By Bryan Menegus, Staff Writer
This just in: Against Me are no longer relevant to punk rock.
The quartet, who once enjoyed legendary status as one of the modern day saviors of the genre, have seen a steady drop in quality since 2005’s “Searching For a Former Clarity.” But even with disappointment becoming the status quo, their most recent studio release, “White Crosses,” comes as a heady blow to fans. There simply isn’t a single good track on here. Their sound has clearly drifted towards polish, pop melodies and cohesion. Unsurprising, considering that, like 2007’s “New Wave,” it features the production of Butch Vig, whose credits include Green Day’s most recent travesty, “21st Century Breakdown.” Whether “White Crosses” is judged against their back catalogue, or the bands they’ve come to sound like, the resulting half hour is a bland, heartless affair which shares no common threads with the things that made Against Me worthwhile.
From the first thirty seconds of the opening title track, it’s clear this record has no merits, though thankfully the opening line “wake up in the morning” is not followed by “feeling like P. Diddy.” The chorus, “white crosses on the church law/I want to smash them all,” sees Gabel to his usual anti-religious invective, but sucked dry of all the poetry that made songs like “Walking is Still Honest” the sing-a-long scripture that struck between your ribs and twisted the knife. “White Crosses” plods along without an acoustic guitar in earshot, and enough excess reverb to make a new Angels and Airwaves album.
And it’s not just the dim-wittedly blunt, pseudo-revolutionary lyrics; Gabel’s voice lacks the ambition that made his sloppy-throated screams believable. The artificial aire of “Suffocation” and the jaunty radio rock of “Bamboo Bones” get caught in a dead heat race to the bottom, only to be beat out by the true killer: “I Was a Teenage Anarchist.” Gabel sings wearily “I was a teenage anarchist/but the politics were too easy,” which would seem like a striking move of honest maturity if it didn’t also rebuke what most of their songs stand for. It’s generally a bad move to sing “don’t you remember when you were young/and you wanted to set the world on fire” when most of your fans are the former, and still desire the latter. Not only are they making terrible music, but Gabel seems to be openly expressing disdain for the material which made him famous.
“White Crosses” is a ten-track case study of a band losing touch, and unless the album leak is an elaborate joke, the world, the fans and Against Me would be better off without it.

Members of the band Against Me in the recording studio. ( againstme.net)