1. Propagandhi
2. Alexisonfire
3. Pissed Jeans
4. Teenage Bottlerocket
5. Gallows
6. North Lincoln
7. Brand New
8. Lullabye Arkestra
9. Polar Bear Club
10. Obits
1. Propagandhi Supporting Caste (G7/Smallman)
It's been a banner year for Propagandhi, one that highlighted the best of the band and then threw them into a musical climate that was never intended for the radical-minded success they have forged. Since forming in the '80s, Propagandhi have built a worldwide fan-base and issued five celebrated full-length records, becoming national punk rock heroes whose albums are greeted like sacred edicts delivered from a group of politicized prairie hockey hooligans. And they've done it with the barest semblance of organizational skills, touring, and promotion. That is, until this year's release, Supporting Caste, easily the band's most acclaimed and supported work to date.
Logistically speaking, we're crippled by our inability to organize ourselves," says vocalist and guitarist Chris Hannah. "These days, putting out a record is such a roll of the dice. We were really excited about this particular record so we wanted to give it a fair shake, which we hadn't really done with our records in the past. We just put them out, and if people heard 'em, they heard 'em, and if they didn't, they didn't." While 2005's Potemkin City Limits hinted at a powerful fusion of the classic skate-punk leanings of Less Talk, More Rock (1996) and newfound thrash worship unleashed on Today's Empires, Tomorrow's Ashes (2001), Supporting Caste was shaping up to be a monument to the band's passion and influences. And they wanted people to hear it. "These days, if you don't get out there at all, no one's gonna hear it," says Hannah. "We had invested too much of ourselves in this record to not try."
The band's long-standing aversion to touring was the first obstacle to getting the word out, and it took the arrival of a new member David "The Beaver" Guillas to ignite the band's interest in playing live, adding to the bass and drum heroics of Todd Kowalski and Jord Samolesky. "When we were touring Potemkin City Limits, it just wasn't working," says Hannah. "We were feeling like something was missing, but no one could put their finger on it. Just as our morale was at its lowest, I asked Beave if he felt like jamming with us. He came over, and we were like, 'Holy shit, we should have been doing this years ago.' Not just any guitar player, but Beave specifically."
Finishing out the (extremely limited) touring cycle for Potemkin, the band hunkered down in the basement to begin fleshing out the material that would comprise Supporting Caste. Tracked at the band's home studio in Winnipeg and the Blasting Room in Fort Collins, Colorado with Bill Stevenson (Descendents, ALL) and Jason Livermore, the album would prove to be the massive-sounding rock spectacle they were hoping to create, barbed with the sharp, socio-political lyricism that has been the band's trademark since day one. Then it was time to hit the road. A lot.
"We started the year playing some shows with Bad Brains, which was unbelievable," says Hannah. "Then we played the same festival as the Cro-Mags. Then we played with MDC. And last Saturday we played a show with Sacrifice, a band we've been listening to since we were in our early teens. It was a pretty monumental year. It's kind of surreal." Hitting the ground running meant making some hard decisions for a band comprised of four staunch left-wing radicals raised in Winnipeg's dynamic activist culture. The band has maintained a long-standing refusal to advertise in or conduct interviews with media outlets with business practices they deem unsavory.
We've always made compromises. They stand out for us because we don't make as many and we're pretty vocal about not making them," says Hannah, when asked about the band's sometimes-uncomfortable mainstream existence. "Media have become so ubiquitous that if you don't engage in it, you don't exist to a large portion of the population. We don't live in a cave. We live in the same society everyone else does. We try to maintain our principals to some sane degree, and I don't think people are wrong to criticize us for using corporate media, just as I don't think it's wrong for people to criticize us for producing CDs that end up in a landfill eventually. It's not just bickering, it's a valuable debate."
While Propagandhi have gone upwards of five years between albums, it looks like that debate won't be taking its regular hiatus; with a renewed internal enthusiasm for touring and writing, the band have already started hammering away at their next batch of thinking man's bangers. "Todd and Beave claim that they have between six and 12 songs that are halfway done. I've heard some parts of them and it's all pretty exiting," says Hannah. "For us, though, halfway done means we might as well have not started yet. We have to be right near the finish line before we can talk about having new songs, really. There's lot of material that we have bouncing around, but for us, it's such a fucking struggle to collate it and get it all together into things that resemble songs."
