Flag Bare
Anti-Flag
For Blood & Empire
(RCA)
Taking cues from Green Day’s wildly successful American Idiot, supposed “important” punks Anti-Flag get the sloganeering machines firing.
It would be irresponsible to discredit the musical advances Green Day made on Idiot in assessing the album’s popularity. Anti-Flag, while primarily a driving, four-on-the-floor band of three-chord Luddites, partially recognize pop music on standouts “This Is The End” and “One Trillion Dollars.” In doing so, their nasal croons sound remarkably like the leading brand, but that’s pretty forgivable (since Green Day borrow from others as well).
But the ultimate frustration with For Blood & Empire is its single-mindedness. Like Rage Against The Machine before them — before you rip my head off, that’s a limited analogy — the propaganda disguised as information is disarming. I hate to use something as inconsequential as Anti-Flag as a forum for a bottled diatribe, but the reason current pop protests fail to 1) measure up to anti-establishment rock of yore and 2) appeal to anyone but the congregation is this goddamned ironic posturing, sarcasm, and preaching that the only problems are with the Right. Resorting to lame anti-Bushisms (“Vote to impeach!”), casting the Rwandan genocide as an isolated, freak episode (“Emigre”), and fear mongering (“Cities Burn”) are arguably also tactics of neo-fascism or Karl Rove-ing, whatever you want to call it — pot calling the kettle black.
Beware where you get your information is another battle cry on Blood. Now that’s irony. Nice label, too.
— Steve Forstneger
Appearing: April 7 at Logan Square Auditorium in Chicago.
