Pete Finestone

Stranger than Fiction included some of Bad Religion's well-known hits, including "Infected", "Stranger than Fiction", and the re-recorded version of "21st Century (Digital Boy)" (the latter of which its original version appeared four years earlier on Against the Grain); the album was later certified gold in both the United States and Canada.

Shortly before the release of Stranger than Fiction, Gurewitz left Bad Religion to run his label Epitaph on a full-time basis, and was replaced by Brian Baker.

"21st Century (Digital Boy)", one of the tracks off the album, is generally regarded as the band's most well-known song, and has been played at almost every live show.

Bad Religion is an American punk rock band, formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1980.

The band's lyrics cover topics related to religion, politics, society, the media and science.

Musically, they are noted for their melodic sensibilities and extensive use of three-part vocal harmonies.

After gaining a large underground following and critical praise through their releases on Gurewitz's label Epitaph in the 1980s and early 1990s, Bad Religion experienced mainstream success after signing to the major label Atlantic in 1993.

Bad Religion was formed in Los Angeles, California in 1980 by high school students Greg Graffin, Jay Bentley, Jay Ziskrout, and Brett Gurewitz.

Their first public performance was playing six or eight songs at a Fullerton, California, or Santa Ana, California, warehouse opening for Social Distortion.

Their first official show was on November 11, 1980, at Joey Kills Bar in Burbank, California.

Graffin has said that the name "Bad Religion" came about when the then-adolescent members of the band wanted to "piss people off."

In 1981, the band released their initial eponymous six-song EP as a 7" record on the newly formed label, Epitaph Records, which was and continues to be managed and owned by Gurewitz. Also in 1981, the band began recording their first full-length album, How Could Hell Be Any Worse? During the recording of this album, drummer Jay Ziskrout quit the band, and was replaced by Pete Finestone. Released in 1982, How Could Hell Be Any Worse? was also distributed by the band under the Epitaph label, and sold roughly 12,000 copies.

In 1983, the band released Into the Unknown, a keyboard-driven progressive hard rock album with a slightly slower pace.

Almost all of the albums the band produced were sold out of the warehouse they were housed in without the band's knowledge, after which this album went out of print.

This incident, as well as band members' increasingly divergent personal lives, led to the band's temporary dissolution shortly after the album's release.

Soon after, Graffin reassembled Bad Religion with Circle Jerks guitarist Greg Hetson replacing Gurewitz, who had gone into rehab for his drug problem.

Bad Religion returned to a somewhat mellower, rock and roll version of their original sound with the Back to the Known EP.

Eventually the band split toward the middle of 1985.

Bad Religion slowly reformed in 1986 out of the Back to the Known line-up when Graffin called Bentley and asked him to return.

Bentley's response was tentative, but after being assured that the setlist consisted mostly of tracks from How Could Hell Be Any Worse?, he agreed to return for one show, and ended up staying on because he had so much fun.

A freshly rehabilitated Gurewitz was eventually convinced to come back aboard, and with Pete Finestone returning on drums and Greg Hetson on second guitar; Bad Religion was back.

This lineup recorded the band's third album, Suffer, which was released in 1988.

The album received positive reviews in the independent music press and was voted Best Album of the Year by publications such as Trust, Maximum Rocknroll and Flipside.

During the Suffer tour in 1988, Bad Religion began writing new material.

In early 1989, while the band was on break from touring, they commenced work on their next album, and entered the Westbeach Recorders studio in June of that year to record it.

The resulting album, No Control, was released in November 1989, and was Bad Religion's best-selling album at the time, eventually selling more than 80,000 copies.

The band pioneered the punk rock revival movement of the 1990s, establishing a formula for California-based punk bands such as Green Day and Epitaph-signed acts the Offspring, NOFX and Rancid.

They are also cited as an inspiration or influence on the 1990s and 2000s pop punk, skate punk, post-hardcore, screamo and emo scenes.

The band's success had slowly dwindled by the late 1990s, and, after three more albums, they were dropped from Atlantic in 2001; this resulted in Bad Religion returning to Epitaph and Gurewitz rejoining the band.

Bad Religion's hardcore punk style continued with their next album, Against the Grain, which was released in 1990.

While the album still did not break the band into mainstream audiences, it was the first 100,000 seller, and showed how quickly they were growing.

Drummer Pete Finestone left Bad Religion again in April 1991 to focus on his other band, the Fishermen, which had signed with a major label, and Bobby Schayer joined the band as his replacement.

In May 1991, Bad Religion entered the Westbeach Recorders studio to begin recording material for their sixth studio album, Generator, which was not released until March 1992.

Atlantic reissued the previously-released-on-Epitaph album, Recipe for Hate (1993), which became commercially successful, as did its 1994 follow-up Stranger than Fiction.

The band has experienced multiple line-up changes, with singer Greg Graffin being the band's only constant member, though fellow founding members Jay Bentley and Brett Gurewitz have also been with the band for most of their history while guitarist Brian Baker has been a member of the group since 1994.

Guitarist Mike Dimkich and drummer Jamie Miller have been members of the band since 2013 and 2015 respectively.

To date, Bad Religion has released seventeen studio albums, two live albums, three compilation albums, three EPs, and two live DVDs.

They are considered to be one of the best-selling punk rock acts of all time, having sold over five million albums worldwide.

Since then, they have undergone a resurgence in popularity, with "Sorrow", "Los Angeles Is Burning", and "The Devil in Stitches" being Top 40 hits on the US charts while their sixteenth studio album, True North (2013), became Bad Religion's first album to crack the top 20 on the Billboard 200 chart where it peaked at number 19.

The band's seventeenth and most recent studio album, Age of Unreason, was released on May 3, 2019.