bad Religion"-y EP in 1985 -- with the self-consciously appropriate title of Back to the Known --  and, eventually, in 1988, releasing arugably their finest record, Suffer, and becoming the phenomenal band we all know and love. But, perhaps that wouldn't have been possible without a brief foray into the unknown.