In their breakthrough 2001 album, "Underground Network," Anti-Flag took a solid stance against corporate media and put their ideas to catchy tunes, creating some of the most popular politically-charged music of the last five years; their latest effort, "For Blood and Empire" is more of the same, but under a shiny, new corporate label.
Imagine the fans' surprise when the band signed to RCA Records in 2005, a subsidiary of Sony (one of the largest corporations in the world), in order to reach a larger audience for "For Blood and Empire." This is certainly a strategically sound move for a popular political punk band, but unfortunately, they will never escape their own obvious hypocrisy.
In the title track of 2001's "Underground," there is a breakdown during which singer Justin Sane says, "Just take a look around the world and you're going to find that nearly all / Mass media are owned and controlled by a handful of conservative capitalists / We must devise and implement alternative methods of distributing our...ideas - people worldwide working together to / Make a stand, to / Tell the truth!" Right on!
When you buy future Anti-Flag albums under the RCA label, part of that money will likely go to pay for the very bombs that the band gripes about. So what happened to the underground network?
To the band's credit, it seems as if it has retained a large amount of creative control over its work in "For Blood and Empire" despite its new label; there are many direct similarities between the new album and Anti-Flag's last, 2003's "The Terror State." The most obvious parallel is the presence of a CD jacket that doubles as a propaganda stencil, and where "The Terror State"'s jacket once declared confidently that George W. was a "one-term president," the new stencil poses the question: "What are we going to do about the USA?"
"The Terror State" seemed to be the height of social awareness for the band, and it therefore included several articles by outside political commentators in the album's liner notes that expressed its political ideas more intelligently than the band could hope to accomplish on its own. "For Blood and Empire" sticks to this strategy by cramming so many articles into the CD jacket that it can hardly fit in the album's plastic case. In fact, it is often hard to tell when the lyrics end and the articles begin.
The main problem with "For Blood and Empire" is that the band is trying so hard to prove that it has not changed its attitude that the music is exceptionally unoriginal. The first few tracks, while catchy, seem like a sampling of favorite guitar riffs and melodies that Anti-Flag has been using for 10 years. While this "greatest hits" style will possibly draw a new audience, the new fans will be as unimpressed with old Anti-Flag albums as old fans are with the new.
It was easy to tell the direction in which Anti-Flag was heading from certain songs in "The Terror State," such as "Power To the Peaceful," which sounds so catchy that it is almost danceable. Though that album still contains remnants of their old, more aggressive style of music, the new album expectedly moves further in the direction of accessibility.
"Hymn for the Dead," for example, is so slow and anthemic that it resembles a punk-rock power ballad, which some would consider a contradiction in terms. This song in particular demonstrates Anti-Flag's stance as a cheerleader for the more intelligent articles they included in the liner notes as Justin Sane shouts "Sound off!" and "Dissent!" But what exactly they want you to dissent from is wisely left to the professionals who scripted the writings in the first place.
In the pop-like "1 Trillion Dollar$," the band tries to convey how much one trillion dollars is worth in relation to the U.S. defense budget; Justin Sane remarks that it "can buy a lot of bling." Unfortunately, most listeners will be too busy laughing at how funny that phrase sounds to hear Sane's message in one of the more profound songs on the album.
The loss of Anti-Flag to a major label is not quite as tragic as it might seem. For starters, the fact that Sony puts out an album that has a picture of the White House doubling as a graveyard on the cover is really cool - possibly even punk. Anti-Flag is a lot better than Good Charlotte or Sum 41 or whoever else is popular in the world of pop-punk today, so fans should welcome its impact on mainstream music.
Plus, the band has the possibility of a promising future ahead of them. Now that it has made the obligatory attempt to convince fans that it didn't sell out, Anti-Flag can move beyond this underwhelming release and return to the level of creativity that it's capable of.
So, the next time you hear an Anti-Flag song on an episode of "The OC," remember that the band is still sticking it to The Man - even if it is now part of the corporate machine.
