Today I’ve got the second ‘open fire’ moment of 2023, the new album from Anti-Flag, the Pittsburgh Punksters who continually challenge societal norms, getting in the face of the villains and the corrupted souls that walk amongst us.
It is never a dull moment with these fellas, they are always a pleasure to review and this, their thirteenth album is no different. Their conscience is tuned into their surroundings, the movers and shakers of this unjust world are fixed on their radar, ready to be savaged by the words of Anti-Flag.
‘Sold Everything’ signals that impact is imminent, preparing for the cutting chant of ‘fill us with medicine’ from ‘Modern Meta Medicine’ which features Jesse Leach of Killswitch Engage. He is the first of several artists playing their part in elevating this album, adding textures, artistic flair and bringing their own physical, mental and emotional challenges, and inevitably imparting their own wisdom, shout outs also to Shane Told ( Silverstein), Ashrita Kumar (Pinkshift), Campino (Die Toten Hosen), Tré Burt, Brian Baker( Bad Religion), Tim McIlrath( Rise Against), and Stacy Dee (Bad Cop/Bad Cop).
Anti -Flag have always been on the side of the common man, ordinary folk going about their daily lives, people over profits is their idea of a just society. They see how unfair things are, they see the perpetrators, they see the cruelty and they vent their anger through their art. We, the fans, accept their work as a source of comfort and closeness, we realise that someone is speaking for us even though we feel we do not have a voice. Further contributions are courtesy of the Arts collective INDECLINE, dutifully captured in the words ‘bravery is knowing what’s at stake, dissent is understanding what’s possible’ aptly positioned at the end of ‘Victory Or Death’. Next up is ‘The Hazardous’ another pop at the struggles we face, time and again, the weakest in our society pay the price, reflected in the lyric ‘injustice resides in everything that we buy’ is synonymous with the vicious circle we are trapped in. The music here is heroic; a catalogue of resistance songs and anthems that dig deep and find the embers, and reignite the fire in our bellies. Anti-Flag have that star quality, they empathise, they connect, and they nourish the ravenous hoards that hang on to their every word.
Finishing with ‘Only In My Head’ a track that includes the words ‘ban all the books’ a much mooted topic right now as some of the classics have been chosen to be re-written to be accommodating to the world as it is now.
Bear witness to the decline of our lives, at a time in our lives when we have suffered too much, to all those wretched people that weaponise our frailties and vulnerabilities, sit the fuck down, Anti Flag are talking.
Azra Pathan
Anti-Flag- Lies They Tell Our Children out now.