Death, taxes, an underwhelming New Year’s Eve and Chicago melodic punk quartet Rise Against delivering the goods. Them’s your guarantees. And it is to the elation of my ears that the latter continues to ring true on eighth album Wolves (Virgin).
While the title track may be a solid, yet unspectacular kick start, ‘House On Fire’ sees things click into gear; a superb poppy rocker with a hook to die for that sparks a trifecta of up-tempo bangers to nestle smugly alongside, if just off the shoulder of, the very best of their canon, before a change of pace for the sunny ‘Far From Perfect’ with its chorus designed for outdoor gigs, arms spread wide, mouths wider in joyous union…
Wolves is littered with many such moments, resplendent as it is with earworms, rocking verses, push and pull dynamics and heartfelt vocals. Tim McIlrath is in fine coarse form, his distinctive strains are always earnest and always able to combine honesty, passion, and melody as he leads and guides his excellent band through another selection of strong songs – Rise Against pulling off the golden combination of maturity and the craft of excellent rock songwriting.
While diversity isn’t the main string to Rise Against’s bow, when they do what they do as well as they do and when they produce a plethora of songs that make you belt them out at the top of your lungs by third or fourth listen, variety be damned, frankly. That said, ‘Politics of Love’ tips the hat to New Model Army and the charged ‘Bullshit’ flirts with ska, though so subtly even its spouse wouldn’t even notice.
But, fuck, if you can casually close the album with a run as great as the abrasive ‘Mourning In Amerika’, the pure anthem of ‘How Many Walls?’ and the swaggering ‘Miracle’, Rise Against are confirming themselves once again as a genuine top tier punk/rock act.
Unleashing the Wolves on the back of the excellent The Black Market (Interscope) shows that three years of touring hasn’t blunted the band’s songwriting blade whatsoever, and, while the twinkling troika of Siren Song…, Sufferer… (both Geffen) and Appeal To Reason (Interscope) remains their ultimate pinnacle, to be releasing back to back belters eighteen years into their career is a testament to the longevity and eminence of one of the twenty-first century’s most underrated bands.
8.5/10
STEVE TOVEY