Anti-Flag

Around this time last year, perhaps you were thinking to yourself, "Wow, now that Barack Obama's the president, I guess all those über-political bands that have been raging against George W. Bush and his policies for the past eight years are totally screwed. Now what are they gonna complain about?"...

By Michael Alan Goldberg

January 21, 2010

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Around this time last year, perhaps you were thinking to yourself, "Wow, now that Barack Obama's the president, I guess all those über-political bands that have been raging against George W. Bush and his policies for the past eight years are totally screwed. Now what are they gonna complain about?" As it turns out, there's plenty for a band like anti-government, anti-corporate, straight-edge rabble-rousers Anti-Flag to be upset about: We're still at war, there still are no jobs, and things still generally seem pretty fucked. "Stabbed repeatedly in the back by the Wall Street suit / The Washington hack / Lining up their pockets with the people's cash and laughing all the way to the bank . . . I've seen a lot of bailouts in my life / But why is it I never see a bailout for the homeless and the poor?" frontman Justin Sane sneers in "The Economy Is Suffering . . . Let It Die." It's one of the 11 socio-politically charged tracks from the Pittsburgh quartet's seventh LP, The People or the Gun. And the band plays its anthemic three-chord crunch infused with the spirit of Crass and The Clash, just as it has for the past 21-plus years. As far as Anti-Flag is concerned, the more things change the more they stay the same. And they're probably right. I mean, left.

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