Random Review # 2

These are always fun…I shuffle my iTunes and whatever song comes first, I review the album it’s from:

Rise Against-Appeal to Reason

2008

The most recent release of the gentlemen from Chicago, Appeal to Reason is superbly done. It’s not their best work, in my opinion, but I don’t think they can do much wrong. The guys are lovers of our planet and it generally shows through their music. Collapse (Post-Amerika) sends a strong message to listeners about what we’re doing to our planet and telling us to stop fucking with it, because one day it will die and we’ve all overlooked it.

The album is angry, it’s pissed off. It’s everything a young person needs to listen to. You can take the songs and relate them to anything you want to. Hell, some of these songs got me through a break up and then got me fired up for a political protest. Not many bands can evoke so many emotions for so many reasons.

Rise Against seem to do a brilliant acoustic songs on most albums. There was Roadside on The Sufferer and the Witness and of course Swing Life Away on Siren Song of the Counter Culture. Hero of War is the amazing acoustic piece of Appeal to Reason. It’s a song about a soldier forced to fight, forced to torture and how to him, he’s a real hero because he’s ‘protecting his great country’. It’s not a song in favour of war. It was actually quite disgusting, at a recent gig of theirs, when people had their Australian flags waving proudly during the rendition of this, as if to think this song is praising the war. Singer Tim McIlrath clearly has the right opinions, or left, in the case of politics.

Political musicians will never die, in my opinion. Since it was ok to be out and proud pissed off with something, it’s brought us some awesome tunes. From The Doors to Rage Against the Machine to those small underground bands with their hidden messages, a strong political stance in the music, seems to get those fans. Perhaps it’s because instead of singing about sex, love and having loads of women by your side, these bands sing about what matters. They showcase the fact that they’re talented and intelligent.

Wearing a Rise Against shirt once, I had to laugh when someone asked “Rise against what?” I happily replied “Rise against whatever the hell you want”. The little bit of revolutionary in me comes out when I listen to any album by Rise Against. They’re my angry, political little pleasure.