With their latest album, Endgame, Rise Against has reached new levels of creativity and critical acclaim. It blends the various styles found on their previous records, ups the intensity and remains as passionate as ever with its lyrics. We spoke extensively with lead singer Tim McIlrath about Endgame, as well as the band’s relationship with producer Bill Stevenson, their experiences while touring with Bad Religion and more. Catch Rise Against on tour this fall with Foo Fighters and don’t forget to check out their new split record with Face to Face.

Bill – Endgame debuted at number two on the Billboard 200. What were some of your initial thoughts when you heard the news?

Tim – That was definitely overwhelming. We were in Germany at the time our record came out. It debuted at number two and we were starting to hear about it a couple days before that it may in fact do that. That was pretty shocking. We debuted at number three on Appeal to Reason, so to hit up the number two spot was pretty incredible. We were in Germany, where we have a large underground following, but in terms of the radio play or the press that we get here in the States, we’ve never received that in Germany. We’re not really a band that the casual music fan has ever heard of over there, so we weren’t expecting much, but while we were there we debuted at number one, which was really incredible. We were actually playing in Berlin, so our representatives from the record label in Germany came out just kind of like dumbfounded. As were we, but they were especially dumbfounded because here they were, I wouldn’t say ignoring our band, but I guess really not expecting much or underestimating us for a long time. Some of these people I was meeting for the first time. They were like, “What the heck is going on? Who are you? How did you debut at number one?”. It always feels good when people really underestimate you, and also when the fans come out in droves and storm things like the Billboard charts, where punk rock bands don’t normally traffic. All of that was pretty overwhelming. I think it also just speaks volumes about where the American music fan is right now, with us debuting at number two at home, and it sort of represents that psyche in terms of the kind of music they’re starting to crave or demand. I think there’s a large portion of the music population, and I wouldn’t say the majority, but I would say a large portion that is starting to look for more from their music and starting to demand more. They’re finding it in bands like us who may not have the answers to all their questions, but we’re at least asking the questions that they’re also asking. I think that’s how our band sort of sneaks up that Billboard chart. It’s a combination of the youth of America being disenfranchised and looking for something that represents that, and the fact that there aren’t many bands like us at the level we’re at. It’s almost like we don’t have a lot of competition. There aren’t a lot of bands out there that we’re competing with that do what we’re doing. I wish there were more. I wish that all ten of the bands in the top ten on the Billboard chart were bands that were asking hard questions with their music and challenging their listeners and provoking thought, that kind of thing. I think it would make for some good dialogue on the part of American music.

Bill – Endgame is the fourth album in which you guys worked with producer Bill Stevenson. What do you like most about collaborating with him?

Tim – We’re so lucky to have found Bill, I really believe that, and it’s something I don’t take for granted. I don’t take our relationship for granted. I don’t believe the relationship that we have with Bill we could just simply duplicate with another producer. I don’t think it would be automatically that awesome every time we walk into a studio. With Bill, he’s like our producer soul mate. Somehow we serendipitously found him six or seven years ago when we were doing our second record. In talking to him, I realized that we were meant for Bill Stevenson and Bill was meant to produce our records. That’s why we keep going back to him. He’s just somebody who understands who we are as a band, understands our music and understands the goal of what we’re trying to accomplish. With the vocals, he’s pretty much the only guy I trust to be recording my voice. I think my voice is a little bit different and a little bit more unorthodox than what a lot of singers are doing. I’d probably be a vocalist that would be kicked off American Idol in the first round, but Bill understands where my strengths are and knows how to pull those out of me. He knows it even better than I do. He knows the nuances of it more than I even care to pay attention to and he sort of knows how to get the best performance out of me. With the lyrics, he’s one of the few people whose opinion I trust unconditionally. I think that’s a combination of respecting him and also sort of wanting to impress him so much that he pushes me harder. It’s like I have this guy that not only is he one of my best friends, but he’s also this esteemed musician in the punk scene and he was there in the trenches when punk was being born. I sort of live to impress him. When the guy behind the glass is somebody that you’re just desperate to impress, it’s going to bring things out of you and it’s going to make you work hard. There aren’t a lot of producers out there or the big, hotshot producers that I really care about impressing. I don’t think they’d be able to push me as hard as Bill can push me. I think I’d be just sort of one of these unimpressed singers if I was out there in one of those other studios.

Bill – “Architects” is a great opening song and really sets the tone for the rest of the record. It talks about choosing to persevere and fight for what you believe in. What exactly does this song mean to you?

