Behind Tim McIlrath is a wall of gold and platinum discs that span his career as the frontman of Rise Against—a testament to the reach the Chicago punk outfit have had over the past 26 years. Formed in 1999, the band have long been advocates for a better world, taking on the systems that control it through their songs, and blurring the lines between art and activism as they do so. After starting out on Fat Wreck, Rise Against moved to a major label for 2004’s third full-length Siren Song of the Counter Culture and used the bigger platform to spread their message to listeners outside of the punk and hardcore scene.
Their tenth studio album, Ricochet, continues the legacy of their good work, but also marks a slight sonic shift away from the punk sound that’s been at their core since their inception. Produced by Catherine Marks (who recently co-produced the boygenius album), it takes Rise Against’s sound into a new era, all the while respecting the old one. “Behind the scenes,” says McIlrath, “our team that runs Rise Against—our booking agent, international agent, management, business managers, lawyers—has always been 95 percent women. We work really well when women are in charge, so I think it was natural to put a woman in charge of this record.”
While the sonics may be different, the band’s principles remain steadfast. In the dystopian America of 2025, Ricochet is a necessary antidote to what the world has become, as well as to the hyper-capitalist tendencies that have brought it there. A quarter of a century on, that’s no easy feat—especially as Rise Against seem as motivated and inspired as ever.
With Ricochet out now, read on for our full chat with McIlrath.
A lot has changed since the band started—and even since Nowhere Generation came out in 2021—yet, sadly, it seems that Rise Against’s music is as relevant as ever.
That’s what I always say, too. I remember watching that Whale Wars TV show with Sea Shepherd captain Paul Watson. They were asking about his goals and he’s like, “I’m the only guy on reality TV who’s trying to work myself out of a job. I’m trying to end commercial whaling, and if I do that, your cameras will go away and I’ll no longer be famous. But that’s what I want.” And I think about that with the Rise Against mission—we’d prefer that there is no need for songs that talk about social change and awareness and upheaval and revolution. That would be the preference. But in the meantime, if the world’s going to be a disruptive place, then we have to make disruptive songs.
It’s genuinely shocking to see the damaging effects of the American system on US citizens—and it’s not just the Republicans doing terrible things, but the Democrats refusing to mount any effective opposition. Do you see Rise Against as part of the solution to pushing against that in an attempt to enact actual progress?
America is very isolated—we’re all about high fences and keeping people out and minding your own business. But societies function when we have to coexist with each other. We need each other. Left to its own devices, Americans will see stoplights as infringements on their freedoms. That’s the kind of extremity we go to here: not realizing that there’s a reason that these lights are here. I know it’s going to make you slightly inconvenienced for about 90 seconds, but there’s a reason why we have this. I’m a supporter of stoplights! And that can come down to the fact I’m a supporter of science. I’m a supporter of real data that has real outcomes in the real world—and those are all things I think that America is losing the narrative on.
I think that’s partially due to how isolated we are, and how there are a lot of powers-that-be that want to make us afraid of “the other”—make us afraid of immigrants, make us afraid of science, make us think that climate change is some sort of hoax instead of a well-proven scientific fact. Hopefully, Rise Against are taking the ideas that we absorb from around the world and bringing them into our music—and because we call America home, hopefully it seeps in here a little bit.
“I think of Rise Against as being the professor teaching the freshman class at college: We might be teaching the same class every year, but there are new incoming students every single year.”
Central to Ricochet is this idea of interconnectedness and this almost reverse Butterfly Effect—that everything is much closer and more immediate than that. What prompted that idea?
I was writing the song “Ricochet” and that imagery came up of people dancing around a room while bullets are bouncing off the wall. And most of us are just keeping our fingers crossed and hoping that it’s not going to get us—almost like we’re ignoring it. We’re dancing while the bullets are bouncing around the room. I thought that was a good metaphor for how we’re together in all of this, all in the same room. Sometimes the bullets are fired by us or sometimes they’re fired by our enemies, or sometimes they end up being self-inflicted. It’s all these different things, and I like that metaphor that we have to be mindful of the decisions that we make, because we’re all affected by those things.
That was the imagery that came to mind in describing the world that we live in, whether it’s undocumented immigrants in America, or proxy wars in Russia and Ukraine, or Israel and Palestine, or the economy, or tariffs. I think we’re learning—or relearning—how interconnected we all are. Nobody is really unaffected by it, and if you aren’t affected by it, then maybe that’s something to think about: You’re privileged to be unaffected by this thing.
How has the balance between the music and the message shifted over the years for you?
To me, the only struggle now is the creative struggle. I still want to say the same things, but I want to say them in a way that’s fresh and new. I feel like there’s a number of great political artists out there now, too, so how do I do it where I’m not just regurgitating conversation? And going into a tenth record, that’s trickier to do. I’m still as angry as ever—if not more so—to watch this seismic shift in power around the world leaning more and more right. And to even see it co-opt my own punk and hardcore scene, to see it co-opt my own fans and get swept into the propaganda of the right wing. In some ways, that’s even more frustrating now, in 2025, than it was in the post 9/11 America that this band was born in.
“If the world’s going to be a disruptive place, then we have to make disruptive songs.”
And so there’s even more reason than ever for Rise Against to exist now. I think our band was, in some ways, built for 2025. And we have the back catalog that we’re ready to unleash, and at every single live show we talk about these things. The band has always been sort of dystopian in nature, and any kind of good dystopia is talking about a future world that we might end up in if we keep going down the road we’re going down. And in some ways we are in that world, living there today. Rise Against has been talking about that for years, trying to send out the red flags, and so this soundtrack has strangely come to life in a lot of ways.
What do you think the purpose of this band—and punk in general—is now compared to when you started?
I think it’s to always be pushing forward. I still think our best records are ahead of us, but our purpose also is to protect the legacy of this band, to celebrate these songs, to bring these songs—whether they’re a year old or 10 years old or 20 years old—to a new generation as often as we can. I think of Rise Against as being the professor teaching the freshman class at college: We might be teaching the same class every year, but there are new incoming students every single year. It doesn’t make that class any less relevant. People are coming to this music every day. And when they do come to it like a lost ship in the water, I want to be like a lighthouse. We can’t turn that light off. We’ve got to make sure it’s on today and it’s on tomorrow, because we don’t know when those ships are coming in. We’re part of a bigger thing. It’s a long journey, and in the time that we have here, hopefully we can just be part of the solution. FL
