Jay Bentley is the bass player for seminal punk band Bad Religion. Bad Religion has been recording and touring for 30 years, and is set to release their 15th studio album, The Dissent of Man (Epitaph), in September 2010. Bentley has also been a member of Wasted Youth, T.S.O.L, The Circle Jerks, and Cathedral Of Tears.
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Jay Bentley is the bass player for seminal punk band Bad Religion. Bad Religion has been recording and touring for 30 years, and is set to release their 15th studio album, The Dissent of Man (Epitaph), in September 2010. Bentley has also been a member of Wasted Youth, T.S.O.L, The Circle Jerks, and Cathedral Of Tears.
Jay Bentley formed Bad Religion in 1980 in Southern California along with Greg Graffin, Jay Ziskrout, and Brett Gurewitz. They released their first EP, Bad Religion, in 1981 on Gurewitz's new record label, Epitaph. The album made its way to influential LA punk DJ Rodney Bingenheimer who began playing it on his radio show. Bad Religion was notable in the early LA punk scene as being the only punk band from the "Valley," the San Fernando Valley north of Los Angeles.
Bad Religion's first official full-length, How Could Hell Be Any Worse?, was released on Epitaph in 1982. Bentley left the band in 1982 during the recording of of their second full-length, Into the Unknown (Epitaph, 1983), but he would rejoin the band in 1986 and has appeared on every album since then.
1988 saw the return of the band's original lineup and the release of their third album, Suffer (Epitaph), which has been credited for sparking a new interest in American punk music. With Stranger Than Fiction (Atlantic, 1994), their first major label release, the band had their first (and only) gold record in the US. They also saw the departure of Gurewitz, who left partly to focus more on his record label which had a surprise hit with The Offspring's album, Smash. After a few more albums on Atlantic, Bad Religion returned to Epitaph, Gurewitz rejoined the band, and they released The Process of Belief in 2002, The Empire Strikes First in 2004, and New Maps of Hell in 2007.
Although Bad Religion has undergone lineup changes throughout much of their 30 year career, the lineup appears to have stabilized with Jay Bentley, Greg Graffin, Brett Gurewitz, Brian Baker, Greg Hetson, and Brooks Wackerman. In fact, their next album, The Dissent of Man, will be the fourth consecutive album to feature the same lineup.
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