With a new collection of socially conscious progressive thrash on the horizon, it's not the politics or the stage that keeps the band coming back. It's the simple act of playing together. "The most exciting thing is the prospect of still making more music with guys I've been friends with since I was a kid, and still enjoying it, and still getting the same feeling I got when my mom brought home a tape recorder in 1976, pressed record, told me to talk, and played it back so I could hear my voice," says Hannah. "I get that same excitement when I hear our songs coming through the speakers."
Sam Sutherland
2. Alexisonfire Old Crows / Young Cardinals (Dine Alone)
Easily their most experimental yet forthright effort, Old Crows/Young Cardinals finds Alexisonfire evolving without losing the inherently raucous spirit, passion or fury we expect from them, embracing their heroes fearlessly and without mercy. Songs feel refined and complete while they're still enticingly entangled in the clash between rusty, grit-encrusted hardcore and inherent melodic prowess that encapsulates the AOF legacy. So, while their core remains intact on Old Crows/Young Cardinals, it is easily the band's boldest, most adventurous, daring and fucking catchy accomplishment to date; the sonic equivalent to a coming-of-age flick for this energetic quintet.
Keith Carman
3. Pissed Jeans King of Jeans (Sub Pop)
Their second full-length, King of Jeans, was Pissed Jeans' triumphant arrival. Thanks to sludgy production from Alex Newport and another batch of blissfully banal post-hardcore bum-outs, the Pennsylvania-based four-piece are a perfect mess on this record. Preparing the sweaty, illegal basement show mindset for a larger scale, the band continue the menacing Jesus Lizard-meets-Black Flag pummelling that they've made tradition. As brooding guitars and a pulsating rhythm section bolster Matt Korvette's schizophrenic lyrics, it becomes increasingly clear that, as the apocalypse approaches, King of Jeans could be the last great hardcore record written, and no one's complaining.
Josiah Hughes
4. Teenage Bottlerocket They Came From The Shadows (Fat Wreck)
Straight-ahead pop punk from Laramie, Wyoming that's laden with snotty vocal harmonies, eighth notes spastically pounded on the drums and down stroke guitar that heavily shows influence from the Ramones and Screeching Weasel. The band's fourth full-length release is a product of pure insubordination meets boredom with playful degenerate anthems like "Skate or Die," "Call in Sick" and "Without You." The songs are executed swiftly with infectious melodies while still keeping it simple and concise. They Came from the Shadows is relentless punk rock tomfoolery that brings on the kind of rush that only petty vandalism can match.
Brad Schmale
5. Gallows Grey Britain (Warner)
Just as punk rock arrived at a safe, predictable destination, Gallows enter the picture ready to tear down the genre and rebuild it in whatever ugly, angry fashion they choose. Grey Britain, the Watford, England band's second album, shares as much in common with the Sex Pistols snotty attitude as it does with the experimentation and genre pushing of Refused's classic The Shape of Punk to Come. Gallows might not be out to rewrite the rules of punk, but they're certainly injecting it with a much-needed dose of excitement.
Ben Conoley
6. North Lincoln Midwestern Blood (No Idea)
Combining antipathy with melody, North Lincoln expand into a spiralling rendition of Midwestern blue collar rock encapsulating thick vocals, notable beer-swinging swagger and deliciously chunky guitars and bass lines. Midwestern Blood escapes the power-chord punk found on their debut Truth is A Menace, and embraces their Glassjaw influences to paint a heavier, scruffier more dynamic picture of Grand Rapids, MI punk rock. Between the booming sounds on opener "My Summer Spent Indoors," the political undertones on "Remember" and the softer melodies on "Siblings," Midwestern Blood is chock full of hostility, melancholy and some of the craziest drumming of the year.
Sheena Lyonnais
7. Brand New Daisy (Interscope)
Having stretched out their sound like a four-year old with a Slinky on 2006's The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me, Long Island, NY's Brand New once again flipped the script on this wonderfully dense and claustrophobic record. With a poster boy singer and accessible sound, no band was better poised for pop stardom in the post-emo boom. Instead they chose to evolve and distance themselves from the scene that spawned them, adding rattling Jesus Lizard bass lines and distorted Tom Waits vocals to their sound this time out. In a genre rife with sound-alikes, Daisy is a breath of fresh air.