Tim – It does set the tone for the record, I’m glad you said that. It was funny because it didn’t occur to me that it was setting the tone when I was writing it. Actually, it was Joe’s, (bassist Joe Principe) idea to start the record with it. When he said that I was like, “Oh yeah, this is the song that starts the record. This is the song that does set the tone”. It sort of lets you know where we are. We haven’t put a record out in I guess three years now and a lot has happened in the band since our last record. I could see fans sort of wondering where we are today when they go and pick up our new record. I think the band has always been viewed as this radical political band. I think our politics have been the same since day one, but as the band gets bigger those politics fall in plain view of people who aren’t used to seeing politics in music. Something as simple as being anti-war in a punk or hardcore scene, that kind of thing is all of a sudden radical to the mainstream. When we were doing the Appeal to Reason tour I noticed that our politics to me were all kind of no-brainer politics, but they were radical to these casual music fans that were coming to see us because they heard a song on the radio. In that sense you start to get a little bit of flak from the fans. You get people who are like, “Shut up and play. We don’t want to hear your politics. We came here to have a good time and I wish Rise Against would stop preaching to us”. To me, being in the band for ten years, it’s just like, “Did you not know what kind of show you were coming to?”. No one goes to a Rage Against the Machine show and says, “Man, they put out another political record?”. It’s like this is what we do. If it’s not for you, cool, that’s fine, nobody twisted your arm into coming to this show. I realized we were playing for a whole new ilk of fans, fans that I largely found were sort of unaccustomed to politics, activism or anything like that, especially when it’s teamed with music. It sort of got me thinking like, “Where is the next generation of musicians?”. I’m not sure if they’re in our audience. I don’t hear them on the radio. I’m looking around and all I see is that cynicism is the new currency. This jaded, hipster, cynical attitude has permeated all the music that I see out there, and if it’s not that it’s just sheer fame and fortune-driven music. It’s like one or the other. It’s either people starting bands just to be giant rock star millionaires, or people starting bands that could just give a shit about anything but how they look. That made music seem very superficial and I think that was sort of a microcosm of society in general. The song was about the people that shaped the world we live in today, in terms of everything the activists, the civil rights leaders and the people that fought for every single right that we have now. I’m wondering who in my generation is going to protect those rights or fight for progression to acquire even more rights and freedoms. The song “Architects” is a song about the people who are going to be the architects of tomorrow. The people who are going to design the world that we are going to go on to live in, the same way the world we live in was designed by the architects of yesterday. I guess it was sort of my blanket response to the cynicism that sort of had found itself in much of the music scene that I see when I look around.

Bill – “Make It Stop (September’s Children)” references several recent suicides of teenagers in the LGBT community. Talk about some of your motivations for writing this song.

Tim – It was actually a couple different things that were the catalyst for the song and inspired me to write it. One was that a couple of our fans had approached me and asked how we would feel if one of our fans told us they were gay. I almost thought the question was a joke. I was like, “What do you mean? Is there something out there that makes you think Rise Against is synonymous with homophobia?”. I was kind of confused, but then when it hit me this was a serious question and the person asking me was dead serious about it, I of course immediately answered the question and said that Rise Against is accepting of all walks of life and encourages people to be themselves, no matter what that is. Then it made me really sad to think that any Rise Against fan would have a question or even a hint of a doubt in their mind as to where we would stand on something like this. I guess I should qualify that I don’t think that’s the majority of Rise Against fans. I think if you polled the average fan as to where we stood on this, people would be like, “Well yeah, they’re probably cool with that. I can’t see Rise Against being this crazy homophobic band”. Just for the fact that anybody would be out there, even if it was just a handful of kids out there questioning it, I felt like this maybe deserved some sort of statement. It also kind of heightened my senses and made me look at our audience and to the rock world in general. What I found was there was this very male-dominated, testosterone-driven, macho rock world. I felt like this was the perfect breeding ground for homophobia. It’s the kind of place where the conditions are ripe for it to spread and I wanted to make sure that we as a band could differentiate what we do and our community of fans from the rest of the rock world in our genre, which I feel like has largely remained silent about this. I guess when I say that I mean bands that are on the radio with us and that play radio festivals with us. They’re also bands I don’t feel like I have any real affinity for, but I’m also realistic enough to look at what we do and where we sit. We’re no longer playing the Fireside Bowl. All of a sudden my peers are these other bands on the radio and they’re bands that I really have nothing in common with. They’re people that I have nothing in common with, living lifestyles that I have nothing in common with and certainly never aspired to live. Then I feel even a little bit more sort of distance from all that. I’m happy when we have fans that notice we’re different from these bands and they notice the things that make us different. I believe this is one of those things where we’re probably the only band out there in the rock world that’s talking about this issue. I feel like it should be talked about. Those things were going around my head last fall when we got to Fort Collins to do the record. That was in September of 2010, when well over a dozen kids committed suicide around the country. Most of them were gay or perceived to be gay, or kids that were just being called “fag” or tormented because of a perceived sexuality. Some kids were just simply bullied. This wave of teen suicides was plastered across the headlines. It made me really angry, especially with the conservative, religious right-wing out there, who was creating this environment that made gay kids feel like they had no future. These churches that traffic in hate and that’s their mission, claiming that they follow god, claiming they’re all about family values and claiming the moral majority, all these things, yet their mission is hate and just making people feel like they don’t belong. And if you’re gay it’s a sin and something you’ve been cursed with, to the point that the conclusion these kids reach is that they should commit suicide. That made me just pissed off, as well as sad about the loss of life. There are lines in the song like, “What god would damn a heart?” or “What god drove us apart?”. No matter where you fit in religion, there’s no god that would do that. If you’re interpreting the bible or your religion in that way, you’re really just allowing your own bigotry to find its way into what you claim is religion. That’s like your front. The whole thing made me really pissed off and sad at the same time, so I put the song together with the help of Bill.

