Did I come down too hard on Rise Against?

I know it's a matter of taste, but I struggle to hear them. I get the appeal. They're totally a big singalong, hang-on-every-word band for a whole cohort of my peers. You can tell from the energy (and the streaming numbers, people like them a lot!). It just misses me. Such is life. They have my respect.

I also meant what I said about the lyrics in our latest Cultish Creative Music Club. They're genuinely moving! Credit to Guy Penn for his pitch and Joseph Moore for unpacking it. Maybe it's too close to home. In 2014, I was around the same age as at least some of the band members, and that probably colors how those words land for me. Now I want to take a beat on melodic hardcore.

My takes are just as flawed and rooted in personal experience as the biggest Rise Against superfan's, so this one's for me. It isn't meant to be a history of the form, but that history kept bouncing around in my head during the conversation, and I needed to organize it chronologically for myself.

So I'm following one guy through it: bassist-turned-guitarist Brian Baker, and some of the bands he played in: Minor Threat, Dag Nasty, and Bad Religion.

Minor Threat, "Minor Threat" (1981)

Baker starts on bass, providing the mid-rangy low end of a punk band, under Ian MacKaye's vocals, which in that era were more shouting than singing. It's about as far from melodic as you can get, unless you're paying attention to the instruments, and even some of his bass lines.

Listen to the bass on "I Don't Wanna Hear It," which carries a real melody under all that speed.

It's an interesting development, because when Steve Hansgen joins on bass and Baker moves to second guitar, it's a sign of where things are headed.

Dag Nasty, "Circles" (1986)

Then comes Dag Nasty, where the melody of the guitar runs alongside the melody of the vocals, with the hardcore energy fully intact. Listen to "Circles," which has all the singalong qualities without the polish.

Dag Nasty, "Dag Nasty" (1987)

By Wig Out at Denko's, the band has a new singer, and the lineups keep changing as the sound evolves. There's more singing and less shouting, and the melody is noticeably carrying as much weight as the lyrics and the instruments. To my ears, this is Baker's sound at its closest to what Rise Against would later do.

Bad Religion, "Stranger Than Fiction" (1994)

Baker joins Bad Religion on tour to replace Brett Gurewitz, who left around the album's release. He isn't on the record, so he's the new guy playing someone else's songs, but it must have put some ideas in his head. Bad Religion was evolving too, and in the melodic hardcore thread, "Stranger Than Fiction" is just one of my all-time favorite songs.

Bad Religion, "The Gray Race" (1996)

Two years later, on The Gray Race, Baker is credited as a co-writer with Greg Graffin on a number of songs, including the title track. The new guy playing someone else's songs is now one of the people shaping them. Bassist, guitarist, songwriter. Across Minor Threat, Dag Nasty, and now Bad Religion, Baker keeps changing, and so do the bands around him, with new lineups and a sound that keeps evolving. Through all of it, he keeps helping shape that sound.

Where 88 Fingers Louie comes in

Switching gears from Baker, I have to recognize that this is the same thread I see running from 88 Fingers Louie to Rise Against. When 88 Fingers Louie broke up in 1999, guitarist Dan Wleklinski (Mr. Precision) and bassist Joe Principe went on to start Rise Against. The people who made the fast, snotty Chicago hardcore I loved built the band I struggle to hear. They even covered Minor Threat's "I Don't Wanna Hear It," the same song with that original Baker bass line (!), so the connective tissue is even stronger than I imagined when I started writing this post. Cool.

Two songs I love from 88 Fingers Louie as they evolved: "Under the Covers," from the earlier recordings on The Dom Years, and "Joyboy," from Back on the Streets.

Honorable mention to 88 Fingers Up Your Ass and the song "Past Mistakes."

The move from Up Your Ass to Back on the Streets is when I realized they were outgrowing me. Like Baker's bands, they came back with a new lineup and a different sound. They were maturing, and so was I, but I was still in high school, and a song about fatherhood didn't resonate as much with me. Looking back, that sound is the tee-up for Rise Against.

I'm writing all this down and I'm now saying to myself: what a fascinating parallel evolution, right?! Baker takes hardcore and puts melody under it, and the Chicago guys who made the music I loved follow the same pull toward melody and end up somewhere I can't quite follow. Maybe I can't love where the Rise Against road ends the way I love the Baker narrative, but I can still appreciate how it got there.

And to think that without a friendly pitch from Guy Penn, and then a chat with Joseph Moore, I wouldn't be considering any of this. I'm loving doing this podcast series.