Rise Against are not the first punk band to embrace the trappings of arena rock, but few of their forerunners can say they moved between those opposing states with the confidence and style displayed here. Having spent two decades retrofitting the breakneck melodic hardcore of their early work with rafter-shaking hooks and gleaming production, the Chicago veterans’ 10th album is a hulking thing, its bombast and righteous anger fed by vocalist Tim McIlrath, who finds the middle ground between Strike Anywhere and Creedence Clearwater Revival more often than you might think possible.
Working in tandem with producer Catherine Marks, fresh from Grammy wins for her work on Boygenius’s The Record, and mixer-to-the-stars Alan Moulder, they regularly square the circle between blood-and-guts emotion and high-sheen recording craft. McIlrath’s community-minded political sloganeering finds the perfect vehicle in the wrecking-ball sonics of Sink Like a Stone and Nod, an opener that taps into the double-time urgency of their career-shaping 2006 track Prayer of the Refugee.
There is a very fine line between going big and becoming broad, though, and Rise Against do occasionally cross it. I Want It All’s stomping garage rock fails to rise much above pastiche, and power ballad Gold Long Gone is too slick for its own good. They pull it back thanks to moments such as Black Crown. A collaboration with Manchester Orchestra’s Andy Hull, it’s a gut-wrenching warning against apathy as the world burns that also happens to sound like a million bucks.
