Ricochet
Ten albums is a landmark in the music business, a testament to perseverance. For Chicago punk rockers Rise Against, the milestone sparked a new kind of self-awareness. “This is the first time I think I’d ever paid attention to the number of records we have, and 10 seemed like a lot,” vocalist and guitarist Tim McIlrath tells Apple Music. “Not a lot of my favorite bands made 10 records, you know what I mean?” To mark the occasion, Rise Against decided to switch things up. After making six of their last eight albums with producers Bill Stevenson and Jason Livermore, they enlisted Grammy-winning producer Catherine Marks (St. Vincent, boygenius) to take the wheel for *Ricochet*. “After 25 years, we’re sort of congealed in our way of working and sounding,” McIlrath says. “No matter how hard we try to break out of that, there’s going to be some of that still in us, which I think gives you the Rise Against sound. So we picked a producer who is really outside the box for us, and largely unfamiliar with the Rise Against world. Therefore, she’s not beholden to any idea of what we should sound like.” Lyrically, McIlrath zeroed in on the theme of interconnectedness. “What I’ve been thinking about since our last record is just how desperate we are to isolate ourselves from each other, but how unavoidable it is that we’re all connected,” he says. “We try to crawl into our own silos and listen to our own news channels and streaming algorithms, and we react to things as if we’re not connected—not realizing that everything we do is so connected. I kept picturing this room that we’re all firing guns in. You may have intended to hit this target, but you actually hit someone else—or yourself—because all the bullets are ricocheting everywhere.” Below, he details each song on the album. **“Nod”** “When our songs fall into the political bucket, they’re often call-to-action songs, but this one was less of a call to action and more of a question of ‘Are you in this with me? Are we together? Am I alone?’ And I think that our shows can feel like those rallies in a sense, where just for a moment you feel like you’re not alone. You realize that there are people that are like you next to you. ‘Nod’ is talking about the nods we give to each other, those unspoken signs we give each other to let people know, ‘Hey, I see you, you see me.’ When I grew up in the late ’80s and ’90s, if you walked on the street holding a skateboard, you were nodding to every single other person with a skateboard out there. Or maybe you’re wearing a Descendents T-shirt. I think we’re always nodding, signaling different things to each other.” **“I Want It All”** “We came up with a real simple riff that felt powerful, and we decided not to overthink it. I think that Rise Against has lots of strengths, but if I was to speak about our weaknesses, we can get lost down the rabbit hole of a song and overthink it until we’ve just sucked the life out of it. So we decided to just put this one out there—big riff, big lyrics, a statement song. Lyrically, it’s about not settling. The punk rock world is steeped in punk rock guilt, the idea that you should be ashamed of any success you have. That’s the world we all grew up in. So we turned that on its head: Whether it’s musically or politically or with your career, don’t be afraid to want it all.” **“Ricochet”** “There’s a line in the song that goes, ‘Don’t turn away as the bullets ricochet.’ I kept picturing the world turning as so many horrible things are happening in it, and the things that we find ourselves doing on a Friday night, whether it’s at a Rise Against show or at a club or whatever, and meanwhile people are starving in Sudan. The reality of life is that we certainly can’t be emotionally engaged 100 percent of the time, but sometimes I feel like we can be turning away from it too much. So it’s saying: Don’t forget what’s happening in the world. Don’t forget that the life you live is sometimes built on the backs of people who aren’t living it.” **“Damage Is Done”** “This was a fun song to put together because it’s based around a Rise Against riff that’s about 15 years old or maybe even older. It’s something we’ve been playing around with for a long time but we’d always just hit a dead end with. Usually when you hit enough dead ends, I think as a musician it’s your sign to move on. There’s lots of songs I would give up on that I never thought about again. But this one nagged at me, and we always talked about it as the one that got away. This time, we finally turned it into a song. So, for us, it’s like a throwback, even though no one’s ever heard it before.” **“Us Against the World”** “This is about how easy it is to feel overwhelmed with what’s going on in the world. And it’s a reminder that anybody who ever changed anything meaningful in society always at first felt alone. So it’s normal to feel like it’s you against the world. That’s where lots of good things get started. The song is saying, ‘Can’t you see it’s always been us against the world?’ And maybe it’ll always feel like that, but it’s okay.” **“Black Crown”** “I co-wrote this with Andy Hull from Manchester Orchestra. I flew down to their place outside Atlanta, and we just jammed and hung out and wrote this one all in an afternoon, just him and I in a room with acoustic guitars and sort of singing at each other. That was fun, because I’d never really done that with anyone outside of the band before, so the song is probably a little bit of a curveball in the Rise Against world. Lyrically, Andy had read an article about a guy who was a doomsday prepper. Instead of trying to actively fix and repair the world, these guys are trying to survive and endure. But if you survive a nuclear apocalypse in your bunker or whatever, the world won’t be a place you want to live in.” **“Sink Like a Stone”** “When I was in high school, I had a summer job as a lifeguard. Every year I had to get trained in CPR and first aid, and one of the things they would tell you is that if someone was drowning and you had to save this person, you’ve got to make sure you take care of yourself first. You can’t create a second victim. If you go out and try to save some guy who’s twice your size, he could very well take you down. And now there’s two people drowning. So you’ve got to make sure you’re looking out for yourself. If you can’t help yourself, you can’t help anybody else.” **“Forty Days”** “This one’s just about persistence and patience and dedication and commitment to something or someone. I will wait here no matter what’s coming for you. No matter what happens as the waters rise, no one’s going to make me move. I’ll be right here. It’s a commitment and a dedication to an idea or a person. As for the number, it’s the old ‘40 days and 40 nights’ thing, like Moses in the desert. I went to Catholic school K through 8, so there’s too much Bible in me no matter what I do.” **“State of Emergency”** “I feel like the news and media around us is so driven for profit nowadays that the only way to keep us really engaged is to convince us that we’re always in some state of emergency. There’s always some breaking news, there’s always something happening that’s super urgent today, right now, that you need to drop everything and be fully panicked about. And I think there are things on this planet that we should be fully panicked about, but the biggest story of the day is often something we won’t be able to remember tomorrow. It creates a lot of anxiety for people, and this is the world our kids are growing up in.” **“Gold Long Gone”** “I think this taps into some of the ideas behind our last record, *Nowhere Generation*. There’s a line in the song that says, ‘Tell me what the hell is going on/We’re digging in the mines for gold long gone.’ I have this image of people who went out to the gold rush late, and they’re just chiseling away at the rock while somebody is standing behind them knowing that there’s nothing left. Meanwhile, this person has turned their life upside down just to dig away hoping to find that gold. It’s talking about the American dream and asking if it’s still there. The idea that you’ll be rewarded if you work hard is becoming less and less true. It’s asking if there’s anything left worth working for.” **“Soldier”** “‘Soldier’ is about blind faith in an idea or a concept and how dangerous that can be, and then what it’s like to walk away from it, especially if it’s been something like an article of faith. It’s the idea of somebody tearing off their uniform, pulling off the patches and being like, ‘I’m not going to fight this fight anymore.’ It’s about critical thinking and making sure you’re doing things for the right reasons. Always be analyzing the causes you’re fighting for. You’re allowed to evolve as a human and no longer identify with those causes. It’s like an anti-follow-the-leader song.” **“Prizefighter”** “This is talking about the world that you’re thrust into if you decide to start a band, write a song, and acquire an audience. It could be any kind of art—writing, acting, anything where you rely on an audience. It’s not something I ever thought about when I picked up a guitar with my friends in a basement and started playing songs and doing this. We didn’t have any delusions of grandeur that we’d still be doing this 10 records later. But it comes with all these extra dynamics between you and your audience that no one really prepares you for. We have an amazing audience. I’ve never met a Rise Against fan that I don’t like. But we’re still our own people, our own band. We’re going to decide what we do, what we sound like, who we play with, and where we play. We’re not beholden to anybody. A prizefighter fights for themselves.”
Almost everything about Ricochet is professionally well-done in terms with its recording quality and Rise Against's general listenability.
A quarter of a century in, Chicago punk rockers Rise Against still fight heinous wrongs and pen awesome songs.
Rise Against still sound urgent, defiant and fully engaged: a band with purpose, not just volume.
Charlotte Griffiths reviews the new album from American punks Rise Against! Read her review of 'Ricochet' here on Distorted Sound!
Blood-and-guts emotion with the energy of the punk veterans’ early years meets high-sheen recording craft in a hulking 10th album