Coming of age to the socially conscious sounds of punk and hardcore groups like Bad Religion and Minor Threat, the music of Chicago-based melodic punks Rise Against has always thrived in its direct address of the world.

But rarely has Rise Against sounded as urgent as it does on the group’s ninth studio album Nowhere Generation, available now for pre-order ahead of release Friday, June 4, 2021 on CD, vinyl and cassette via Loma Vista Recordings.

The new album battles stereotypes associated with millennials and takes a deep dive into the American dream, begging the question of whether it’s even achievable in America amidst the erosion of a middle class fueled by income inequality.

Working with artist activist group Indecline, Rise Against crafted a stunning video to accompany the song “The Numbers,” one which speaks to the power of a strong, collective voice against injustice.

Aging gracefully is about as difficult in the punk genre as it is anywhere in the music world. Album nine is a career point most bands never see and many punk groups rarely even aspire to.

Rise Against has largely defied the odds, lending young fans a powerful voice for nearly 20 years, charting five albums in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 pop albums chart along the way.

“At the end of the day, I try not to think about it. Because that interferes with songwriting. It can make it insincere and either contrived or forced. And I just don’t want to do that. I think we’re able to progress but maintain the roots of the band,” said co-founding Rise Against bassist Joe Principe. “The fact that this record has a sense of urgency and intensity behind it? The fact that we can still do that is something I’m really proud of.”

“I don’t know what to attribute that to but I think we’ve always just tried to be really honest with our songwriting and give people something they can sink their teeth into. And also just write songs that were relevant to what’s happening in the world. And in that way, we’ve managed to speak to young people,” said vocalist and guitarist Tim McIlrath. “I think of Rise Against as almost like a university where you’re always getting that incoming freshman class, you know? Because I feel like for the last 20 years, my front row has been 16 year old kids. When we go on tour, we’re going to have young people in that front row seeing us for the first time that have just gotten into punk rock. And we may only occupy a certain number of years in their life until they move onto something else - but we’re happy to see you in class that day. We’re kind of teaching that same lesson in some ways but it’s a lesson that needs to be taught.”

I spoke with Joe Principe and Tim McIlrath about writing songs together for two decades, how that partnership informs Nowhere Generation, maintaining a sense of optimism despite uncertain times, Rise Against’s summer tour of the U.S. and much more. Highlights from two separate video calls follow below.

I couldn’t help but notice that you chose to open the album with a snippet of “The Internationale.” How relevant is that song and how important was it to kick off the album on that note?

TIM MCILRATH: It’s traditionally been an anthem of leftist movements that talk about class and labor and the people. Which was a perfect segue into our song “The Numbers” and also into the record and the whole idea behind Nowhere Generation. I thought it would be kind of a cool way to herald in the album and also point out that the struggle that we deal with in today’s world in some ways is very timeless. It’s something that people have always kind of dealt with and struggled with and found different solutions for. 

How important was it with these songs and in the promotion of the record to fight back against certain stereotypes? 

TIM: I felt like there wasn’t a lot of sympathy for young people in terms of their anxieties about the world. I felt like there was this instinct to dismiss millennials as sort of entitled or apathetic or lazy or whatever. Then it made me realize that, in a world of concentrated wealth - in a world of the rise of the 1%  - and the anxieties of global warming and climate change, maybe we should be listening to what young people are saying and take it a little more seriously. And think about how their experience is different from people who grew up before them in previous generations. 

When I grew up, a single income family could live a middle class lifestyle. Nowadays, that’s just impossible. And we have to start asking ourselves why that is - what’s happening in the world to prevent people from getting ahead and make them feel like they’re always swimming upstream against this insurmountable current?

Your albums are always relevant, always speak to the times. But, with Nowhere Generation, I really felt a sense of urgency that I haven’t been feeling in a lot of new music. Was that something you guys were aware of? 

