It is impossible to categorize Pittsburgh’s Anti-Flag as anything but a punk rock band. From their mohawks and clever pseudonyms to their music and politics, Anti-Flag adheres so closely to the genre’s template that, after nearly a decade of recording and touring, the band’s prominent stature among the Warped Tour demographic is to be expected. Always political, the band’s website is a soapbox for its left wing political tracts.
Voice Leisure spoke with Anti-Flag’s primary singer and songwriter, Justin Sane, before a recent headlining gig at Baltimore’s Ottobar. Anti-Flag’s sixth album, The Terror State, was released the following day, Oct. 21.
Voice: After 30 years, do you think punk rock has become trite?
Sane: Honestly, I think that right now punk rock is more important than ever. Just with Anti-Flag, for instance, I think this is a really important time in the history of our country. We’ve positioned ourselves to be in a place where we can influence people, and give them knowledge and a chance to think about things that they might not normally think about.
I think the underground scene is more organized than ever and I base that on the Internet. It’s easier for kids to meet each other, and before they know it they’re working on projects together. There’s more underground punk collectives now than ever before. And they’re active-they’re doing all kinds of important work … Sure there are bands in the mainstream that aren’t doing those things, but I think the punk bands that are doing those things balance that out, and that’s what’s important to me.
Voice: Is there a place for the right wing in punk rock?
Sane: Not in my punk rock. The community that I’m interested in being a part of is not the right-wing community. We’re trying to build a community based on leftist, progressive ideas … I don’t believe the right-wing belongs in punk rock.
Voice: How do think the U.S. should have responded to September 11?
Sane: I would have invited all the leaders of the world to be involved in a world summit and asked them how they would have dealt with these problems. When you include the entire world community in trying to solve these problems, you’re building an alliance and saying “you’re important to us; your opinion matters to us.” After opening those kinds of doors, you can do almost anything you want to. The Bush Administration didn’t do that at all. They said, “we’re going to do whatever we want, we don’t care about anyone else and we’re going to go bomb fuck out of whoever we want to bomb to the fuck out of.”
Voice: Would you ever sign with a major label?
Sane: We’ve been approached by major labels numerous times and we’ve never signed. I can’t say that we never would. If I felt like the people that we would work with were decent people and that we’d actually be able to achieve our goals, then I would consider it. It’s very difficult to be on an independent label and reach a large mass of people, and our goal is to reach as many people as we possibly can with our message. We’ve sold 250,000 to half a million records and we see bands that have sold 10,000 records sign with a major label and suddenly they’re all over the place.
Voice: What’s your new record like?
Sane: Musically, we’ve gone further than we’ve gone ever before. We wrote 50 songs for the record and narrowed it down to 12 or 13 songs. We picked the songs with Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine and now Audioslave; he executive-produced the album. We’d talk about what was strong about the songs and what was weak and work on those aspects of them. He was really helpful and gave us a lot of really good ideas. Some of the music is more in the vein of the Clash, rather than in the vein of intense hardcore like the Exploited or old Anti-Flag. There’s a mix between really hard music and more creative kinds of music.
At the same time, I think this is the most angry record we’ve ever written. In the current state of the world there are so many things that feel frustrating to us. It’s really hard not to be pissed off. We were writing this record as we were organizing an anti-war march in Pittsburgh. It was a really intense atmosphere, and I think that intensity and frustration are definitely on the record. There’s not really a lighter side to this record.
