Propagandhi
Victory Leap

If there is one genre that should be both quantitatively and qualitatively in a state of grace in this second half of the second decade of the twenty-first century, it is punk. However, excluding the more uncompromising forms of hardcore and the occasional enjoyable revival and reinterpretation of post-punk, it seems there is not much room for what twenty years ago was the offering of labels like Epitaph and Fat Wreck. The former has become increasingly an independent major that has lost all specialization, and the latter deserves a cloak of pity (or maybe I'm the one moving away from the sounds that thrilled me at 14-15 years old, who knows), but the genre, excluding its more extreme connotations, is in a state of stagnation (even there, am I the one who has lost the antennae for these things?) with old glories that cannot renew themselves and indulge in embarrassing anachronisms and lyrical banalities. It's extremely strange given what's currently happening in world politics; we have a president of the world's most powerful state who continues to talk about "clean coal" and walls, who flirts with the idea of a nuclear war with North Korea, a sociopathic narcissist with dialectics that should make the Anglophone world nauseous. In short, the feelings of young people who lived through the Reagan era should have reincarnated in today's counterpart. Perhaps the politicized anger has shifted to other genres, and perhaps that's for the better.

In this landscape, the Canadians Propagandhi are only to be thanked; twenty-five years after their first album, they are still in dazzling form, and they still know how to bring fresh air, having settled since sixteen years now, since 2001's "Today's Empires, Tomorrow's Ashes," on sounds that masterfully combine Melodic Hardcore, Thrash, and Progressive veins, a "Progcore" with inventive songwriting, engaging melody, intelligent lyrics, and attitude in spades. The musical buffoonery (although it was already accompanied by very serious subjects) tinged with ska of the first two albums is now twenty years old; the devastating final solo of "Purina Hall of Fame" dating back to 2001 is a statement of intent. Propagandhi plays heavy, thoughtful Punk. They convey a fierce political message but do not do it entirely with their gut; they can do it with music that is both abrasive and melodic at the same time, with an energy that has both apocalyptic and bright tones. "Victory Lap" is endowed with all of this; it carries a formula already tested and standardized, but in which the band from Winnipeg has still managed to find room for imagination with songwriting that leaves no way out and engages from beginning to end. "Victory Lap" is an album that still offers Propagandhi's music in a pure, fresh, and uncompromising form.