RISE AGAINST (2007) Interview by James Hepplewhite
This interview with RISE AGAINST frontman Tim McIllrath has been a long time coming. First conceived by Jordan and I in October 2005, it failed twice, (once at the Vic in November '05 and another time at Warped Tour 2006) before coming to fruition in late November of 2006 in Buffalo, NY. Enjoy!
Pastepunk: So when's THE KILLING TREE show this year?
Tim: Geez, uhh…I don't know if there will be one this year. We talked about doing one around Christmas, but I'm going to go out of town for Christmas, so this year might go by without a KILLING TREE show. So we can cross our fingers for next year. But! The “HAIR” comp just came out. Do you have it?
Pastepunk: Umm… I uhhh…
Tim: I'll give you a copy on the way out. We actually managed to be somewhat productive in the year '06. We put a song out. So instead of a show this year, you get a song.
James: Sweet! Any plans for a BAXTER reissue?
Tim: Uhhh, no. *laughs* I mean, there's BAXTER CDs available to be honest, on Interpunk, and a friend of ours years ago that put out a 2 disc set if people are that curious about it, but, I loved BAXTER and everything BAXTER did, but it's an acquired taste. You're going to find me in my very pre-pubescent stages of writing music, it's pretty raw to say the least. I didn't know what singing in key really was at that point.
Pastepunk: At least on Siren Song and the new one, there's at least one song on each about teaching, -- there's “Diaspora” and “Prayer of the Refugee.” Are those in honor of your daughter Blythe?
Tim: She affects my writing as far as the future generations. I guess maybe subconsciously there are songs where I'm speaking to somebody, some sort of person some sort of anonymous generation and now that generation is no longer anonymous, it's Blythe, my daughter, it changes things a little bit. I suppose that part of the songs and the perspectives and the people I'm speaking to have to do with her and the generation she will become.
Pastepunk: What are you guys going to do with the covers you haven't put on CDs?
Tim: We have so many b-sides actually. We have like 10 different b-sides out there, we have things like “Generation Lost,” “Obstructed View,” “Join the Ranks,” the two BLACK FLAG songs, the LIFETIME song now (“Boys No Good”), the SICK OF IT ALL song (“Built to Last”), “Gethsemane” off the THICK comp…
Pastepunk: There's the first version of “Swing Life Away…”
Tim: True, true. There's a bunch of stuff. There's talk of a b-sides record, (gives me a kinda sorta look) know what I mean? We'll see. It seems like b-side records are what bands do when they get real lazy and don't know what else to do, and so we haven't hit that point yet, but when we all want to take a break and get real lazy, we'll have Bill mix 'em all and put 'em all together and put it out, it'll be cool, because some of those songs barely saw the light of day. Songs like “Gethsemane” and “Obstructed View” barely came out, and there are covers that I'd love people to hear.
Pastepunk: What about “Generation Lost” in particular? Like what were you thinking when you wrote it, were you going to put it on something else, or…
Tim: That was like, that was the first song we wrote together after The Unraveling. We did The Unraveling together and then we started writing for a new record, and that was the first time I brought a guitar to practice, too. Before I would just show up with a microphone and I would sing over whatever everyone else was writing. That was when I had ideas and when I started bringing my guitar to practice and that was the first song I wrote with the band it was the first song we recorded with me on guitar, so it was definitely a step for us, a leap in a different direction, a direction we were all really stoked on. We did that at Atlas, and put it on the Fat comp not knowing what kind of like song it would be placed next to. It's so funny because we recorded it very cheap and very shitty at the studio in Chicago and it's sandwiched between a NOFX song and a STRUNG OUT song - very polished production, it's really funny to me in retrospect. Love the song, glad people really like it, I think the song is pretty clearly about gentrification, a lot of it through the eyes of somebody who's really living it, not from a straight up political fundamental standpoint but something that's more… less academic and more personal.
Pastepunk: Kind of like Pilsen?
Tim: That area for sure. The stuff that I was watching thing like Cabrini Green and the North Side of Chicago which is far from the ghetto, but it's certainly parts of it where I was just watching these low income housing being replaced by really nice condos in my own neighborhood. You always wonder where do these people go, you know? Where did the people who live there go? Where did they end up?
Pastepunk: And then you seem 'em on the street after another six years because the government didn't give a shit. Are you guys ever going to do a DESCENDENTS song since you record with Bill Stevenson so much?
