Rise Against: Endgame (2011)

There will never be a Rise Against album better than 2003's Revolution Per Minute. It's just not going to happen. They're simply not the same band anymore. Call it maturity, call it selling out (though I do not subscribe to this line of thinking of at all), call it whatever you want. As a giant fan of that album part of me wants Rise Against to simply recreate it over and over again but I'd probably find something to complain about then too. The point is that as both a fan and a wanna-be critic it's hard to not compare what a band is currently doing to what they've done before. That way of looking at things will be problematic and after the third or fourth listen to Endgame it occurred to me that taken on it's own merits, it is a better than average Rise Against album.

There's still plenty of anger to be found in Rise Against's music but most of it now lies solely in Tim Mcllrath's lyrics. Most of the music is still fast and aggressive but in a much more subdued way. The one two opening punch of "Architects" and "Help is on the Way" is a fantastic way to start off the album. They both have excellent melodies, some nice guitar work and are the highlights of Endgame. The rest of the tracks all get by on the same blend of melody, passion and tempo changes. There's a nice mix of differing speeds presented but eventually the tracks do bleed together quite a bit. The album does flow well but with every song being at least three and a half minutes long and almost always following the same fast-slow-fast pattern, there's a sameness to everything. Only the mid-tempo and jangle of "Wait For Me" really distinguishes itself amongst the later tracks. It's not like that's a new complaint for a punk band and that approach can work very well for a punk(ish) album in small doses but 45 minutes is overkill.

Endgame is a pretty good album. It's certainly better than 2008's Appeal to Reason and even if it doesn't reach the heights that Rise Against set early in their career, it's still a welcome addition to the bands catalog. For as much as I've harped on the negatives, the positives do outweigh them and Endgame is a good example of mainstream melodic hardcore done right.

Rating: 3.5