#chris head

Live: Vol. 1 does a good job of bringing a sense of their life performance to your ears, but Anti-Flag shows are full-body shows, never waning in energy, and there’s something you miss by not actually being there. This summer, you can be there, as the band are on Vans Warped Tour for the entirety of the tour.

And it’s when you see them, as we’re all halfway through the first year of the circus show that is a Trump presidency, that you realize why they’re a band that matters so much. If you’re a longtime Anti-Flag fan, you’re probably already familiar with this, but if you’re not, here’s the skinny: Anti-Flag does tons of progressive outreach. They work with and have worked with Amnesty International, Green Peace, Democracy Now!, PETA and tons of others. They’re activists. They protest, they confront, they support the opposition. Given the corporate and bigoted administration Trump has erected, it’s hardly a surprise that it’s fertile ground for Anti-Flag.

Drummer Pat Thetic

This is arguably the golden hour for all of punk rock, since progressive ideals are under such unapologetic attack by Trump, and many many punk bands, activists, and liberal artists (that’s a lot of them) are motivated to speak out. But Anti-Flag aren’t just a punk band – they’re a good one. They have classic punk bones – shredding guitars, non-stop energy, lots of “whoahs,” and lots of parts to sing along to, but the band also innovates and manages to keep things fresh. Remember: They’re activists and musicians. This isn’t your generic, chugging, power chord punk rock run through fourteen layers of distortion effects. Justin Sane’s (vocals, lead guitar) leads are charged and bursting at the seams; Chris #2 (Chris Barker, bass, vocals) brings bass to the forefront of your mind (go listen to “Cities Burn,” one of the best songs for punk bass). You never get a “oh, these guys are still around?” feeling from them. You can pretty much expect every release to be in your face in its own way.

Glance through most of the main records in their catalog, and each is distinct from one another (our favorite is For Blood And Empire from 2006).

Chris #2 singing with the crowd to “Brandenburg Gate”

Their set at Warped Tour spanned a good swath of this catalog, too – as much as a band can with 30 minute sets, anyway. It drew from For Blood And Empire, American Spring (2015), The Terror State (2003), and even two from their first album in 1996, Die for the Government.

Songs from their set were bitterly relevant, as is to be expected. See “Turncoat,” a tune about former President George W. Bush, feeling applicable to Trump. But this is more tragedy than triumph. The band threw in “Fuck Police Brutality,” but not before taking a moment to remember all recent victims of such brutality (Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, and others). 

Anti-Flag at the start of “Fuck Police Brutality”

The tragedy comes when you realize this song, released in 1996, is painfully relevant 21 years later. For a non-political band, it would be weird to pull such a deep cut from so far back in their catalog for a 30-minute set, but it makes so much sense for Anti-Flag because this is what they do. It’s tragic that the song is still relevant, but on the flip side, it’s why Anti-Flag matters, and why the band is one of the most important on Warped Tour this summer. If protesting Trump is your thing, there’s actually a lot of merch on Warped Tour to scratch that itch, with Anti-Flag selling a shirt that boldly declares “smash the alt-right” (the alt-right being the far-right ideology that has mostly been in support of Trump).

We’re probably due for an LP of new content soon. When Trump was inaugurated, there was a meme that went around saying something along the lines of “the only benefit to this is that we’re going to get some killer punk rock music in the next four years!” Meme standards aside, this is kind of true (again, it’s the golden hour), and it makes us really excited about what comes next for Anti-Flag and how they’re going to boil the turmoil of a Trump presidency into yet another sonic punk record.

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Article and photos by sonder editor Andrew Friedgen. Enjoy this? Sonder is an independent music, travel and photography feature publication at sonderlife.com. Give us a follow here or at our Twitter, Instagram or Facebook if you like in-depth talk about music, travel, photography and lots more.

Also check out:

All of our Vans Warped Tour 2017 coverage

Our previous feature, on Jule Vera

All Anti-Flag photos