Anti-Flag: Truth & Lies

Rousing Pittsburgh punk heroes ANTI-FLAG have just released their twelfth album LIES THEY TELL OUR CHILDREN and as we have come to expect from the band, it is a fiery affair that tells of the ills that are still going on in the word today and how that can be changed. This time though, it is the first time that ANTI-FLAG have done an actual concept album, which is, as you’d imagine, handled informatively and passionately by the band. We caught up with Anti-Flag bassist/vocalist Chris #2 who talked us through the concept behind their new album and the effect that the music of ANTI-FLAG has had over the years, and still is going strong today.

ANTI-FLAG have always been a band of the people so it is extremely important for them to still be connecting to their fans as that is who they do this for of course, as Chris #2 tells us. “We’ve been a band for 30 years as of this year so you learn that the minute it’s released, it’s no longer yours. People can say and have a plethora of reactions to it that are out of your control, so we did the best you could and we did something that we really believe in and we’re excited to share, that’s a success for us.” 

Since LIES WE TELL OUR CHILDREN is the first ever concept album from ANTI-FLAG, talk turns to the actual concept of the record which Chris #2 explains about how the idea initially came about. “I think we’ve flirted with the idea before, but we’ve never been in a position that was advantageous enough with time to do it. We didn’t want to make a record in the lockdown of the pandemic, we waited until we went on tour and kind of got re-energised and then we took that energy into writing and recording the album. A lot of the records over the last handful of years were done in between tours.” 

Chris #2 goes onto to clarify in full the actual concept of their new album. “The idea was, and thankfully, it came to full fruition, was wanting to trace back issues that we face to their origin. A lot of them come from either political policy that was happening and laws that were written, many of them come from corporate interests, shifting the culture in a way that benefits the ultra wealthy and subjugates those that have not, so in that, what we were trying to do is create these threads, and say, okay, if you’re a person who has dinner with your uncle, who might have some suspect views on reality and politics and you get into an argument about the climate crisis that we all face. You wonder to yourself, how does a person in 2023 not see that climate change is real. You gotta go back to the 70s, when the big oil companies put millions and billions of dollars into advertising campaigns that confuse the public on the true science around using fossil fuels as a primary energy source. That was the idea, to draw this line back to where the issue that we faced is.” 

He also goes on to explain where the title of the album comes from and what ANTI-FLAG are saying with the album and the songs on it. “LIES THEY TELL OUR CHILDREN comes from Mobil, which in 1973, took out a full page ad in the New York Times called Lies They Tell Our Children and was debunking their own science, they found that climate catastrophe was inevitable if we continued using fossil fuels the way they were and instead of deciding to shift their corporate profits and change the way that their business model was operating. They shut down their science departments studying the effects of their product on the planet, and opened up marketing departments that confuse the public as to whether or not it was real or not. It’s 50 years ago at this point, that’s not that long. So you’re able to say, okay, I’ve got people in my life that I love that are older than this issue they don’t fight. It shouldn’t make me feel as if it’s unconquerable. If they’ve done that to us in our recent history, we can find way in our upcoming future. That’s kind of the quick synopsis of what we were trying to do.” 

The protest aspect and the message of their music is, ultimately, still the most important part of the music of ANTI-FLAG and has been since the bands inception as Chris #2 declared proudly that this will never stop. “I think it’s an extremely viable method of shifting people’s focus and spreading empathy. Our community around punk rock has grown in such a way, we can see that we are shifting culture, we are becoming better and more empathetic as a society. There’s a lot of work to do in the world, an immense amount, but there’s a lot of optimism and hope to gain from the amount of shift and progress that we’ve made.” 

With such a direct and positive message with their music, ANTI-FLAG have made a huge difference in peoples lives over the years and Chris #2 finishes off our great discussion with a few examples of how the band have touched and changed people for the better and how the punk rock ethos is still a huge part in changing things for the positive. “Well, it happens frequently, especially now at year 30. A fan we interact with who says because of punk rock or because of ANTI-FLAG, I now live this way. I am a activist or I am a worker at Greenpeace. I ran for local office, it goes on. We have a framed conscientious objector letter from 2004, where a person was in the military and used some resources that ANTI-FLAG had provided to object to the invasion of Iraq and be discharged from the military. That’s how we measure our success. Those are the things that we see, it’s not record sales or the amount of tickets sold per show. It is the people that are impacted by this community and this thing we love so much.”

LIES THEY TELL OUR CHILDREN is out now via Spinefarm Records.

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