Bill – “Disparity by Design” is about the widening gap between the rich and poor in this country. What inspired you to compose these lyrics?

Tim – Like you said, it’s about income disparity and that kind of thing. I wanted to discuss the bootstrap myth, which is the idea that if you’re not successful and if you are one of the have-nots instead of the haves, then it’s because you haven’t worked hard enough in your life to get there. And that if you are rich and you are successful, or if you’re wealthy and you’ve made it to the top of the food chain, then you did that because you’re a hard worker and the guy next to you isn’t. Those theories dismiss so many other sociological aspects of your upbringing and what it is to be successful or wealthy. They dismiss those aspects because it’s convenient for the rich guy to say he got there by working hard. I don’t doubt that perhaps he or she did work hard to get there, but to dismiss all the other parts of their life, all the breaks that they got. You can’t dismiss if they were simply white and a part of white privilege in America, or in the right place at the right time, or the breaks that were given to them because of who they were and their status and their family’s status. It’s much more convenient for the rich guy to believe he came from nothing and built everything himself. There are so many stories that permeate history about the guy that came from nothing and built a fortune, built an industry. Realistically though, those are like the headline-grabbing stories, because there are so many more stories that negate that. They just don’t grab the same headlines. To sociologists, it’s known as the bootstrap myth, like you’ve got to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and work hard and that’s how you’ll get to that place on the pedestal. But if you’re a young black kid living in the ghetto somewhere in the inner city, you have more obstacles to overcome than the child of wealthy parents with connections, whether it’s industry connections or politics or whatever. I think it’s unfair to dismiss those obstacles to that young black kid in the ghetto. It’s unfair to tell that kid they won’t get what they want because they didn’t work hard enough. That’s a really frustrating answer for somebody when there’s so many other aspects involved. I wanted to sort of put a song together that attempted to explain that. I wanted to talk about income disparity, but it’s disparity by design. It’s designed to be like that. It’s designed to keep the rich on top and the poor where they are.

Bill – “Midnight Hands” is a heavy, hard rock song with somewhat of a metal influence. Musically speaking, it’s different than a lot of what you’ve done in the past. Where did the idea for this song originate?

Tim – Musically it was probably something that was a little more derivative of what I was doing with The Killing Tree. It was probably a leftover riff or a leftover idea that was banging around my head. It’s in drop D tuning. We’ve only done two songs out of our six records in drop D tuning. One is off Appeal to Reason, called “The Strength to Go On”, and then “Midnight Hands” is the other one. We haven’t messed around with a lot of drop D stuff, but I felt like we could get away with it on this one and I wanted to write a song that had that sort of drop D feel to it. You’re right, it’s got a little more of a metal influence, it’s a little sloppier. I forget what we were calling it at the time, something like “The Slop Rock Song”. It has that sort of lazy metal riff happening through the whole thing. The imagery behind the song just kind of poured out. It’s almost like this activist love story thing happening. I was having a lot of fun playing around with that imagery and trying to parallel it to someone’s obsession with another person, mixed with their obsession with a cause or a passion of some sort.

Bill – Since 2007, Zach Blair has solidified your band’s lead guitar position. In your opinion, how has he improved Rise Against?