Ian Gormely
8. Lullabye Arkestra Threats/Worship (Vice)
A series of unions ― of course Justin Small and Katia Taylor's wedded bliss, a warm welcome from Vice Records, and the concept of oppressive "bad" versus the freedom of "good" ― are behind Lullabye Arkestra's sophomore album, one definitive of the stripped-down ferocity the two-piece was forced to nurture sans auxiliary musicians. From the metal sludge of "This Is A Storm" to the hardcore churn of "Get Nervous" and the booze-soaked balladry of "Sad Sad Story," the band's real passions are being uprooted and put on full, messy display. Threats/Worship shed layers only to reveal something bigger ― something that's still growing.
Nicole Villeneuve
9. Polar Bear Club Chasing Hamburg (Bridge Nine)
These upstate New Yorkers have been turning punk and hardcore heads since 2005, and Chasing Hamburg is proof positive that the band have yet to slow down the hooky hardcore hit machine. Incredibly catchy riffs, angular structures, and gruff vocals are served up on Chasing Hamburg. It makes for a tasty post-hardcore patty dressed with Leatherface vocals, Sunny Day Real Estate guitar interplay, with a side of Small Brown Bike. It's one of the best of the year, but it's only a taste of what's yet to come from Polar Bear Club.
Aaron Zorgel
10. Obits I Blame You (Sub Pop)
Rick Froberg's bold mission for musical refinement is fully realized on this subtly sharp debut by Obits. The Drive Like Jehu co-founder might be renowned for writing long-form, prog-punk abstractions but, with each new venture, his songs are pointedly trim and taut. While Hot Snakes featured some smaller-scale, roaring, riff-pop, structurally Obits really get to the heart and essence of high energy, blues-rock. The genius of I Blame You, which some fans have missed, really stems from its detailed lyricism, the intricate guitar dynamics between Froberg and Sohrab Habibion, and the impassioned roar of the complete package.
Vish Khanna
2. Alexisonfire
3. Pissed Jeans
4. Teenage Bottlerocket
5. Gallows
6. North Lincoln
7. Brand New
8. Lullabye Arkestra
9. Polar Bear Club
10. Obits
1. Propagandhi Supporting Caste (G7/Smallman)
It's been a banner year for Propagandhi, one that highlighted the best of the band and then threw them into a musical climate that was never intended for the radical-minded success they have forged. Since forming in the '80s, Propagandhi have built a worldwide fan-base and issued five celebrated full-length records, becoming national punk rock heroes whose albums are greeted like sacred edicts delivered from a group of politicized prairie hockey hooligans. And they've done it with the barest semblance of organizational skills, touring, and promotion. That is, until this year's release, Supporting Caste, easily the band's most acclaimed and supported work to date.
Logistically speaking, we're crippled by our inability to organize ourselves," says vocalist and guitarist Chris Hannah. "These days, putting out a record is such a roll of the dice. We were really excited about this particular record so we wanted to give it a fair shake, which we hadn't really done with our records in the past. We just put them out, and if people heard 'em, they heard 'em, and if they didn't, they didn't." While 2005's Potemkin City Limits hinted at a powerful fusion of the classic skate-punk leanings of Less Talk, More Rock (1996) and newfound thrash worship unleashed on Today's Empires, Tomorrow's Ashes (2001), Supporting Caste was shaping up to be a monument to the band's passion and influences. And they wanted people to hear it. "These days, if you don't get out there at all, no one's gonna hear it," says Hannah. "We had invested too much of ourselves in this record to not try."
The band's long-standing aversion to touring was the first obstacle to getting the word out, and it took the arrival of a new member David "The Beaver" Guillas to ignite the band's interest in playing live, adding to the bass and drum heroics of Todd Kowalski and Jord Samolesky. "When we were touring Potemkin City Limits, it just wasn't working," says Hannah. "We were feeling like something was missing, but no one could put their finger on it. Just as our morale was at its lowest, I asked Beave if he felt like jamming with us. He came over, and we were like, 'Holy shit, we should have been doing this years ago.' Not just any guitar player, but Beave specifically."