JOE PRINCIPE: We’re all dads. And I think it would be hard to ignore that. Looking at what our kids have to go through and then realizing that whatever we’re doing now is obviously going to impact them and their children. It’s just more apparent the older we get and the older they get. So I think it wasn’t a planned out theme - I just think that with Tim writing from his personal perspective, that’s what you’re going to get. We’re fathers. And it’s crazy. Our kids have seen way more - I mean, the last four years probably aged them like 10 years. 

People ask me, “Did you feel the same kind of frustrations and uncertainty when you were growing up?” And it’s like no. I think politics were so off my radar when I was 10 or 12 years old. And now our kids are forced - it’s in their face. It’s everywhere. It’s on social media. It’s in their schools. And of course the pandemic exacerbated it. “How’s Trump handling this with the pandemic and the vaccines and this and that?” And they were faced with it whether they liked it or not.

TIM: I wanted to talk about some of the underlying things that are happening now instead of singing about the low hanging fruit like Donald Trump or whatever else is happening in the world. I wanted to get more at the roots of the issues that we’re dealing with. That’s kind of where “Nowhere Generation” came from. I feel like that was something that was affecting everybody. I wanted to address the ideologies behind something like the rise of the Trump administration or the rise of xenophobia and nationalism and that kind of stuff. 

In that way, the album became this thing that was looking just under the surface for “Why does the world feel like this? What is this weight that we all are bearing every time we wake up?”

I jotted down a few lyrics… In “Sudden Urge” it’s “Searching for something to save from this fire.” In “Middle of a Dream” there’s “Hope is the only way we tolerate the pain.” No matter how dire the circumstances, a sense of optimism generally emerges from Rise Against songs. Are you able to maintain that right now despite the uncertain times? 

JOE: Yes. I attribute that to faith in humanity that clearer heads will prevail. That’s all we have, right? So you have to move forward with a goal in mind. The goal is to be better and do better and learn from past mistakes. And I think you have to have this sense of hope and a faith in humanity that we are going to do better - or else we have nothing. So I have faith in other humans that we’ll rise above the bulls—t that we’ve experienced the last 4 years, 8 years, 12 years, whatever. 

But there were a few bands growing up that were instrumental in shaping my worldview. 7 Seconds was key in that. They were singing about sexism, homophobia and xenophobia in the mid-80s when people were afraid to speak up about it. 

When I was a kid in sixth grade, I didn’t realize what they were singing about at first. I also grew up in a household of all women because my father passed away when I was 7. So I thought the women around me were so tough. I was growing up in this kind of meathead neighborhood - it was just very misogynistic. And then the more I listened…So I gravitated more and more toward like-minded people. 

But those lyrics of 7 Seconds songs really opened my mind to the idea that people can be better. It’s really important.

One of the things I most enjoyed about sitting down and listening to the new album was reading along with the lyrics and picking up the story that it tells - in an era when I think maybe lyrics have kind of become an afterthought for a lot of people. Who are some lyricists, whether it’s growing up or today, that you really kind of connected with, Tim? 

TIM: That’s a good question. Growing up it was definitely Ian MacKaye with Minor Threat or even Fugazi - all the way to Jawbreaker and Blake Schwarzenbach and his more literary approach to punk rock songs as an artform and a place where poetry can exist. So those two lyricists were really big in my life. 

I know Tim handles a lot of the lyrics and you, Joe, a lot of the music. What’s the collaborative process like between the two of you at this point after all these years when it comes to sitting down and creating new music? 

JOE: It’s crazy. It’s like a very unspoken thing. I think in 20 years of writing songs, I write with Tim’s vocal in mind unknowingly. When I’m writing, I just have an idea of how a vocal could fit in or not fit in musically. I think that’s key to songwriting. When you’re writing music and you’re layering it and it’s super interesting, you can’t forget that there’s going to be a vocal over it. It’s not an instrumental version of the song.

So I tend to err on maybe the more - I don’t want to say simple - but I tend to go with the less is more approach with my songs and I’ve always done that. And it just allows him to sing over it.

Also, when he’s writing a song, he would play literally a verse and I knew exactly which note he was going to go into for the chorus. Our producer Bill Stevenson was like, “How did you know he was going to do that?” And I was like, “I just know.” It’s unspoken.