Tim – Zach has brought so much to the table and some of it is entirely not musical-related, just Zach as a person. Anyone who’s ever met him, he’s sort of like a hyperactive six-year-old in a way. He has a really funny, bubbly personality. He has the gift of gab. He’s one of those guys that’s immediately likeable, funny as hell and just brings a pretty good vibe to whatever room he walks into. That kind of thing, to find that in the doldrums of tour life, that’s certainly very welcomed and appreciated. He’s a good guy, he’s got a lot of energy and he’s a great guitar player. He brings that to the stage as well. He sees that hour-and-a-half onstage every night as sort of this gift or this opportunity to show people what you’re made of. He doesn’t take one second of it or one inch of it for granted. He’s all over that stage, bouncing around, going nuts. How he does that and still plays proficiently is a small miracle. When he’s bouncing around and engaging the audience it makes me want to do the same and tap into that. He brought a lot to our live show via that. From his days with Hagfish he’s got this real great right hand, some great Ramones-like, Black Flag kind of chugging, riff-oriented guitar playing. He’s a really good guitar player and he’s able to do a lot of different things, which is fun. We’re very different guitar players too, but we complement each other in a lot of ways. He’s also one of these guitar nerds, he just loves the instrument and can name you the model, serial number and what kind of wood it’s made out of. I’m just not that guy. He’s a fascinating sort of box of trivia that once in a while opens up and lets you know what’s going on.

Bill – You guys just finished a tour with Bad Religion. Having toured with both them and Rancid, what are some of the most valuable things you’ve learned from such legendary punk bands?

Tim – Bands like Rancid and Bad Religion especially helped us realize how important your audience is and your fan base, so much more important than radio or TV or those things. Bands like Rancid and Bad Religion, and Social Distortion for that matter, they’re bands that have had long ass careers and successful careers, and careers that Rise Against aspires to have. Even though these are bands that have been on major labels, I think Rancid still might be on a major label, they’re ones that don’t really live on the airwaves the same way that like Nirvana did. They’re still these classic punk bands. If you went to a Rancid show in Chicago 15 years ago, the front row would be full of 16-year-old kids going nuts. When we toured with them two years ago in 2009, the front row was full of 16-year-old kids going nuts. We realized that every year there’s a kid turning 14, 15 or 16 and getting into punk and this is one of the bands that they go and check out. You buy a Rancid record and you buy a Bad Religion record and you buy a NOFX record, or you get Minor Threat or Operation Ivy or Dead Kennedys or Jawbreaker or Black Flag. You get into this stuff. They’re one of these gateway kinds of bands that you start with. They’re all the same bands that I started with in like 1993, but it’s still happening and it’s happening right now all around the world. These bands are still providing an effective introduction to punk, which is so amazing. I noticed that on our tours with NOFX. Kids were always the same age; they’re going to be the same age next year and the next year and ten years from now. You realize these bands are sort of the gatekeepers to all these different generations of adolescent kids finding their way into punk. They worked for me and they worked for the kid who was there two years ago. Going on tour with bands like that, we’re so lucky to sort of soak up and absorb whatever we can from these bands that’ve done it, and done it themselves and done it the right way and are still around to tell the tale. I have a lot of respect for the bands that have been there for many years. There’s bands out there that have one record out, they’ve sold a million records, they’re playing arenas and living in mansions, but that doesn’t impress me. What impresses me is if you’ve been in a band for ten years or whatever and I can look in your eyes and say, “You’ve seen some shit”. You’ve been through a lot with your bandmates, labels, shows, you’ve worked hard and you weren’t a one-hit wonder kind of thing. You’ve persisted and you’re a lifer at that point. I have a lot of respect for lifers.

Bill – What do you miss most about the band’s early days and playing places like the Fireside Bowl?

Tim – I think meeting all the people that were at your show. If we’d show up to the Fireside to play for like 300 kids, chances are we were also back there selling our t-shirts and our records. Just being there all night, you’d end up either shaking hands or at least exchanging a few words with almost every single person that walked into the room that night. You’d at least say “hello” and they’d say “hello” to you. If people really wanted to talk to you, you were there to talk to and they could tell you their story about how far they drove for the show or when they first heard your record, or asked you to play a song that night, that kind of thing. When you went from town to town, playing shows like that, you met a bunch of people. Chances are you probably slept on some of their floors and maybe they made you breakfast in the morning or at least took you to their favorite diner. That kind of stuff was really cool. Nowadays, it hit me at some point that I wasn’t playing for 300 kids anymore, I was playing for like 3,000, but as the bus was leaving town I would be going to bed and thinking, “I didn’t meet one single fan today. I didn’t shake hands with one single person out of those 3,000 kids that showed up”. I miss that interaction. At the same time I understand that it’s sort of logistically almost impossible. We were at the Aragon two weeks ago, I couldn’t just walk out onto the floor and go, “Hey everybody, how are you doing? What’s your name?”. It turns into a weird, logistical nightmare. Nowadays the people I meet are people who are patient enough to wait by the bus at the end of our shows, which is sometimes a couple hours if not longer. They’ll hang out there and there’ll be a good dozen people every night and I’m sort of talking to them and taking pictures or whatever. Those are the sort of people that I meet. It’s interesting to watch your band get bigger and that sort of distance between you and the crowd grow.

