Selective Amnesia, and What's Done is Done

The Against Me! starter Pack

Against Me! has the uncanny ability to create die-hard fans—people that live and breathe their music—and very quickly make enemies of them. I don’t know anyone who’s liked them for any given period of time that doesn’t absolutely despise them now.

And it fits the music: it’s impulsive, impassioned, and angry. They took a generation’s worth of punk’s skeletons from outfits like The Replacements, Hot Water Music, and Leatherface and smashed them into something that gave what few of us cared a voice, something to listen to. They combined the post-post-post punk of old and juxtaposed it to the southern (American) sensibilities that pervade our subconsciouses. The impact was at one point undeniable.

They gave young anarchists and the politically unsettled something to sing under their breaths at work and scream drunk and glossy at shows. It’s so easy to write them off as something incidental or anecdotal now, but the unbearable truth is that this music happened. Tom Gabel made the “Acoustic EP”, and that will never go away.

Love them or hate them—hate them or hate them, they’re still out there. Every album they’ve ever popped out has pissed off a section of their fanbase, and that won’t stop. If you hated “New Wave”, you most definitely hated “White Crosses”, and wait for the next. Against Me! hasn’t ever asked for your friendship, and the quiet whimpers and violent foot-stomps you use to show your distaste have never and will never affect the music they make. It’s every man against Tom Gabel, and by now he’s well aware of it.

On another note, if you don’t have at least “Reinventing Axl Rose”, drop everything you’re doing and go get it.

-Drew