Tim McIlrath from Rise Against took some time before the huge Resch Center show to talk about what’s going on with the band. We started by discussing the tour itself because on paper this wasn’t a tour some people would come up with.
‘It’s funny because touring falls under our purview, it’s really in our control, we can decide to do it or not to do it…and we get hit with things all the time we say no to, or we come up with ideas that fall through for one reason or another. The Papa Roach guys we’ve known for a long time but mostly in the festival world, like a radio show kind of thing…our bands shared the airwaves together…so it had kind of been mumbled about in the past but nothing was like REALLY concrete until this one and they said “What if you guys came out with us?” And it’s exciting to watch their band kind of have this renaissance where they’ve doubled down their popularity too. So they’re coming to these big ass places and that sounded appealing to us too…and then when Underoath came on then it was like, alright this is a cool tour, let’s do this.’
It was an appealing thing for Rise Against to find be on the tour beyond all of that because it gave them a chance to play in front of people they’ve never played in front of before as well. As Tim says here.
‘You know as your band gets older you look for opportunities to play in front of new people. It’s easy to play in front of your fans, you know, when you come to a place like Green Bay, but you’d like to play to people who have never seen your band play. Or maybe like know some songs but never fully committed to buying a ticket to your show….Hopefully next time we roll through the states they’ll remember and be like “oh that band was cool let’s go see them.”
Rise Against has been known for being a band that makes statement with their music and with today’s political climate there is no shortage of material for Tim to pull from for the new album.
‘Rise Against has been, without almost meaning it to, has become a dystopian project…where we’re talking about a world that we would live in if we keep going down the road we’re going down. And now we’re sort of there, you know we’re watching these things happen in real time. So in that sense the songs sort of have this relevancy and they feel more urgent…I feel the words differently I feel the song differently they have this new life.’
We moved on to talk about the new album process. He said they used a different producer than previous releases, someone he says had very little knowledge of the band. I asked what makes a Rise Against song in 2025, he said this.
‘I think what we’ve done with some of the new stuff we’ve put out is (thought) “What if we handed these very traditional Rise Against ideas to somebody that was largely unfamiliar with slash doesn’t have the baggage that we might have with our own band and run it by people who are only peripherally aware of what we do. And then hear the song through their ears…You’re going to hear our band but the record will sound different than previous records. Which I think was the goal.’
Giving the work away to someone who didn’t know the band as well as their previous team was a heavy proposition.
‘For everyone that knows us, we have nine records out, six of them we did with the same team (Bill Stevenson)…We knew what we were going to get out of those sessions…So on this record we went to a woman named Catherine Marks, who wasn’t intimately aware of Rise Against, so there times in the process where we were like “No this is the way we do this!” And you see her be like “I don’t care, I’m not here to do all the same things you guys have already done…I’m here to hear your band now as if this is your first record and no one’s ever heard you before.” And so there’s moments of discomfort for sure but in the end the result is always like this is cool, this is different, I like it.’
No timeline was given for the rest of the album but gauging by Tim’s excitement it’s going to be worth the wait!
[Spotify: Decker] [Catherine Marks] [YouTube: Rise Against]
