Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Life is worth fighting for; it should never be placed into the open ended furnace in which desire and thought are too readily disposed in the pursuit of the quick fix and the so called unwelcome. Even when something doesn’t grab you at the first attempt it should at least be explored at least another couple of times so you can at least give it due consideration. Nothing is truly non-descript or distinctly average and that goes for music at the best of times.
Rise Against’s latest album The Black Market may have the feel of a meeting between the decimating beauty of The Offspring and the slight overcast touch of Nickleback. However, the field they plough is very much one of their own making, the ruts, the divots, the criss-crossing of a chosen genre, the uplifting beat tempered with a very good vocal line and the touch of quality in heart felt lyrics, these are things that are hard to ignore and even harder to dismiss casually out of hand.
The Black Market is fair, it promotes itself with some very cool guitar work by both Tim McIlrath and Zach Blair and conjures up the idea of destruction of the self and of the furnace in which we have placed certain ideals and lofty noble morals. These images complement the lyrics with a standard befitting a group such as Rise Against and on songs such as The Eco-Terrorist In Me, Zero Visibility, I Don’t Want To Be Here Anymore, Sudden Life and A Beautiful Indifference the claim of a great band is abundantly clear.
The flip side of anything good is that there is going to be something just slightly on the average side attached to it and no matter how great the cover of the album is disguising it, there is something just a little on the bland side creeping throughout the overall album, something that detracts from the effect you believe that Rise Against wants to offer. It is not a crime after all, many a band have fallen into the same trap and at least Rise Against have produced something interesting for the fans to cling onto.
Whilst far from being the best album of the year, it is also something in which to take a semblance of pleasure in; The Black Market is a gallery of music waiting to be explored.
Ian D. Hall