Tim: I'd love to, to be honest. We've done so many covers now that I don't want to inundate the world with covers by RISE AGAINST, but we mess around with DESCENDENTS songs during soundcheck, I don't think we know a complete song front to back, but there are definitely a few songs where we'll get bored at soundcheck and we'll just start playing them. Joe knows a lot of the bass lines and I know a few lyrics, so it would be fun. I think we could do DESCENDENTS really well to be honest, I think it's one of those bands that I think we could nail for sure Bill would enjoy it.
Pastepunk: You said in Wonka Vision magazine that you particularly like Sundowning by THIS IS HELL…
Tim: Those reviews I did, right?
Pastepunk: Yeah, anything you want to say to them?
Tim: You guys have a great band, keep playing and I hope to be on the road with you sometime. I've never seen you live. It was cool because they sent me a bunch of CDs that I wasn't really into and that one really stuck out. I remember I was on vacation in Colorado, just driving around listening to these CDs they sent going "I don't wanna do this I don't wanna do this", you know? And that's funny because it's really hard for me to get into hardcore stuff nowadays because I hear so much of it. It's almost like when you have a second of your own time you want to put on something a little more chill, know what I mean? Listen to something a little more relaxed because I listen to loud music all day. It takes something really good to catch my ear. I thought that was a really cool record. It brought me back to the hardcore I grew up with, the late 90's hardcore, Victory's heyday, REFUSED, BY THE GRACE OF GOD and SNAPCASE and all those bands like that. I thought it was really cool and I'd love to see what they do in the future.
Pastepunk: What was a LOS CRUDOS show like and who were they and so on and so forth?
Tim: LOS CRUDOS was an amazing hardcore band from Chicago, I believe they all came out of the Pilsen area, well not all of them, there was kind of a rotating lineup, but Martin was the singer, very intellectual guy, very smart guy. All their songs were sung in Spanish. Every single one, which really alienated a lot of their crowd, since much of their crowd was white punk kids watching them play in garages and basements and the Fireside Bowl and wherever you could see LOS CRUDOS play. At the same time, you could see they were very proud of their heritage and their language and who they were and they didn't want to be some band that would go out there and sing in English so they could reach people. They wanted to show "this is our language and we're proud of it and we're not gonna change it for you". That was really cool, definitely one of the most passionate bands I've ever seen to this day, their live show was so intense. Martin was just so emotional onstage, he'd spend a lot of time explaining the songs before he played them which was really enlightening as a person, I felt there in the audience watching this band, even though I couldn't understand the lyrics, he would go into an in depth discussion of what the song was about, you felt like you knew all the lyrics by the time you went to sing it. That was really cool to go to a show and have that aspect of it. You learned something, you learned something about the corners of Chicago that you don't go to and the Spanish speaking communities of Chicago and things like that.
Pastepunk: Going forward on this binge of old-school history... In Alt Press they mentioned that in every interview you guys are asked about FALL OUT BOY, yeah they're great, there's much talk of Andy Hurley's time in RACETRAITOR and when people talk about it, they were an angry political hardcore band, and I gotta figure there's more to them than that. What do you know?
Tim: When they came out, they were the most controversial band in hardcore. They made the cover of MRR and Heartattack, which are/were two incredible punk zines. To make the cover of that you really had to do something, and they made the cover of both of them. It was so controversial - Money, the singer, who I still talk to to this day, a real smart guy, had some very radical ideas and was ready to present these in the form of music. Much in the same way I describe LOS CRUDOS, they pick up where LOS CRUDOS left off. They'd throw some really heavy politics at you, and a lot of it…it really rubbed the wrong way, especially in Chicago. A lot of it centered around white guilt. It was something people needed to hear, know what I mean? And Money did it... like he didn't do it in a gentle way, he did it in an abrasive way, to really get people to think about it. It pissed a LOT of people off, I remember going to shows and it's so funny to talk about RACETRAITOR and talk about their legacy and everything because their shows were never more than like 50 kids, know what I mean? And by the third song, 25 of those kids had already left, flicking them off and saying fuck you and they were out of there it was definitely a radical band, taking politics to a whole new level, perhaps more important than the music they left behind was the interviews that Money did. A lot of things that he was talking about, a lot of things that were very new to political ideologies in hardcore at the time, there are even things that he'll tell you to this day he would go back and change, or things he would change his mind on or things he feels differently about, that he did when he did the interview, but that's life, people aren't statues, people change. But what's great about someone like Money and even Dan Binaei, the guitarist, you could tell that politics were so at the root of their soul, because that band ended years ago and both of those guys are still politically active and still care so much about the politics around them and the world around them and still do things, and work and Money went to law school and Dan does all kind of non-profit type work, and so you know it wasn't a façade when you see where they've gone in their life, they care very deeply about these issues. I still love talking to Money, he blows my mind. I wish I was half as articulate as he is. Really cool band, I don't know if you've heard them…
Pastepunk: No I haven't, and that's why I'm asking about it!
