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True North (Bad Religion album)

album by Bad Religion

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ3604547 ↗
Source-derived summary

True North is the sixteenth studio album by the California punk rock band Bad Religion, which was released on January 22, 2013. After touring in support of their previous album The Dissent of Man (2010), Bad Religion began writing new material for an album that was planned for release in 2012. During their 2011 tour, frontman Greg Graffin stated that Bad Religion would make "one more album and then all join the navy, do honest work", which led to speculation that they were breaking up, although this turned out not to be the case. The recording sessions took place in July and August 2012 at Joe's House of Compression, a studio owned by Joe Barresi, who produced the album.

True North was met with positive reviews upon release, and peaked at number 19 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, becoming Bad Religion's first album to crack the top 20 and their highest ever peak on that chart in their career. This is the band's last album with guitarist Greg Hetson and drummer Brooks Wackerman, who left the band in April 2013 and October 2015, respectively.

Background

Bad Religion released their 15th studio album The Dissent of Man on September 28, 2010, via Epitaph Records. In 2011, they went on tour with American punk band Rise Against, who were promoting their new LP Endgame. While on tour with Rise Against, vocalist Greg Graffin told The Washington Examiner that he did not know when the band would release a new album, saying, "It's all very punk just like it's always been. We will record when we have enough songs.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “True North (Bad Religion album)” is album by Bad Religion. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through True, North and Religion, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2013, 2010, 2012, 2011—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2013. For this dossier, True, North and Religion is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “album by Bad Religion” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3604547. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2013, 2010, 2012 and 2011.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

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  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “True North (Bad Religion album)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow True North (Bad Religion album) primary sources, True North (Bad Religion album) archive and True research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “True North (Bad Religion album)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.