I don’t think I’ll ever be able to take Anti-Flag seriously after they signed to RCA – a band so ‘fuck the man’ they then signed to the man – watered down their sound and “after fulfilling their two-album deal” (read: were dumped) have wound up on Side One Dummy with a record which continues the themes of all of their other records – the world is fucked, America’s fucked and politicians are fucking everything up. Yawn.
Musically this isn’t that bad, but truth be told if you’ve heard one AF record you’ve heard them all and this doesn’t move the band on at all. It’s pop-punk with a bit of a snarl and lyrics that make me cringe, but will appeal to A-Level anarchists everywhere (“where are all the bailouts for the homeless and the poor?” could be a line from any one of the band’s albums since 1997‘s ‘Die For The Government’. ‘We Are The One’ and ‘The Old Guard’ are decent enough and probably better if you actually like the band. But I don’t and I really don’t think they’ll ever win me over. I know that hardly makes me the best person to review them, but fuck it. If you’re a band and you put up the same record for 12 years then you deserve the same reviewer.
Kudos to Anti Flag for churning out yet another album of the same old, same old. Expect it to win over a generation of disaffected youths, replacing the fans who have grown out of the band’s predictable ‘fuck it all’ politics. If you’ve liked any of their previous albums you’ll probably enjoy this. For me, however, it’s just so lyrically and thematically predictable that, while I recognise there are catchy moments, listening to ‘The People of The Gun’ just flat out annoys me.