Photo: Wyatt Troll To say anything vaguely ‘woke’ is to be questioned and accused of virtue signalling and clout-chasing by the online hordes of the right, with messages sometimes heard but rarely listened to. But to make such accusations against Rise Against at this stage .
is a
Rise Against album. In all of their jangly, closely-adhered-to chord progressions, how they structure their songs, high tempo palm-mutes and strums, backing-vocal chants and harmonies they’ve been doing since before I was even in my teens, and
Bill Stevenson’s as-per-usual crisp production detailing the record. I expected all of these ticked boxes
long before I pressed play on ‘
Nowhere Generation’; it’s just how
Rise Against are. Though on this latest entry in their lengthy career, it feels the most fired up it’s been in a fucking decade. While I’m not fully in love with it, I’m gonna take that win!