I definitely attribute that to just being in sync musically. Some people just have that in them. Growing up with bands like Bad Religion - Greg Graffin and Brad Gurewitz had that songwriting dynamic. The Clash. Mick Jones and Joe Strummer had it. 

They all had different approaches - but those different approaches make up the bands that they’re in. And that’s why you get Rise Against. If it was a band that I was just solely writing for, it would probably be all hardcore punk rock. With Tim, he has his style. It’s really cool. 

When you talk about writing with Tim’s voice in mind, what was the process like on “The Numbers?”

JOE: That song kind of threw me for a loop. Because I wasn’t sure how he was gonna approach singing that chorus. But it was definitely a nod to the roots of the band - the more punk rock, in your face approach. I tend to, when I write chords, it’s kind of funny, I only use like two strings - but it’s on purpose. Because I want the melodies of those two strings to shine more than if I’m using all six strings on the guitar. So there’s an emotion to that song and I wasn’t sure which way he was going to take it. But it’s perfect. 

The intensity behind that song is definitely a nod to the roots of the band. I still have that angst in me where I just want to play aggressively and let out some of that frustration that was built up over the last two or three years or whatever.

Obviously the video for “The Numbers” contains some pretty powerful imagery. It’s really a perfect example of how words and images can kind of team up to drive narrative. What was it like working with Indecline on that video to make sure the song’s message resonated? 

TIM: Social movements are so important to American history and world history - and they always have been. I feel like they can be easily dismissed - but they have shaped legislation and they’ve shaped ideologies. There is an establishment. There are people in charge. There is an elite that kind of operates and pulls the levers of society - those are our elected officials. But they answer to us. They have to answer to us. That’s how they get reelected. So people should wield that power and they should know that their voices do matter - even when it feels like they don’t matter. Their protests matter and their activism matters and it impacts the decisions and the way they react to certain policies. 

I was just reading about some of the anti-trans legislation that was going through in North Carolina. Eventually they had to reverse the law and just end it - end these nonsense, anti-trans laws. And that’s a success story for progress. To see that this law was going to happen and was going to affect a lot of young people’s lives and instead people stood up and said, “No. We’re not going to be a part of it.” And the people in power had to respond to it.

That’s what “The Numbers” is about. We really do have the numbers. They have the power, we have the numbers. 

In “Nowhere Generation” you sing “we are a credible threat.” It really sums up something I’ve always thought of punk rock, which is that as much as it’s about any sort of sound, it’s even more so a mindset - a refusal to conform and a willingness to speak up. How important is that of an ingredient to what you do and to punk rock in general? 

TIM: Punk rock should always be a little bit dangerous. It should always be a little bit of a threat. It should always exist to make the establishment a little bit uncomfortable. And it should be there to remind people that they have the ability to do that. They have the ability to be a thorn in the side of their problems and the people in power. So that’s part of the legacy of punk. And I think we’re just part of one iteration of it.

How excited are you guys to have actual concert dates scheduled?

JOE: I can’t wait. I felt like someone cut off two of my limbs the last two years - where I just didn’t feel whole. I didn’t have that outlet to play or the connection that we have with our crowd. That’s huge. I just took it for granted. You do something for so long and you inadvertently take it for granted. One positive of the pandemic, I think, is that it makes you appreciate the things that you were neglecting.

TIM: We’re definitely chomping at the bit. And not just for the selfish reasons of wanting to go out and play these songs because that’s what we do. It’s also a part of who we are to travel and hang out with our crew - that’s our family - hang out with each other, see our family on the road and see all of our friends around the world that we can pretty much count on seeing once a year depending on the city you’re in. That’s part of our pulse. It’s part of our heartbeat. It’s part of who we are and what we do.

So this whole year has been trying to figure out what to do without that - figure out who you are without that. In some ways that’s great - it’s a great time to take a deep breath and do some self-reflection and figure out where you are in your life.

But I’m looking forward to it in so many ways. We can’t wait.