Finishing out the (extremely limited) touring cycle for Potemkin, the band hunkered down in the basement to begin fleshing out the material that would comprise Supporting Caste. Tracked at the band's home studio in Winnipeg and the Blasting Room in Fort Collins, Colorado with Bill Stevenson (Descendents, ALL) and Jason Livermore, the album would prove to be the massive-sounding rock spectacle they were hoping to create, barbed with the sharp, socio-political lyricism that has been the band's trademark since day one. Then it was time to hit the road. A lot.
"We started the year playing some shows with Bad Brains, which was unbelievable," says Hannah. "Then we played the same festival as the Cro-Mags. Then we played with MDC. And last Saturday we played a show with Sacrifice, a band we've been listening to since we were in our early teens. It was a pretty monumental year. It's kind of surreal." Hitting the ground running meant making some hard decisions for a band comprised of four staunch left-wing radicals raised in Winnipeg's dynamic activist culture. The band has maintained a long-standing refusal to advertise in or conduct interviews with media outlets with business practices they deem unsavory.
We've always made compromises. They stand out for us because we don't make as many and we're pretty vocal about not making them," says Hannah, when asked about the band's sometimes-uncomfortable mainstream existence. "Media have become so ubiquitous that if you don't engage in it, you don't exist to a large portion of the population. We don't live in a cave. We live in the same society everyone else does. We try to maintain our principals to some sane degree, and I don't think people are wrong to criticize us for using corporate media, just as I don't think it's wrong for people to criticize us for producing CDs that end up in a landfill eventually. It's not just bickering, it's a valuable debate."
While Propagandhi have gone upwards of five years between albums, it looks like that debate won't be taking its regular hiatus; with a renewed internal enthusiasm for touring and writing, the band have already started hammering away at their next batch of thinking man's bangers. "Todd and Beave claim that they have between six and 12 songs that are halfway done. I've heard some parts of them and it's all pretty exiting," says Hannah. "For us, though, halfway done means we might as well have not started yet. We have to be right near the finish line before we can talk about having new songs, really. There's lot of material that we have bouncing around, but for us, it's such a fucking struggle to collate it and get it all together into things that resemble songs."
With a new collection of socially conscious progressive thrash on the horizon, it's not the politics or the stage that keeps the band coming back. It's the simple act of playing together. "The most exciting thing is the prospect of still making more music with guys I've been friends with since I was a kid, and still enjoying it, and still getting the same feeling I got when my mom brought home a tape recorder in 1976, pressed record, told me to talk, and played it back so I could hear my voice," says Hannah. "I get that same excitement when I hear our songs coming through the speakers."
Sam Sutherland
2. Alexisonfire Old Crows / Young Cardinals (Dine Alone)
Easily their most experimental yet forthright effort, Old Crows/Young Cardinals finds Alexisonfire evolving without losing the inherently raucous spirit, passion or fury we expect from them, embracing their heroes fearlessly and without mercy. Songs feel refined and complete while they're still enticingly entangled in the clash between rusty, grit-encrusted hardcore and inherent melodic prowess that encapsulates the AOF legacy. So, while their core remains intact on Old Crows/Young Cardinals, it is easily the band's boldest, most adventurous, daring and fucking catchy accomplishment to date; the sonic equivalent to a coming-of-age flick for this energetic quintet.
Keith Carman
3. Pissed Jeans King of Jeans (Sub Pop)
Their second full-length, King of Jeans, was Pissed Jeans' triumphant arrival. Thanks to sludgy production from Alex Newport and another batch of blissfully banal post-hardcore bum-outs, the Pennsylvania-based four-piece are a perfect mess on this record. Preparing the sweaty, illegal basement show mindset for a larger scale, the band continue the menacing Jesus Lizard-meets-Black Flag pummelling that they've made tradition. As brooding guitars and a pulsating rhythm section bolster Matt Korvette's schizophrenic lyrics, it becomes increasingly clear that, as the apocalypse approaches, King of Jeans could be the last great hardcore record written, and no one's complaining.
