The long-standing Los Angeles-based punk band Bad Religion are preparing to release a new album in the spring.|

Picked by Alternative Press as one of the 25 most anticipated albums of 1998, the album will be Bad Religion's first since The Gray Race, which was released two years ago, and their fourth on a major label. Prior to the 1993 release of Recipe For Hate on Atlantic, the band released a series of albums with the then independent Epitaph Records.

Bad Religion lead singer Greg Graffin recently debuted his side project, American Lesion, at Manhattan's Knitting Factory. The project consists of songs Graffin has written over the last 10 years that did not find their way into Bad Religion's recorded repertoire.

American Lesion's name references the bottom-line mentality of contemporary American society, according to Graffin. "You are seen as a pariah if you try to do something that isn't profitable, regardless of the emotional wellness it promotes. You become, in a sense, a lesion on the tranquil surface of prosperity that America stands for," he said. (Isaac Josephson)