Anti-Flag

The genre of new-school punk rock is not necessarily rife with politically conscious lyrical content. In fact, most every song is about girls, high school or both. But there is one glaring exception to this standard, Anti-Flag. Hailing from Pittsburg, PA, Anti-Flag have all the obligatory new school attributes: youth, a record deal with Fat Wreck Chords, and musical chops. Moreover, they recently toured with Less Than Jake and New Found Glory (two of my personal favorite girly-core bands ) and were part of last summer’s Warped Tour, the annual traveling Woodstock of new-school.
But these associations belie the true spirit of Anti-Flag; one look at the lyric sheet of their latest release, Underground Network, makes this is evident. Song titles range from "This Machine Kills Fascists Dead," to "Vieques, Puerto Rico: Bikini Revisited." The latter includes an entire page devoted to facts about the United States’ "exploitation and colonization" of Vieques, while the former includes lyrics like, "You try to fuck with our scene / We’re gonna fuck your life," and "This machine kills fucking fascists dead, that’s right, dead."
Not exactly what one expects from four Pennsylvanians barely out of their teens. But Anti-Flag are not concerned with seeming overly ambitious, nor are they concerned with the seeming austerity of both their name and their message. The Synthesis recently caught up with Anti-Flag on their way to Seattle and spoke to bassist Chris #2 about these, and other issues.

It must be nice to be headlining. I’ve seen you guys three times in the last year, but always as an opener.
Yeah, it’s been awhile since we did our own tour.

I also find it interesting the variety of bands you guys play with. Do you guys purposely play with bands that don’t necessarily complement you stylistically?
With us, as long as the band has some sort of punk-rock ethic, and basically aren’t idiots, we’ll tour with them. Plus, I think [playing with different bands] opens people up to new ideas. When we started the band, we never wanted to be come sort of exclusive club that you had to have a mohawk or a certain kind of uniform to be a part of. If we can play a show with a band that’s different, and one of their fans walks away and is like, ‘you know, I never thought about the fact that when we fight a war, we’re not fighting against the leaders of that country, we’re fighting against the youth of that country,’ then thats why we do what we do.

It’s just that a lot of bands who espouse the same sort of message as you guys, like to stay on the outside of the scene, whereas Anti-Flag is signed to Fat Wreck Chords.
The way I see it, I’ve never compromised any of my beliefs or myself to do what I’m doing now. I still hold true to all my political ethics and my punk ethics. Sure there are negatives to the band growing, like sometimes at a show there’ll be people there that are just there because it’s socially cool to be there and are there to be a jerk and start fight. But the other 90% of the people who are there to have a good time and take care of each other, will tell those people that they aren’t welcome to come into our family and be a jerk.

But wouldn’t a song like "This Machine Kills Fascists Dead," be sort of like the pot calling the kettle black, or is it meant to be taken tongue in cheek?
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Woody Guthrie, but he had "This Machine Kills Fascists Dead," written on his guitar, and he wasn’t talking around shooting people in the head; it was just a phrase in the song. We don’t expect anybody to take the song literally. But we do expect people to understand that if you do go to an Anti-Flag show and start fights or chant "U.S.A," all well and good, you’re allowed to think our band sucks. But when you use violence to express your message, if it bothers you so much that we have a flag turned upside down, so much that you’re gonna punch someone in the face, that’s fascism. And we’re gonna tell you that you’re not welcome in our punk rock scene. I know it sounds cheesy to say that we want to unify and yada-yada-yada, but that’s really what we want to do.

I remember reading in the liner notes of your second album that "Anti-Flag does not mean anti-American," but aren’t you worried somewhat that people might be misled by a name like Anti-Flag?
When we started the band we never imagined that it would get where we’re at. Sure some people are going to be turned off by the upside-down American flag or turned off by the name, but I think a lot of people might say, "what’s this about?" and read our lyrics and figure out that we’re not anti-American. We’re totally pro-American; I actually think of us as patriots. The way this country was founded was by people recognizing that there was a problem and working towards change, and that’s what we try to do. Sure we’re the wealthiest nation in the world, but not a day goes by that I don’t hear someone say "faggot," or hear someone out in the parking lot tell a girl to "show her tits." That’s kind of why we do what we do.

So you’re not necessarily anti-American in terms of anti-capitalism, it’s more of a reaction against the current state of popular American culture.
The flag is just a piece of fabric. The flag shouldn’t be what you put your pride in, you should put your pride in what you do.

But don’t you sometimes wish that you could just be New Found Glory and sing songs about girls and not have to worry about such heavy issues all the time? Don’t you get sick of talking about politics and not music?
Sure we’d like to talk about our record more, but if you listen to our record, there’s only one song that’s not political, so you know… But we are human beings, and we do have fun. We have a good time when we play. I have another band that I play in, Justin [Sane, vocals] has his thing on the side. But the vehicle that we have created called Anti-Flag, we choose to do in a certain way.

Bookmark: