Recent alternative bands lack political awareness

February 11, 2008 —

I recently found out, much to my gleeful surprise, that the 1980s hardcore legends known as Bad Brains put out a full length album last summer. The album is called Build A Nation. After the initial shock I began to repeatedly ponder how in the world an epic release like that passed under my radar without my finding out. In any case, I made immediate arrangements to get a copy to listen to.

Upon finally putting the album through my car's compact disc player, I listened to all fourteen tracks from start to finish, and I whole-heartedly enjoyed it; I probably listened to the album about three or four times throughout the course of the first day. It was exactly how I remembered the Bad Brains from their older work.

Indeed, this group is still the perfect mix of aggressive hardcore political angst mixed with mellow reggae-style beats, and although the political climate has changed a lot since the band's inception, their style has not changed at all.

While listening to Bad Brains' new album, however, it dawned on me that bands like them just didn't have much sway in the current music scene, even among music advocates who don't follow mainstream pop music's current fickle obsession and adhere to a more alternative music philosophy. I understand that changes happen and often times these changes happen for the best, but in this case I see a major blunder in the modern music industry.

To start with, I'm not here to write about how new alternative rock music is terrible. It isn't. I listen to a lot of new rock bands.

My argument, however, is that Bad Brains, once one of the defining bands of the hardcore/alternative movement, are nothing like the bands that are currently in the front of the modern hardcore/alternative music genre.

The current genre is led by bands like the Plain White T's or even the more brutal Atreyu. The difference between bands like the Bad Brains and one of these new bands is the political and social awareness in their lyrics.

While Bad Brains and their 80's hardcore peers such as Minor Threat, Black Flag, and the Dead Kennedys wrote songs about the political strife they perceived during the Reagan era, bands like Atreyu and the Plain White T's tend to direct their talents toward writing songs about relationships and post-adolescence angst. Haven't we heard enough of this? I thought the boy band fad was over.

Don't get me wrong, there are some newer bands, however, that are quite political. For instance, music groups such as Anti-Flag, the Code, NOFX and Thought Riot all write and perform songs of a politically social persuasion.

Heck, a quick glance at Anti-Flag's last album, For Blood and Empire, proves my point. Compare that to Atreyu's latest album entitled Lead Sails Paper Anchor and you'll understand which band's ambitions are aimed in which direction.

However, the unfortunate fact that many groups of this political caliber exist only in the independent music realm certainly limits their scope of listeners. Thus, these bands, sadly, are exceptions to the rule, not the norm.

This isn't to say a band isn't worthwhile if their twelve song album doesn't feature the proper ratio of politically oriented songs to non-politically oriented songs. This being said, I do listen to a lot of bands, for instance, the Melvins, Big Business, and Boris, that are almost entirely politically apathetic.

However, what these bands lack in political and social awareness, they make up for in innovative ideas and concepts. The latest front bands of alternative rock, however, seem to be lacking the essential criteria that made their genre "alternative" in the first place.

After all, let's be honest. If a band lacks the essential political or innovative content to make themselves "alternative," the only difference between them and Britney Spears is the volume of the vocals.