Few bands could compose a convincing soundtrack for our apocalyptic election year and the slow-blooming Occupy spring. But Anti-Flag’s The General Strike suits these chaotic times, delivering a bracing sonic snapshot of a superpower off its rocker.
LISTEN: ‘This Is the New Sound’ by Anti-Flag
Free download (MP3)“In The General Strike, we celebrate those who bring a new vision for the world to the table,” Anti-Flag vocalist and guitarist Justin Sane told Wired in an e-mail interview. “People who stand for workers rights, human rights, a just representative political system, and a new mode of doing business where sustainability is the norm not the exception.”
Anti-Flag, a punk band from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that celebrates its 25th anniversary next year, was screaming truth-to-power back when hordes of Occupy‘s populist strivers were in diapers or yet to be born. The group has built a respectable catalog of ferocious full-lengths stuffed with punk stomps over the years.
On the new record, released last week, Anti-Flag serves up a worldview that stands in stark contrast to a society that worships business leaders like late Apple chief Steve Jobs.
“The reality is that a consumer culture which chucks out its iPhones for a new version every nine months is completely unsustainable, because Earth has already reached the tipping point,” Sane said. “ The General Strike attempts to personalize these issues and encourage listeners to look for a new model. Because one does exist.”
The General Strike ‘s focus on political and financial inequity should satisfy the Occupy movement and others distrustful of Wall Street and the White House. Tracks like “Nothing Recedes Like Progress” and “Bullshit Opportunist” blister the rich and chastise the apathetic. “This Is the New Sound,” available as a free download above left, is an impassioned plea for a blue-collar uprising. It’s also the bruised backbone of the tragically hilarious video below, wherein Sane and crew are tortured by sadistic Muppet lookalikes, courtesy of an Anti-Flag tag-team with Amnesty International.
“President Obama looks suspiciously like President Bush, a man on a quest for American Empire.”
“The video takes aim at the danger and absurdity of the recent passage of the National Defense Authorization Act,” Sane said. “Like Amnesty, we share a strong conviction that human rights must be respected, and America isn’t fooling anyone into thinking it has a corner on those rights when it denies them to people at home and abroad. With the NDAA, his failure to close Guantanamo Bay and the ramping use of drones, President Obama looks suspiciously like President Bush, a man on a quest for American Empire.”
But it’s becoming clearer that empire is as unsustainable as hyperconsumption, and for that we can thank technology as much as we can blame it, said Sane. As a tool of engagement and enrichment, technology has revolutionized sociopolitical and socioeconomic participation, laying the foundation for an alluring new strain of worldwide post-capitalism.
We just need to work out some bugs.
“Technology isn’t the enemy, it is our ally,” Sane said. “But only if we adopt a new model that puts people before profit. I realize that we seem far from that model, but I have seen it in action and it is a beautiful thing. So I’m not willing to give up yet. Hope is the last thing to die.”