Bill – Tell me about your split record with Face to Face.

Tim – Yeah, that kind of just came about through some e-mails between us and them. I don’t remember how exactly it happened. Someone shot the idea to us and we all immediately said, “Yes, duh, of course we would totally do that”. Unfortunately we made them wait forever for us, because they cranked out their cover of our song in no time. We were just so busy that we didn’t have time to do it, so we finally did it in the studio when we were making our last record. That’s amazing though. I saw Face to Face at the Metro in the mid-‘90s and that was at a point in my life where I would bend over backwards to go see any Face to Face show. To hear a singer that I grew up listening to sing my own song and my own lyrics, that sort of just blows me away. That’s never happened. I’ve met a lot of my heroes, but I’ve never heard any of my heroes sing my song. That was really impressive. It was so hard to pick one of their songs to cover, but we settled on “Blind”. We wanted to add our own signature to the song. We’ve done a lot of covers and I feel like we’ve been pretty purist with the covers we’ve done in the past, almost to the point where I look back and I’m like, “Aw man, I wish we sort of fucked with that a little more”. To me, the covers that you remember are the covers where the band really fucks with it. I feel like we’ve done a lot of covers just really straight up. I didn’t want to do that, I wanted to do it a little different. I wanted to mess up the tempos and sort of mess up the vocals a little bit. I wanted to try something that would be different from their version, because no one’s going to do it better than Face to Face.

Bill – What else does the band have planned for 2011?

Tim – We’re doing KROQ’s Weenie Roast this weekend in the LA. We’re going to Australia with Sick of It All for two weeks, which is another in the series of tours where we only take out our heroes. Sick of It All took us out on our very first European tour almost ten years ago. Then we’re going to open up for Rage Against the Machine and Muse at the Coliseum in LA. It’s going to be fuckin’ sick. We’re just the humble opener. We’re going to Canada with Flogging Molly and The Black Pacific. We’re going to Europe and playing some festivals. We’re taking Tom Morello out and Polar Bear Club across the UK. We’re also doing two weeks in the Midwest with Foo Fighters. We’ll end the year doing some radio shows in December. For Chicago people, we have Summerfest in Milwaukee on July 3^rd. We will be playing Chicago at least once more before the end of the year, but I can’t say anything about it yet.

Bill – You guys have reached a level of success that most bands never dream of, but the sort of fame you’ve achieved was never the objective from the start. With that said, what’s your ultimate goal with Rise Against?

Tim – That’s a good question. I feel like I simply want Rise Against to be looked back at as part of the solution. I want us to be a band that did its part in leading some sort of impact on culture, even if it’s just culture as it exists in the microcosm of Rise Against’s community of fans. I can’t change the world, I don’t play in the world’s biggest band, but I play for a band that has a very niche group of fans who are passionate about what we do. Going back to the song “Architects”, I want to do what we can to create those architects. I want to be part of the reason why something clicks in your head to make you go down a path in your life where you’re going to be someone who is a catalyst for change and awareness and progress, that kind of thing. I’m not so delusional to think that Rise Against will be the only catalyst to that. If our record and a good book and some film that you saw that moved you and a good friend that you met and someone else that inspired you all come together to combine to see change in your own perspective, I want to lend my hand to that. If what we do can tip the scales for somebody into doing something progressive with their life then that’s awesome. That’s the side of this whole battle that I want to be on. I was reading some cynical review of our record that said something like, “Punk rock is trying to change the world, which it obviously has yet to do so”. It was really just making fun of how punk has yet to change anything. I think that the world and culture in general is this tug of war and somebody is always pulling on one side and someone else is always pulling on the other. Even if you don’t gain those inches every day, the fact that you’re at least holding on to the rope, you’re preventing the other side from gaining those inches. Sometimes it’s as simple as that. It’s sort of holding that rope and not letting the other side win, because if you were to let go not only do you give up any opportunity for progress, but you also give the other side the advantage. Then it turns the world into this place that I don’t want to live in and I know many people don’t want to live in either. So sometimes just holding on to that rope I think is commendable, even if we don’t see some sort of headline-grabbing change every day. If we’re just holding on we’re at least preventing any sort of backtracking from happening.