Tim: Uprising put it out, Burn the Idols of the White Messiah, and it's a crazy fucking record. I'm not going to sit here and say I'm a fan of it, because it's pretty obnoxious music. No offense to Money and Dan, it was math rock… I don't know if you've ever heard CHRISTIAN CRUCIFICTION or ABDIGATION or that stuff, that crazy math rock that made no sense at all, but it made sense to them, and they could all play it together, which made it pretty brilliant. It made people like Andy Hurley pretty brilliant that he could keep up with it and do it all. Short lived, but left a giant legacy behind them.
Pastepunk: Can you remember anything they've said specifically?
Tim: I was very open to the ideas, the hard pill to swallow was he would come out and say things like "you should feel guilty for being who you are and your culture and being white," and immediately people went well fuck you. That turned people off. If you could get past that and listen to what he was trying to say to you, this is what things like the white community is, this is how we live on the backs of other people, to consumerism to an unbalanced share of wealth and a lot of things like that I think nowadays aren't specific to a race. Now it's more of a class thing. There's people who are consuming most of the resources in the world, enjoying most of the wealth in the world while others are starving and dying of poverty, he was touching on a lot of those issues, I think it's things that where you don't have to go to the Fireside Bowl to see RACETRAITOR in 1996, you can just go to CNN.com and find out about fair trade or sweatshops, things that he was talking about 10 years ago that are finally becoming big issues. We're living in an unsustainable way of life.
Pastepunk: Which is kind of like the “Prayer of the Refugee” video.
Tim: Yeah, true.
Pastepunk: Did SCREECHING WEASEL piss kids off in larger numbers, or…
Tim: You know, I never saw WEASEL live, to be honest. Ben was already not playing shows by the time I got into them, they did a few reunion shows at the House of Blues years ago that I missed because I was out of town. Totally two different worlds. The SCREECHING WEASEL world and the RACETRAITOR world. The scene was kind of divided back then, you either went to punk shows or hardcore shows.
You didn't go to both, granted there were exceptions to that rule people would go to both shows, and some people certainly did. There were kids you'd find at a RACETRAITOR or EXTINCTION shows in Chicago, and there were the kind of kids you'd find at a SCREECHING WEASEL show. Two different worlds. Then, he [Ben] I'm sure he offended people too. He was staunchly independent, DIY kind of guy. Very bitter about the punk scene. Very defensive about his own celebrity, whatever that was. People think that if you sell out the Fireside Bowl, you must be a millionaire, back then they thought that too, this guy from SCREECHING WEASEL is a rockstar because he sells out the Fireside Bowl, I remember at one point, he put all his personal finance records in a zine. He said look, "I made 16 grand last year, that's way below the poverty level in America. I'm putting this here, it's kind of embarrassing almost, but I want you guys to know I'm not a rockstar." I thought that was really cool because people just assume that it's different now. Though, we're in a bus, I doubt SCREECHING WEASEL ever toured in a bus, but dudes see us pull up in this bus and be like, "you guys must be so fucking rich" and you know, there's a lot of money made at these things for sure, like tonight, there's a lot of money made, but I'll be the first to say, it doesn't all trickle down to us, *laughs*, if you're just doing the math saying "I paid 18 bucks to get in here, so there's x amount of money being made", yeah, there's a bunch of money made. If you want to see how much each individual guy in these bands sees of it at the end of the tour, it's expensive to do this whole thing.
Pastepunk: Where did “Survive” come from?
Tim: The song? Musically or lyrically, or in general? It started with that intro I had, we would soundcheck a lot to it. We'd just mess around with the intro, do a soundcheck, making it more extended than it already is and turned it into a song. I remember just playing the guitar riff, showing our guitar player Chris plays a little drums then showing him on the drums, it's very much in the same vein like "Broken English", kind of my own obsession with bands like NO USE FOR A NAME, NOFX, real fast, picky punk shit. The song wrote itself at that point. It all came together really easily. It's one of my favorite songs right now.
