Rise Against have long since established their place as one of the more abrasive political punk rock bands of the past 20 years and their latest album, The Nowhere Generation, is no exception.
Opening with ‘The Numbers’, the band sound invigorated and have all of their trademark speed, aggression and snarl on display as they seemingly invoke a rallying cry to the disaffected masses that have been left to sink or swim by an older generation that doesn’t care about them.
This feeling is mirrored constantly throughout the record and there isn’t a single point that it feels disingenuous or preachy which is an incredibly rare skill in the landscape of modern music. Tracks like ‘Talking to Ourselves’ and ‘Middle of a Dream’ have that ability to appeal to emotion that have made them stand out so well over the 20+ year career.
Every track could have worked as a single but Rise Against opted to release the title track as a lead single and this track is easily one of the highlights of the album and makes an excellent abstract of what the album is saying, which is not to say that the rest of the album does it poorly.
Nowhere Generation makes the smart decision to break up the relentless pacing of the record with ‘Forfeit‘ which is a slower paced and heartfelt acoustic ballad that stops the album from being one note.
The biggest problem with Rise Against is that they seem to have found a formula that works and that is fine to die-hards but it becomes somewhat problematic to newcomers that tend to consume as much of their music as possible, especially in the streaming age.
Overall, Nowhere Generation is a fairly safe album in the Rise Against back catalogue which some may consider a flaw but it is still a high quality punk record that delivers much of what the average punk listener would want in a record of this caliber.
Nowhere Generation is out now via Loma Vista.
