Against Me!
White Crosses

Release Date: 2010 | Tracklist

Eight years ago Against Me! released the brilliantly-titled Reinventing Axl Rose. It came across as the angriest folk record ever made with singer/guitarist/ anarchist sloganeer Tom Gabel screaming over wrist-achingly fast strumming. In other words Reinventing was as close to a true punk record as anyone could ever hope to make and as a result had a very limited audience. With every album since then Against Me! have widened their popularity. Until 2007s New Wave gave them a minor breakthrough and a few killer singles in the form of Thrash Unreal and White People For Peace. This new album from Against Me! continues this trend and is much more poppy than even New Wave. The drums thunder and boom, the guitar is often soaked in effects and several of the tracks prominently use piano. No doubt this is going to see Against Me! labelled as sellouts but this view seems slightly narrow minded. For a start Against Me! are far from the first punk band to move in a more popular direction. The Clash and Nirvan both did it and produced their career defining albums while bands like The Ramones, Bad Religion and especially Green Day have remained popular whilst expanding their fan base. In fact, with White Crosses, Against Me! sound fairly similar to American Idiot era Green Day. They both manage to combine punk ideals with big choruses. However while Green Day have moved even more into the mainstream with the mediocre 21st Century Breakdown and a broadway musical (what the hell were they thinking !?). Against Me! manage counterbalance their commercial sound with brilliant, intelligent lyrics that, for me, really define this album.. From the emotional Because Of The Shame (in which Gabel mourns the loss of a former girlfriend by singing that “I watched your mother bury you today with tears in her eyes, It wasn’t her words that shook me, it was the resemblance you shared”) to the ranting of High Pressure Low (how many other bands could combine lyrics like “ Vestal virgins triumph over lifelong inhibitions” with a sing-along chorus). These two are only a couple of the brilliant lyrics that I kept discovering throughout the album.
Although the big sounding arena rock approach is probably going to put off Against Me!’s more punk fans I’m predicting it’s going to find them a whole new group of fans among the people who prefer Green Day to Black Flag and personally I don’t think it’s a bad thing. White Crosses starts the album by making me want to air guitar and air drum at the same time and it only gets better. I Was A Teenage Anarchist’s anthemic chorus will sound great screamed out by a few thousand yelling fans as will the shouts at the end of Rapid Decompression. The only low points on the album are the acoustic ballad Ache With Me (which just seems a and meandering and only serves to slow down the album’s pace) and Suffocation (a mid tempo song seems to lack the drive of the rest of the album) however by the time the final chorus of Bamboo Bones has finished blasting out of your speakers you’ll have little time to dwell on the small disappointments of these songs as you’ll be too busy humming along to any one of the other eight tracks.
Although White Crosses is a pretty massive departure from Against Me!’s folk punk roots that will probably see them labelled as sell-outs by their old fans, I can see it winning them a whole new legion of fans with its intelligent lyrics and stadium-sized choruses and, when they write songs this good, that can only be a good thing.

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3 good

Rank: #0 for 2010