Lyrically, it's just a great way to sum up a lot of the record a lot of our band a lot of life in general. We were just putting it together, it was a great way to, I was writing this record about all the shit people go through and deal with, and the bottom line…things that I tell kids when they come to me "Dude, I'm having a really hard time with my girlfriend, or school or parents or I've been thinking about suicide because I've going through all this shit." People sometimes turn to me as someone who plays in a band they listen to or send me an email and you know, you don't know quite what to say to someone like that. But, I know that for me, out of the worst times in my life was born this band. If I didn't have those terrible times in my life, if I didn't go through the shit that I went through, I wouldn't be here right now. I'd have no story, I'd have nothing to sing about and nothing to make me the person I am. That's one thing I've always told people if they're looking for advice from me, which I don't think I'm qualified to give anybody advice in anything, but if they really want to hear my own take on it there's sooooooo much born from heartbreak pain, from any kind of suffering that you can do with that. I feel like instead of being afraid of those times in your life, embrace those times in your life and realize how important they are and get past them find a way to channel that frustration to something else. That's the general theme of "Survive." How we survive these things, how we survive these travesties in our life makes us who you are. And, if you don't have these things, people have these perfect lives, these very boring lives, I think, that the interesting people you're going to meet out there are the people who have gone through shit at some point in their life.
Pastepunk: On Revolutions, I think there were a couple lines about people on the internet shit-talking you or the band – who was that, or is that just a long time ago…?
Tim: It was a long time ago and it wasn't very specific, it was a play on words, it almost written to the hardcore scene, my own disenchantment with the hardcore scene and there were times in my life that, the minute we signed to Fat Wreck Chords, it just abandoned me. I sold out because I signed to Fat Wreck Chords.
Pastepunk: I guess AGAINST ME! has heard the same argument, too…
Tim: Yeah, I'm not going to sit around with anybody and argue what their definition of a sellout is, I never argued back then and I'm not going to argue now because of what label I'm on. I believe this was when we signed to Fat and did the Unraveling, I had friends who went "Oh look at you, rockstar." The Unraveling years? There's nothing rockstar about them. Even the RPM years, I would argue there's nothing rockstar about those years either.
I spent a bunch of time playing in bands that were very under the radar, very underground and never went anywhere, and in that sense, we never got a lot of critique because no one really know who we were. But once we started playing in a band that was on Fat Wreck Chords, and put out a CD that are sent to 'zines all of a sudden you're getting reviews. You're getting good reviews and you're also getting bad reviews and for the first time in your life, you're reading something about somebody trashing you, know what I mean, it's a weird price to pay, if you put something out there, be ready for someone to hate it. I was real thin skinned at the time, like "oh my god, this guy hates me, he hates my lyrics they hate the songs" it was very hard to swallow, and then there were times when we had a message board on our site -- those things just get ugly, those things get unbelievable. It's funny -- you're wearing a Punknews.org shirt… It's unbelievable crimes against humanity on that site. It's like a band gets in an accident and the bass player dies, and people are writing messages about how happy they are, you know, about the bass player dying, it just shows you, if you can give somebody an anonymous stab at something, they'll do whatever. It's a very gutless way to do anything. If you don't put your name on it, you're a total coward. The internet's a way to do that. There was a time in those years when I'd actually read these things: "Okay, here's what people think of it". And if you believed these things, you'd believe everybody hates you. If I believed half the shit on the internet, I wouldn't be here right now, I would never believed that 2000 kids are coming out to see my band tonight, because, and realistically, the 2000 kids aren't kids that are wasting their time on message boards. It's usually the same 15 kids writing the same shit about every single band ever. It's more fun as somebody who gets off on that kind of thing, it's more fun to talk shit, know what I mean, than to say you like them. It's more creative. So these kids just do that. So when that song was written, it was my swan song to the internet message board world. I'm not reading this shit anymore, this is doing nobody any good, I don't going to check this out, I don't go to message boards anymore, I don't read that shit, I don't check it out, and my life has been better because of it, trust me. That song, I don't exactly remember the lyrics to it now, a lot of 'em were talking about, those people were in mind.
Pastepunk: At least for me, it's an oddity that Victory Records has really ever been a hardcore label. As long as I've been in and quasi-observing the punk rock scene, I say in, because you can be in the scene if you go to shows and go to message boards but it started with THURSDAY and there was a dramatic shift towards anything…that could sell.
