![]() ![]() Lyrically, and musically, The Sufferer & The Witness is a surprisingly dark, melodic hardcore record. Going back to the Blasting Room with Bill Stevenson and Jason Livenmore, Rise Against have returned to their harder roots ala Revolutions Per Minute release compared to the slightly more polished Siren Song Of The Counter Culture, and I could not be happier. ![]() And while the release of The Sufferer & The Witness came as a surprise to some people due to the lack of updates, they were sure glad to have new material from the band and once again, Rise Against doesn’t disappoint as they give their fans easily one of the best records of the year. Seven months later, yes, only seven, the CD was released and the band back on the road where they wanted it. Instead, they silently ended their touring schedule, went into the studio for a few months and made maybe three updates throughout the entire thing. Every week there’s a hundred updates about the little mishaps that happened while recording, you hear how the songs are turning out, you hear what else needs to be done before the record is done, you get little snippets of songs, video footage and basically, every where you turn, there’s something about that band in the studio. At times 'Wolves'' polished, pop-tinged punk sounds more like a proffered Pepsi can than a clenched Molotov cocktail, but it is still punk to its bones in a time when the label tends to be skin-deep.When some bands go into the studio, that’s all you hear about. But when your raising your fist at a protest, what do you really care if the guy to your left is a masked anarchist and the woman to your right is a vegan hippie? This is a record that is simply about making a stand (as the band's name suggests) against injustice and tyranny, the 'for' can come later. It could also be argued that odes to pacifism like 'The Violence' (which actually boasts rather good lyrics, provided that lines like: "Is the violence in our nature, Just the image of our maker?" appeal to your reason) sit at odds with the more aggressive lyrics of the likes of 'Wolves'. This unfaltering commitment to a better future shores up the often blunt earnestness of 'Wolves', which in turn excuses the odd clunker from McIlrath (lines like: "I'll just hold you like a hand grenade / You touch me like a razor blade" do not make us miss the old Bush-era bands in the slightest). The straight-edged, vegetarian (from before it was cool) members of Rise Against have always been outspoken defenders of a wide variety of social justice causes from animal rights to welfare protection to world peace. The language of social revolution has regained currency in post-2016 America, the ugly divisions and social tensions laid bare by last year's election creating an atmosphere where self-flagellating yet positive anthems like 'Mourning In Amerika' and 'How Many Walls?' really chime. This unasked-for maturity has resulted in a series of lyrically impassioned but increasingly uninspired records desperately trying to recapture the revolutionary vigour of their youth, much like your dad continuing to create ever-more questionable anti-May memes in a bid to convince you he used to be an anarchist. Since then the band have been doing what all successful punk bands have eventually done: had kids, bought houses, grown up and nearly burst a blood vessel trying (and failing) to stay as angry as they once were. It's been a long, long time since they dropped 2003's radical (for the time) 'Revolutions Per Minute', 2004's landmark 'Siren Song Of The Counter-Culture' or even 2006's fiery - if uneven - 'The Sufferer And The Witness'. The Obama years were not kind to Rise Against. In fact, the election of Donald Trump could not have come at a better time for these four Chicagoan stadium punks who were in real danger of losing their capacity to rage. ![]() If you thought one of rock’s most idealistic and politically earnest bands might just take a pop at their country’s new peroxide blonde idiot-in-chief on their new record then you’d be 100% correct.
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