Punk-rock veterans Rise Against recently released their tenth studio album, 'Ricochet'.
'Ricochet' is Rise Against reinventing themselves. They worked with Australian producer Catherine Marks (Boygenius, Foals, Manchester Orchestra, St Vincent, Wolf Alice) and it was mixed by Alan Moulder (Nine Inch Nails, Paramore, Queens Of The Stone Age, The Killers). The result is an album that expands the definition of a Rise Against song.
Vocalist Tim McIlrath is at home in Chicago the week of the album release doing media interviews. The night before this interview, he joined Linkin Park as special guest vocalist for the song 'One Step Closer' when they headlined the United Center in Chicago.
You'd expect a guest feature like this in front of tens of thousands of people to be organised well in advance, or at least a few days, right? "This was very last minute," Tim explains.
"I just wanted to go see the show, actually, so I would have been happy to sit in the crowd to watch the show and I just reached out to the guys and said, 'hey, I want to come, I'm in town. I'd love to see the show.'
"As I was on my way there, Mike [Shinoda, vocalist] was like 'hey come hang out, enjoy the show, come say hi. If you want, if you're interested, come sing a song with us,' and I was like, 'oh, okay. Let me see what I'm wearing. See if I brushed my hair.' You know what I mean?"
Since forming in 1999, Rise Against have released ten albums and each time the anticipation of releasing a record to the world is always an experience in itself.
"I think every record's been a little different, you know. For sure, the early records when it was like, do or die, like you gotta prove yourself, you gotta prove your last one wasn't just like a one-hit wonder kind of thing.
"This record, I think, was put together after a look back at our legacy and who we are and the reputation that we have and the sound that we've created, knowing that people have kind of already made up their mind about Rise Against, one way or another usually.
"Even though there are people that are still coming on to this journey with us, I think that gave us a little bit of licence to sort of do whatever we want and just have fun with it, and if nothing else create something that just very simply doesn't sound like every other Rise Against record.
"That's what I wanted to do going into this. I thought that would be the accomplishment, and this is like these 4 guys that are making records for 25 years, are almost like congealed in the way that we work and let's find a way to break out a little and see if we are still flexible enough to create something that might be considered more of a curveball in the Rise Against catalogue.
"Because I think we made a record that people won't mistake for an older Rise Against record. They'll hear this record and they'll say, 'oh, this is from the 'Ricochet' era of Rise Against, I can tell right away'. It won't just be lost in your shuffle of Rise Against songs."
It's been about 20 or so years since the seminal Rise Against albums 'Siren Song Of The Counter-Culture' and 'The Sufferer & The Witness'. However, the themes and messages behind the songs still resonant 20 years on, and Tim is still singing about similar themes in 'Ricochet'.
"It is crazy to hear how relevant some of these songs are. I play the song 'Hero Of War' [from 2008's 'Appeal To Reason'] every night, which is about conflict and innocent civilians and casualties in a war, collateral damage. Every year I've played, there has been some other conflict that it relates to.
"I think about the group Sea Shepard and when they did the TV show 'Whale Wars'. I remember they were being interviewed by the cameras. Sea Shepard had been doing that long before the cameras came along.
"The cameras were documenting them and I remember it was, I think it was Captain Paul Watson talking to the camera, talking about the reality show and everything else. He said, 'you know, I'm the only person on reality TV trying to put myself out of a job. I'm out here trying to end commercial whaling and if and when it ends you will go, you'll go away, your cameras will go away. You'll no longer care much about me.'
"He's like 'so I'm working to end my job and end this TV show'. I always think about that, Rise Against is working to end our career as well. We would love it if tomorrow we woke up and there was nothing to sing about and there was all just sunshine and lollipops. If there was no conflict to speak of.
"That said, the conflict in the world reinvents itself, it comes out in different ways. Our songs are about how things can feel like one step forward, two steps back. Our songs are about vigilance too.
"Just these battles that we've won over time, like these hard-fought battles, they aren't permanent border lines that we've set. You constantly have to be defending them because if you walk away from that front line, there's going to be somebody there that will try to seed some territory.
"We're certainly seeing that in human rights. Gay rights. Women's rights. You know what I mean? We're seeing that in income disparity, we're seeing, certainly in my country, you're seeing a rise of tyranny, a rise of authoritarianism, things that we never thought could possibly happen in this country.
"But you're seeing that, if you walk away from that fight, you know, for a second, someone's going to be there to take advantage of your absence. So, that's something that we've always sung about and something that I think we'll continue to sing about as well."
Rise Against are known for their amazing acoustic songs like 'Swing Life Away', 'Hero Of War', 'People Live Here' and the new song 'Gold Long Gone'. They're one of the few bands where the members have never had side projects, and Tim has surprisingly never had any solo projects.
"I've always been able to fit my vision into this Rise Against world. The Rise Against canon has always been really flexible. I can get a lot into it. So it really ticks a lot of boxes for me in terms of my expression.
"It's not that there won't be something I can do outside of it. My focus is within Rise Against, it takes up a lot of my time and effort you know what I mean. So, I’m not always looking for extra credit, out there, you know?
"I wouldn't want a whole Rise Against album of just 'Hero Of Wars' and 'Swing Life Aways' and 'Gold Long Gone'.I like showing that side of us. I love having an acoustic song on our records or something that kind of breaks it up. Just like I like doing in our live show, too. I feel like it's a good dynamic."
For the acoustic fans, Rise Against experimented with the 'Ghost Note Symphonies Vol. 1' in 2018, which was an acoustic orchestration and reimagining of some of their classic songs.
As the name suggests, there may be room for a volume two sooner rather than later. "Yeah, I think we should follow that thing up. Honestly, we did that whole thing in like 12 days and we went in there to do 3 or 4 songs and we just got carried away.
"The next thing you know, we had all those songs and so it turned into what it turned into. I think we learnt a lot on it, but I think we could do a better one now than we did before. I look forward to getting back in there. I feel like we're pretty good at that now."
Rise Against have frequently visited Australia and have an ever growing fan base here. They were last in Australia supporting Blink-182 on their 2024 arena tour, so when will we see them next?
"We're actively conspiring to get back to Australia. I've seen the block of time that we're supposed to go there and so we're trying to put it all together. It won't be this year, but we are hoping it will definitely be next year, in the first half of next year." Stay tuned.
