Interview: Rise Against

When I first opened up your new album, Appeal To Reason, the first thing I saw was your list of recommended books and films for your fans, so that they can be more aware about what's really going on around them and in their lives. With everything that's happened over the last few weeks, do you have any additional suggestions for things that fans should check out to get a better understanding on everything that's going on out there? Brandon Barnes: You know, we list, like, a couple books and things to look at to kind of open your eyes [in the liner notes to Appeal To Reason], but yeah, it's been tough times, man. We're coming up on an election, and no one in this band is voting Republican. We're really hoping, first of all, that kids go out and vote, no matter who they vote for, and obviously we're pushing for no more Republican domination for the next four years. As far as reading up for all that, though, like what I've been telling kids when meeting them, is just find out about the candidates. We were in Phoenix a couple weeks ago playing with Pennywise and Jim [Lindberg, vocalist] from Pennywise was like, 'Who's voting for Obama?!' And there were cheers and then he yelled out, 'Who's voting for McCain?' And, granted, McCain's a senator from Arizona, but it was like the whole crowd was silent. If you really look into McCain's past it gets shady, so I would just hope people would just go and actually educate themselves about the candidates. Actually the [issue of] Rolling Stone, John McCain is on the cover and they have a whole article about his past and it kind of outlines him in a different light. It's a really interesting read, actually.

Besides the election, with everything that's happened economically recently, do you have any advice or anything that you think your fans or younger people should know so that they can look at things differently than just the massive amounts of fear being presented in the mainstream media right now? You know, I don't know, man. It's tricky. Everyone keeps saying this is the worst it's been since The Great Depression, but when I think of a depression I think of bread lines and people starving to death and so while I know economically we're in some trouble, I think that goes back to the Republicans. I think it goes back to Bush getting us into two different wars, and just spending ridiculous amounts of money a day in this war in Iraq that's really going absolutely nowhere. Really, I think another reason for this financial crisis is just credit in general. You've got millions of people in this country spending money that they don't really have. The whole idea of credit is that I can go spend twenty grand that I won't have. I'm suspecting that that's finally having a huge effect on the economy. I'm not an economist, so I don't really know the details [laughs].

How would you like to see the war ultimately come to an end? Yeah, obviously Afghanistan and Iraq are two way different conflicts. Our government went after Afghanistan because they wanted to stamp out the Taliban which they thought was supporting [Osama] bin Laden, but I think as far as Iraq goes, my viewpoint is get out as soon as possible. I don't think we're making as much progress over there as the Republican side keeps saying we are. It's a mess over there. At our show last night we had some soldiers from the IVAW, Iraq Veterans Against the War. They were tabling at our show last night and they're going to be tabling throughout this tour. These are kids that were over there; kids that were in the city streets of Iraq and they're saying they're not doing any good. They're kicking down doors of strangers, ransacking homes, flipping over furniture, digging through all their shit and when they don't find anything? Next house. I mean, imagine that. Just imagine in your town, soldiers and tanks going house by house and just digging through shit. And they don't see that much of a change. They don't see anything getting better. These are kids that were over there just recently. These are people who aren't anti-military. Many of them are still in the military and proud to be in the military. They're just saying, 'We're not doing anything over there.' Like, what's the mission? And when is it going to end? There is no mission now. The only mission now is to save face. Oh, we can't lose; we've got to win. That's not a reason to continue the bloodshed.

Yeah, especially when you're asking or ordering these brave young people who want to do valiant things to continue with this random behavior over there. I hear that right away, like how you guys wanted to confront that side of it, on 'Hero of War' on the new album. Is that ultimately what you want to do is give a voicebox to those people and not just help them to reach people but make sure their message is heard as loudly and by as many people as your band is? Yeah, for sure, it definitely is. Like you said, the minute [the IVAW] heard the song they completely agreed. The song isn't supposed to be bashing the military or anti-American. You sort of feel sorry for these young kids. A lot of them got recruited because they're from low-income families or they wanted to go to college... the tactics these recruiters use to get these kids in the military are pretty scary and they're not true. And you get these kids over there in these awful situations and doing awful things. Like, the last verse of the song is about a guy gunning down a woman. I mean you've got a woman running towards you and you don't know if she's got a bomb strapped to her and you end up shooting her before realizing that she's got her surrender flag in her hands – I mean, that's something that's going to ruin that person's life forever. Forever. I mean, it's really sad what these kids are conned into going over there to do. I mean, there's always time for war. It's not like we're over there fighting the Nazis – granted, that war was justified. I just think it's time to move on, time to get out of there.

With the even larger audience that you now have after The Sufferer and The Witness, did you feel any more or different pressure while working on Appeal To Reason than you had before because you knew it would be reaching so many more people so immediately? Not really. I mean, maybe we should have. I think bands do get themselves wrapped up in the pressure and the expectations and they can freeze the writing process. They can change your sound and force you to write songs that aren't you. But doing this record, we were all really mellow and we just went about it the Rise Against way, and that's the way that we've always done it. And we're lucky at our label, too. We have a team of people around us that give us a hundred percent control over music, videos, album art – all of that is under our control and I think that also helps us be natural and do what we do. A lot of bands, especially on major labels, have a lot of people breathing down their throat. They want demos, they want this sort of message, they want you to dress like this and do this, and we don't have any of that. So, like I said, I think that helps us remain ourselves and keep doing what we do.

All four of you are vegan. What do you think people typically misunderstand about going vegetarian or vegan? It's not so much in the last few years – in the last few years it's gotten so that every restaurant you go to has a veggie burger or a veggie whatever, but yeah, people still think you're weird. You don't eat cheeseburgers, what the hell is wrong with you? So yeah, I think the only misunderstanding is how easy it is to be vegetarian and how healthy it is and how some people just don't want to eat flesh. And the whole animal rights thing too. The way that burger ends up on your plate is pretty ugly. That burger may look fine on your plate, but if you go back and look where it came from, it's disgusting, I think, really. A lot of people that are die-hard meat eaters think it's crazy, but those are also people I think who are also good at turning a blind eye to where their food came from. I can't really do that. I have to know what I'm eating, know what I'm wearing. That's just my personality type. People can say what they want, but meat's also awful for the environment. It's a greater cause of emissions than cars.

Since you mentioned knowing what you're wearing as well, I wanted to ask about the vegan shoe that you guys have with Vans. What all went into that and how far does veganism extend into apparel? Well, none of us wear leather or try to ever wear leather in any way. Don't support, don't put your money into it. So we got Vans to make us an all-vegan shoe just to show kids, look, this is a comfortable, totally vegan shoe and things don't necessarily have to be made out of leather anymore. This isn't like the 1700s. There are all sorts of synthetic materials that do the exact same job. And there's no torture involved, no pollution, no suffering.