REVIEW: Bad Religion, Social Distortion, Lovecrimes at The Fillmore New Orleans | 04.23.2024

Punk legends Bad Religion and Social Distortion are currently in the midst of a co-headlining tour of North America. The tour is surprisingly the first of its kind – aside from a single show in 1980 and a brief stint in Australia in 2022, the two bands have never joined forces like this before.

The 28-city tour, which includes support from Lovecrimes, kicked off a few weeks back in the bands' home state of California before making their way to New Orleans this past Tuesday for a packed show at The Fillmore.

"This is our first time in New Orleans!" exclaimed Lovecrimes vocalist Julian Ness when the band took the stage to open the evening. Lovecrimes opened with their debut single, "Sabotage"; a textbook punk anthem with a killer chorus and soaring guitar solos.

Despite "Sabotage" being the only track by the band currently on streaming platforms, Lovecrimes had plenty of material to showcase during their 30 minute set. Midway through, Julian Ness took a moment to acknowledge the influence that Social Distortion and Bad Religion had on him and his band as well as society at large.

For Ness the influence goes much deeper than fanship; he is the son of Social Distortion frontman Mike Ness. It was awesome to see him following in his father's footsteps while charting his own course.

As the set change was in progress, the crowd roared as a giant banner was raised behind the stage: Social Distortion was up next. Opening with the iconic "Bad Luck" from the equally iconic album Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell, Social Distortion wasted no time pulling out the hits while the fans wasted no time losing their collective minds.

"We're going to play some new songs, some old songs, and some really old songs" announced frontman Mike Ness to the excitement of the crowd. True to his word, the band then launched into "Mommy's Little Monster" from their 1983 debut album of the same name.

Social Distortion’s setlist featured selections from almost every album in their discography as well as a few tracks that have yet to be released. “I had a medical mishap that put the new album on hold,” Ness said to the crowd in acknowledgement of his recent treatment for tonsil cancer. Ness is thankfully now in remission and the album, he promised, is on its way.

Included in the set and on the forthcoming album is “Warn Me”, a song inspired by his recent experiences that Ness described as being about life and death and everything in between. Social Distortion then picked things up to wind their set down with popular tracks like “Ball and Chain” and their cover of “Ring of Fire” to bring their performance to a close.

It’d been just shy of a decade since I’d last seen Bad Religion and they were every bit of great as I remember them being. The band walked on stage and frontman Greg Graffin held out his arms in the direction of his bandmates one by one, hyping the colleagues with which he gets to share the stage. The band then launched into “The Defense” and got the night into full swing.

Since their inception over four decades ago, Bad Religion have released an impressive 17 studio albums. The sheer number of releases makes it easy to see the quantity of their musical contribution but their performance truly showcased the quality within. Songs like “21st Century (Digital Boy,” “Fuck You,” and “American Jesus” are but a few of the 20+ somgs that made the setlist.

Bad Religion’s performance, and Social Distortion’s for that matter, made it clear why these bands were so pivotal to the punk rock revival that birthed them. To experience them both back-to-back was particularly epic.

The tour continues through the middle of next month and will come to a close on May 18th at The Salt Shed in Chicago.

PHOTOGRAPHER’S NOTES

• There is lighting a-plenty; sometimes hard and harsh but otherwise completely manageable
• None of the bands moved around a great deal
  • I took advantage and played with using a half-second shutter speed and dragging
• My camera was reading Bad Religion’s logo to be more magenta than red and which caused some headaches during editing
  • The resulting edits are still more magenta than I’d like - I could have probably fixed via Lightroom’s Calibration tool but chose not to for the sake of timing

LOVECRIMES

SOCIAL DISTORTION

BAD RELIGION