Sampling — Propagandhi

PROPAGANDHI
SUPPORTING CASTE
Smallman Records/ G7 Welcoming Committee, 2009

By Nick McGregor

Punk rock has fallen into a bit of a rut lately. While second-wave pioneers like Pennywise, NOFX, and Bad Religion continue to perform, record, and tour, the fire once lit under their collective asses seems to have sputtered. And let’s not even discuss the current state of emo-punk, full of bands with terrible names like The Devil Wears Prada and Escape The Fate.

Which makes it all the more heartening that Canadian anarcho-radicalists Propagandhi have returned to the game and delivered a thrashing, throbbing slab of heavy-duty punk with their March release Supporting Caste. And while this pro-gay, pro-feminist, pro-vegan, anti-fascist, anti-capitalist foursome shuns the militant/political label they often get slapped with, what better way to describe a band with past song names like “Resisting Tyrannical Government,” “The Only Good Fascist Is A Very Dead Fascist,” and “With Friends Like These Who The F**k Needs Cointelpro”?

Each one of Propagandhi’s albums has progressively ventured into more complex instrumentation, and Supporting Caste continues that trend, especially with the addition of second guitarist David “The Beaver” Guillas. Where early records like How To Clean Everything featured exuberantly confrontational pop-punk in the vein of fellow Fat Wreck Chords labelmates, this latest entry on the band’s own G7 Welcoming Committee imprint rocks hard, fast, and with immediate effect.

Elements of speed-metal and thrash bludgeon listeners on opener “Night Letters” and the furiously brutal “Incalculable Effects,” while the classic Canuck marriage of melodic punk and technical hardcore shows up on “Potemkin City Limits” and the aggressively self-realizing “Without Love.” Yet the Propagandhi message still burns brightly on the title track, which ridicules revisionist history, and the face-blasting “Dear Coach’s Corner,” which lampoons Canadian hockey announcer Don Cherry and his on-air support for the war in Iraq – while also celebrating lead singer Chris Hannah’s intense (and unlikely, for a punk musician) love for the game of hockey.

Then there’s the Jonathan Swift-like satire of “Human[e] Meat,” which, tongue planted firmly in cheek, exposes the horrifyingly paradoxical position that if we can humanely kill and eat animals, why not do the same with humans? Anyone lamenting the loss of significance in punk rock’s lyrics need only look to Supporting Caste’s liner notes, which are full of succinct, intelligent, and argumentative pleas to mankind’s more equitable impulses.

After joyously taking part in the energetic mosh pit that formed in front of the band’s recent Harvest of Hope Fest performance, I realized the best thing Propagandhi has going for them: Even if you don’t subscribe to all, or even any, of their radical beliefs, they still rock a hell of a lot harder than just about any punk band in existence.