The New Guitar Gods: Rise Against

Originally printed in Guitar World Magazine November 2006

As the Warped Tour scene splinters into punk subgenres, Rise Against continue to wave the banner for pure melodic hardcore on their latest disc, The Sufferer & the Witness

Destiny grabbed Rise Against’s Tim McIlrath by the shoulders when he was just 14 years old. “A whole bunch of my friends started snowboarding,” he recalls. “I saved up $400 and found a snowboard I wanted to buy. I was like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna be a snowboarder. That’s it.’ But as I was walking down to the snowboard shop, I passed by a guitar shop, and in the window there was a 1984 Gibson SG, just sitting there. I fell in love with it and bought it. I never got the snowboard. I’ve never even been snowboarding. But I’ve still got that guitar, and I’ve used it on every record I’ve played guitar on.”

McIlrath’s $400 investment has paid off in spades for the Chicago-based act. Rise Against are one of the hottest bands on the current Warped Tour. Their last album, Siren Song of the Counter Culture, sold nearly 400,000 copies, and their new disc, The Sufferer & the Witness (Geffen), is heavily tipped to do just as well. McIlrath, co-guitarist Chris Chasse, bassist Joe Principe and drummer Brandon Barnes blend churning hardcore rhythms and punk melodicism with an undercurrent of political rage. The net result is very much in the spirit of bands like Bad Religion and Fugazi, two of McIlrath’s key influences.

“That was the music that touched me when I was growing up,” says the singer/guitarist/lyricist. “The hardcore bands taught me that if someone gives you a microphone and a stage to say something, then you’d better say something.” The album title The Sufferer & the Witness encapsulates McIlrath’s take on political apathy. “There’s a lot of that in our country right now. But apathy doesn’t make you innocent of what’s going on. There’s so much suffering that happens in our country and the world, and if you’re not the one suffering then you’re bearing witness to it. Either way, you’re involved; you can’t turn a blind eye. Living in America, we’re obviously not the sufferers in the big scheme of things, so that makes us the witnesses. But at the same time, the phrase can be applied to a relationship between two people: who’s the sufferer and who’s the witness? It’s an interesting way to place yourself in any situation.”

The album is filled with rabble-rousing calls to action, like the incendiary “Bricks.” The track “Survive” will strike a chord with anyone struggling to get by in these desperate times. In fact, survival is a key theme on the album and one that strikes close to home for McIlrath and his band.

“As a punk band going into our seventh year of existence and our fourth album, survival is a big part of what we do. Some of us are approaching our thirties; some of us are already there. And you’re talking about playing a scene where there’s some 18-yearold kid with fancy hair who wants your job. So you’re out there trying to remain relevant, pushing yourself to remain true to your fans and yourself.”

McIlrath and Principe cofounded Rise Against in 1999, taking their cue from Chicago’s punk scene. “I was really into the local scene,” says McIlrath. “Bands like the Boll Weevils and Cap’n Jazz. If you weren’t from Chicago you’d have no idea who these bands were. But it was a great, inspired scene to be around.”

To this day, McIlrath and Principe remain the songwriting nucleus of Rise Against. “Joe’s strong point is ultrafast hardcore punk,” McIlrath explains. He points to new songs like “Bricks”—“a minuteand- a-half blast of pure punk”—and the bass-heavy “Drones” as examples. “Those are classic Joe-style tracks.” The “big rock” tracks, like “Prayer of the Refugee” and “Ready to Fall,” are his own. “I’m a sucker for the big rock stuff,” says McIlrath. “But Joe and I collaborate on almost everything, so there’s a little of each of us in all the songs.”