Josiah Hughes
4. Teenage Bottlerocket They Came From The Shadows (Fat Wreck)
Straight-ahead pop punk from Laramie, Wyoming that's laden with snotty vocal harmonies, eighth notes spastically pounded on the drums and down stroke guitar that heavily shows influence from the Ramones and Screeching Weasel. The band's fourth full-length release is a product of pure insubordination meets boredom with playful degenerate anthems like "Skate or Die," "Call in Sick" and "Without You." The songs are executed swiftly with infectious melodies while still keeping it simple and concise. They Came from the Shadows is relentless punk rock tomfoolery that brings on the kind of rush that only petty vandalism can match.
Brad Schmale
5. Gallows Grey Britain (Warner)
Just as punk rock arrived at a safe, predictable destination, Gallows enter the picture ready to tear down the genre and rebuild it in whatever ugly, angry fashion they choose. Grey Britain, the Watford, England band's second album, shares as much in common with the Sex Pistols snotty attitude as it does with the experimentation and genre pushing of Refused's classic The Shape of Punk to Come. Gallows might not be out to rewrite the rules of punk, but they're certainly injecting it with a much-needed dose of excitement.
Ben Conoley
6. North Lincoln Midwestern Blood (No Idea)
Combining antipathy with melody, North Lincoln expand into a spiralling rendition of Midwestern blue collar rock encapsulating thick vocals, notable beer-swinging swagger and deliciously chunky guitars and bass lines. Midwestern Blood escapes the power-chord punk found on their debut Truth is A Menace, and embraces their Glassjaw influences to paint a heavier, scruffier more dynamic picture of Grand Rapids, MI punk rock. Between the booming sounds on opener "My Summer Spent Indoors," the political undertones on "Remember" and the softer melodies on "Siblings," Midwestern Blood is chock full of hostility, melancholy and some of the craziest drumming of the year.
Sheena Lyonnais
7. Brand New Daisy (Interscope)
Having stretched out their sound like a four-year old with a Slinky on 2006's The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me, Long Island, NY's Brand New once again flipped the script on this wonderfully dense and claustrophobic record. With a poster boy singer and accessible sound, no band was better poised for pop stardom in the post-emo boom. Instead they chose to evolve and distance themselves from the scene that spawned them, adding rattling Jesus Lizard bass lines and distorted Tom Waits vocals to their sound this time out. In a genre rife with sound-alikes, Daisy is a breath of fresh air.
Ian Gormely
8. Lullabye Arkestra Threats/Worship (Vice)
A series of unions ― of course Justin Small and Katia Taylor's wedded bliss, a warm welcome from Vice Records, and the concept of oppressive "bad" versus the freedom of "good" ― are behind Lullabye Arkestra's sophomore album, one definitive of the stripped-down ferocity the two-piece was forced to nurture sans auxiliary musicians. From the metal sludge of "This Is A Storm" to the hardcore churn of "Get Nervous" and the booze-soaked balladry of "Sad Sad Story," the band's real passions are being uprooted and put on full, messy display. Threats/Worship shed layers only to reveal something bigger ― something that's still growing.
Nicole Villeneuve
9. Polar Bear Club Chasing Hamburg (Bridge Nine)
These upstate New Yorkers have been turning punk and hardcore heads since 2005, and Chasing Hamburg is proof positive that the band have yet to slow down the hooky hardcore hit machine. Incredibly catchy riffs, angular structures, and gruff vocals are served up on Chasing Hamburg. It makes for a tasty post-hardcore patty dressed with Leatherface vocals, Sunny Day Real Estate guitar interplay, with a side of Small Brown Bike. It's one of the best of the year, but it's only a taste of what's yet to come from Polar Bear Club.
Aaron Zorgel
10. Obits I Blame You (Sub Pop)
Rick Froberg's bold mission for musical refinement is fully realized on this subtly sharp debut by Obits. The Drive Like Jehu co-founder might be renowned for writing long-form, prog-punk abstractions but, with each new venture, his songs are pointedly trim and taut. While Hot Snakes featured some smaller-scale, roaring, riff-pop, structurally Obits really get to the heart and essence of high energy, blues-rock. The genius of I Blame You, which some fans have missed, really stems from its detailed lyricism, the intricate guitar dynamics between Froberg and Sohrab Habibion, and the impassioned roar of the complete package.
Vish Khanna