Propagandhi announce first album in 8 years, ‘At Peace,’ share title track

Canadian punk greats Propagandhi have announced their first album in eight years, At Peace, due May 2 via Epitaph Records (pre-order). Here’s what vocalist/guitarist Chris Hannah says about it:

Everything I’m singing about is still coming from being the same person that wrote and sang our first record ‘How to Clean Everything’ in 1993. But what we’re putting into the songs now, probably reflects more despair than 30 years ago when we had similar perspectives, but with strands of hope and naivete. Now it’s the existential dread of eking out a life worth living in this completely failed society.

[…] Twenty years ago, we had a sense that things are fucked but that there could be a mass mobilization of people against the oligarchy, the billionaire class. I don’t think that exists much in our music anymore and I don’t believe that mobilization is forthcoming. I hope to be proven wrong.

A press release notes that the album was written and recorded as Trump was campaigning for his re-election, before he suggested that Canada become the U.S.’s 51s state, and it was then mixed by longtime collaborator Jason Livermore. The first single is the album-opening title track, which wastes no time making its outspokenly political point. “Hedge every bet. Lick every boot. Make every appeal. Prostrate yourself to the killing machine to spare yourself from its wheels. ‘Better them than me’ rolls so seductively off your tongue. Your reckoning has begun,” the song begins over some rung-out guitar chords, and then the song kicks in with Propagandhi’s trademark mix of skate punk and thrash. Check out the song and its lyric video below.

Tracklist
1. At Peace
2. Prismatic Spray (The Tinder Date)
3. Rented P.A.
4. Guiding Lights
5. Cat Guy
6. No Longer Yound
7. Stargazing
8. God of Avarice
9. Benito’s Earlier Work
10. Vampire Are Real