5 out of 5

Produced by: Bill Stevenson, Jason Livermore, The Suicide Machines

Label: SideOneDummy

I’m writing from a future quite a few years after this album was released, and it’s one in which I’m happy The Suicide Machines returned with some other albums, but had they gone out on War Profiteering Is Killing Us All… it would’ve been quite a high note. And rather a perfect bookend, drawing a circle on how far they’d come and effectively putting punctuation on the line that went from punk ska to hardcore, without the side-stepping some albums inbetween allowed for.

Jason Navarro’s lyrics have never really subtle by any means, but there’s also something just right to the point about this disc – starting from that title and continuing on in every single track – that dispenses with any kind of wishy-washy “fight the power, but can’t we all get along?” punk ethos; this disc is rage. And while that can get tiresome, what SMs have been good at is not falling back on more simplistic rah-rah fuck-the-man themes, choosing instead to snark and skank more directly about all the things wrong with our capitalist, racist world. This album, and the one before, were decidedly more political (versus more general social commentary), but even then, the group wanted to let some joy in here and there, and it kinda went against the rage. But this album is done with all that. It’s the grown up version of Battle Hymns.

But that doesn’t hold together without the music, and that’s where the album just explodes past the last several, standing in line with Destruction and Hymns as all killer, bringing back the hard hitting punk of their Hollywood Records debut and fully marrying it to the volume of the previous disc. Which, again, might remind of Battle Hymns, but that was still more in the punk vein, and this album goes louder and harsher and that, with some true hardcore moments and breakdowns, totally in sync with the general vibe of hostility. As with many long-standing groups in this scene, there’re perhaps only so many rearrangements of three chords to go around, whether played on the up or down stroke, but that’s where you get the longer-standing acts: finding new ways to present those chords. At their worst, a Suicide Machines album is derivative, but still catchy; at their best – i.e. this album – every song has a hook that stands out, and you can sing along after hearing the song once. There’s something about the straight-forward anger here that also focused the band’s songwriting abilities.

Returning producers Bill Stevenson and Jason Livermore complete the star lineup, punching up the guitars and drums but keeping a punchy, crisp bass in the mix, and capturing enough range on Navarro’s singing and shouting to make it another viable instrument, but also making sure this sounds like a band playing live together, everyone angry as can be.

In this post-War Profiteering future, all that rage could still be applicable – things haven’t changed so much, alas – but it’s perhaps good the group didn’t come back to try to top this disc from that angle. It remains the perfect pinnacle of that sound for the band.