I don’t think it’s out of turn for me to say that with the utmost respect, it’s about fucking time we had another Propagandhi record. As the pop dingbats collapse in on themselves with one meaningless platitude after another and a bloated, venal narcissist makes it his civic duty to sow outright chaos while his base of gong farmer chickenhawks rattle sabres, and every day answers the the question of “How much worse can it get?” with a Billy Mays-esque “BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE”, it feels like now is a time as ripe as ever for an acerbic reality check.
And so it arrives, in the form of Victory Lap, Propagandhi’s fervently awaited follow up to 2012’s Failed States. Like many of their contemporaries over twenty years into their careers, Propagandhi’s perspective has undoubtedly been altered by the inexorable passage of time; singer/shit-hot guitarist Chris Hannah is now closer to 50 than 40, as are the majority of his fellow Canuck thrashers in the quartet, with the exception of new guitarist Sulynn Hago. As you’d expect, this has bled into their songwriting, as Hannah explains; “For most of the songs I wrote on this record I tried to go in with a different philosophy than I have in the past. Instead of labouring over every word and making everything perfectly fit some sort of end result, the rule was ‘First thing out of my mouth is the first thing that goes on the paper.’”[1]
It’s an approach that has worked; the gut-level, instinctual reaction sentiments of the lyrics hit just as hard as the diatribes of earlier albums, but with an added immediacy and ferocious abandon that seems a more fitting attack on the pinwheeling mayhem of common discourse. The band are sounding stronger than ever, the rhythm section of Todd Kowalski and Jord Samolesky tearing into their parts with sheer precision, while Hannah and Hago trade off of eachother just as well as the previous team of Hannah and David Guillas, who does appear on the record but it’s not made clear on which songs he is featured.
The opening and title track wastes no time, going straight for the throat of the #MAGA crowd over a gnarled, slithering power chord riff; “When the flames engulfed / The home of the brave / The stampede toward the border was in vain / Faces palmed, faces paled / As the wall they said would make them great could not be scaled.” ‘Comply/Resist’ flexes its muscles after a deceptively slow start with crushing palm muted chugging, while ‘Cop Just Out Of Frame’ opens up with powerful, melodic riffing as it namechecks Thích Quảng Đức’s act of self-immolation in protest of Buddhist persecution as it ends with a ringing sentiment on his sacrifice; “They say that Quang Duc's heart survived the flames unscarred / A righteous calling card, left upon the palace gates / For the invertebrates, their grip on power pried apart / By just one frail human being. No weapon, no war machine.”
By and large, Victory Lap is an even more uncompromising record that its predecessor, which itself was no picnic, however this weight and gravitas is as much down to Hannah’s incandescent lyrics as much as the pummelling musical accompaniment; ‘Letters To A Young Anus’, in spite of its tongue in cheek title, forcefully tells its young listener to “Be careful how much you reveal / […] The water is poison despite how hard we / Mark our little X to rearrange the deck / Damned if we don't, damned if we do”. In fact, it’s almost a relief when the earnest but upbeat ‘Failed Imagineer’ barrels along, its consolation of an old war veteran being a relative comfort amongst it all.
I hasten to add that in spite of the often sobering lyrical content, as a counterpoint Victory Lap also features some of the strongest melodies that Propagandhi have ever put together, as ‘Lower Order (A Good Laugh)’ and ‘Call Before You Dig’ ably demonstrate. Furthermore, the band sound re-energised and invigorated; whether this is because of Hago’s recruitment is anyone’s guess, but it’s quite telling that only two of the songs on the record cross the four minute mark. The final song, ‘Adventures in Zoochosis’, is one of the most outright beautiful songs in Propagandhi’s catalogue, opening with chiming arpegiatted guitars, before the menace weaves its way back in with sampled sickening banter from the 45th US President. The song is a tragic lament, an elegy to the generation to come, as Hannah seemingly accepts his eventual doom while in the same breath hoping for his sons to carry on; “You grab your little brother’s hand run like the wind / And if I’m not there, don’t look back, just go.”
Victory Lap is perhaps Propagandhi’s best album yet. It consistently fine tunes their thrash-metal/punk blend, while throwing in some of earlier records’ furious energy and melodicism to completely kick arse for the best part of forty minutes. It’s an album that gives voice to the primal internal screams of despair that many of us may be experiencing every time we look at the news, and arguably serves as a sharp call to arms to make sure we can’t let it get any worse. Let’s hope it doesn’t.
We’ve missed you, guys. Don’t make us wait five years for the next one.
[1] http://teamrock.com/feature/2017-09-20/propagandhi-the-elephant-in-the-room-is-civilization-itself
Order Victory Lap here.
Like Propagandhi here: https://www.facebook.com/Propagandhi/
This review was written by Omar Ramlugon.
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