Rise Against: The Sufferer & The Witness : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Rise Against became Warped Tour A-listers with their 2004 major-label debut: Dark and catchy like emo, only faster, tougher and more concerned with social decay than broken hearts, Siren Song of the Counter Culture is full of complex, supercharged punk songs spiked with crackling hooks and urgent choruses. The Sufferer and the Witness beefs up the Chicago quartet's ass-kicking thwack: With even more shout-along moments and topsy-turvy action, it's rousing, tightly wound and could be the album of the summer for anybody who needs a good yowl in their lives.

Heading up the maelstrom is Tim McIlrath, a ragged-voiced shouter who is as likely to buckle at the knees as to pump a fist: He rails against man's inhumanity to man and piles up images of burning buildings, bleeding lips and broken bottles on cuts like "Drones" and "Behind Closed Doors." But he also craves spiritual salvation on bangers such as "Worth Dying For," a freight train on which he prays (to God, a girl or the rhythm section, maybe), "Take me from this world/Save me." The music mirrors the push-and-pull between despondency and earnest striving in McIlrath's lyrics: Lead single "Ready to Fall" blasts through bass-driven double time, a thrashy, throat-shredding interlude and a big, catchy chorus that could have come from early Offspring. The spoken-word rant "The Approaching Curve" and the drumless, murmured slow-burner "Roadside" are shaky changes of pace. Rise Against are at their best on a diet of suburban rage and Black Flag -- not a bad foundation at all.