Tim: There's an old Victory and there's a new Victory. I was actually just talking to John, John is a guitar player from the band SNAPCASE, so he was part of the old regime, there's definitely the new regime now, I don't know when it changed, but late 90's, 2000 around there. When I was growing up, I was a subscriber to Victory Records, if Victory put it out, I bought it and it was good. Everything they put out. When SNAPCASE came out, I like this band. When they put REFUSED out, it was good. BY THE GRACE OF GOD, awesome. BLOODLET? I love BLOODLET. Who else? EARTH CRISIS, I was a big EARTH CRISIS fan. DEADGUY. All these bands were killer.
Pastepunk: GREYAREA…
Tim: GREYAREA too! Cool band. WARZONE: awesome band. No matter what they put out, I thought this was really killer stuff, and that all changed, and they started signing almost anything and nowadays they have half the bands in America and that's one of the keys to their success too, they sign 10 bands that all sound the same and one of those bands is eventually gonna take off, but what happens to those other 9? They do what they do, and that's different from what they used to do, and I'm not going to argue with it, they're obviously one of the most successful labels in the independent music business.
Pastepunk: What's been one of the strangest moments on tour where you just look around with your bandmates and think “what the fuck's going on?”
Tim: Opening for GUNS AND ROSES last month -- that was definitely a moment where we looked around and went what the fuck's going on. Meeting Ian MacKaye at a documentary film festival, being introduced to him.
Pastepunk: There's a lot of vaguely religious symbolism in some of your songs…
Tim: I went to nine years of Catholic school. I read the bible front to back. If you put someone in nine years of Catholic school, it's going to leave a footprint, and it certainly did. I think it's just reading any kind of book, those kind of images they stay in your head for sure. A lot of that symbolism you'll find just carried over from my childhood, you know? I grew up in an Irish Roman Catholic family, you know?
Pastepunk: Is there a particular indulgence you've allowed yourself after the success of Siren Song?
Tim: Yeah, I bought a remote control helicopter. It's pretty cool. That's something I would have never done. That's about it… I really should have said, I bought a helicopter - that would have been better in print.
Pastepunk: I can have Jordan make that stand out.
Tim: Tell him I bought a helicopter. It's called a Dragonfly. I can barely get it off the ground. Still learning…
Pastepunk: What do you geek out on?
Tim: Besides my helicopter? Not a lot. I never got into video games. Aside from Guitar Hero of course. I love reading. At the end of the day, that's when I'm most satisfied, if I got a good couple hours of reading in. That's when I go to bed happy, I'm stoked I read that book, that's what really makes me feel good. To read something, to watch a good movie or create something. If after this interview, if I go inside, sit and write another song on the guitar, that kind of stuff is really what helps me through another day, because then I feel like I've accomplished something. As far as geeking out, not a whole lot. I have a scooter back home. We brought all our scooters on Warped Tour this summer, saw all kinds of scooter geeks too.
Pastepunk: RISE AGAINST has been a very strong supporter of PETA. What's been the response to you guys working with them so much?
Tim: We mostly get a positive response from PETA, granted that's a product of sitting out here and preaching to the converted, for sure. I didn't walk into a steakhouse tonight to talk about PETA, I walked into a RISE AGAINST show, so it's a pretty safe place to talk about PETA, and we don't receive a lot of challenge from that…I'm sure most of our fans aren't vegetarian, so we definitely get a little bit of flak. From people who aren't vegetarian, usually if they're fans of the band, they respect our choice, the fact that we do this and have PETA with us and they're respectful of it they don't' agree with it, and that's fine. I'm a big believer that every decision should be left up to that person, I'm not going to sit here and force anything on anybody or judge them, that's your decision, you need to make it yourself.
PETA's tactics are the one thing we get questioned about. [People ask] "How can you support PETA when their tactics are so extreme?" “The video they're playing in the lobby of your show right now is really gruesome, cruel,” that kind of thing… I have no sympathy for those people, because I think the animal industry is extreme, cruel, disgusting and inhumane and so I think people should see it. PETA didn't go out and create these videos, they didn't make 'em up out of thin air, it's not fictitious, this is real footage. I think a picture is worth a thousand words in that sense. You can read all the shit you want to read about animals, but sometimes it's actually seeing that slaughterhouse footage that's really going to make somebody think about what they're doing. And it's not just how the animals feel and their short lived lives and all the shit they go through and the torture they endure from the time they're born till the time they die just to be meat, but also how disgusting the conditions are for what you're supposed to put in your body. Or, just what we do to keep the industry alive and how it hurts the environment. You need to confront that stuff head on and show them things they're not going to be able to stomach, and in that sense, whenever someone's telling me "oh, it's too extreme," no, it's not extreme enough, if you ask me. These are things that need to be done. In that sense, I support PETA. But if someone doesn't support PETA, I respect that as well.
I remember telling that to somebody who was working for PETA at tabling one of our shows about our association with PETA, do you get that at all? He said "Yeah, I get it all the time 'people say oh that ad's disgusting, that TV's disgusting, that video's disgusting, I don't want to support PETA because of their tactics,' and I'm like what do you do when someone says that to you"? You know what, he said he held out a PETA flyer with all the statistics about meat, you know everything from how it's produced, created, the conditions, how it affects the environment, it says PETA on the top, and he tore off the part that said PETA, threw it in the trash, and handed it to me and he said "It's still the same information, no matter who gives it to you." If you don't like us, don't like us. Hate us. I don't care. But check out this information, we didn't make it up. It was a really interesting perspective. People are always going to disagree with the messenger, but you can shoot the messenger, the message is still the same, if someone converts to vegetarianism and veganism through PETA or through somebody else, I don't care. I don't care if you give PETA money, I don't care if you sign up for a PETA starter kit either. They're one of the people out there doing something to actively promote it. If the end result is not eating meat, or cut down eating meat, then that mission's accomplished.
The conversation goes into detail about a series of specific PETA related events, including PETA's support of convicted arsonist Rodney Cornado (to the tune of more than $40,000) with money donated from ordinary PETA members, highlighted in an episode of Penn and Teller's Bullshit! .
Tim: You have to decide for yourself is violence against property violence, or something that should be punished, or something if your goal and feeling is that strong and shit need to change, what are you willing to do about that. You're looking at a guy who wrote the line "I've got an American dream, it involves black masks and gasoline," know what I mean? I think that if somebody felt like they were backed into a corner and they felt nobody was listening, activism like that is sometimes the only thing that changes the world. I don't agree with violence, I don't agree with anybody getting hurt for anything, or anybody hurting anybody for anything, though I think that things like that are very symbolic and I realize that some people don't agree with that, you know what I mean? But I don't define violence against property as violence, personally. And that's not even a band thing. That's a "me" thing. If you talk to the rest of the band guys, they might feel different. There are certain things where the only way you can get a message across is to really do something to make a show. Granted, whether they should have supported [the arsonist] or not, that's questionable, perhaps. I would have given him all the money I had in the world. Because fuck that slaughterhouse, fuck that place and it should burn to the ground, because I don' think that should be there, and I don't think that's what should be taking place.
Pastepunk: I think it was actually an animal testing facility…
Tim I don't agree with [the arsonist] if he took out a sniper rifle and went out to shoot animal testers, that's bullshit, but sometimes, drastic times call for drastic measures. PETA is somebody who is in the middle supporting someone like that, but I don't judge them for doing that. Yeah, I'm pretty radical as a person. Half my songs are about burning shit to the ground.
Pastepunk:Can we put that in big quotes? "Half my songs are about burning shit to the ground?"
Tim: *laughs* Yeah, sure. Hell yeah. I want people to know this isn't just something I write about because it sounds cool. I'm not saying I'm an arsonist or anything like that, but there's sometimes when you feel like shit needs to change, sometimes people aren't listening anymore.
Pastepunk would like to thank Tim for taking the time to do the interview, as well as being kind enough to give us more time than our allotted amount. Second, we'd like to thank Dave from Next Big Thing PR for his persistence in trying to help us out. Thirdly, we'd like to thank RISE AGAINST's PR people for letting us get to pick Tim's brain for a little while. Photo Credits: The group press photo was taken by Anthony St. James; the other two photos were posted without attribution on riseagainst.com
Pastepunk: So when's THE KILLING TREE show this year?
Pastepunk: Going forward on this binge of old-school history... In Alt Press they mentioned that in every interview you guys are asked about FALL OUT BOY, yeah they're great, there's much talk of Andy Hurley's time in RACETRAITOR and when people talk about it, they were an angry political hardcore band, and I gotta figure there's more to them than that. What do you know?
Pastepunk: Where did “Survive” come from?
