Anti-Flag — The People Or The Gun

The People Or The Gun marks Anti-Flag's departure from major label RCA, which released 2006's For Blood And Empire and last year's The Bright Lights Of America, and their return to an independent label.

The disc also seems to be a return to the punk rock, D.I.Y. spirit that imbued Anti-Flag's early releases. Instead of demoing, booking a studio, hiring a producer and spending nearly a year making a record, bassist Chris #2 says Anti-Flag recorded, wrote and finished The People Or The Gun in a month's time.

That should be completely obvious while listening to it, and it shows on tracks like "You Are Fired (Take This Job, Ah, Fuck It)," "The Economy Is Suffering, Let It Die" and "The Gre(a)t Depression," which tackle the current economic crisis and sound incredibly contemporary. But it also comes across in the quality of the writing.

The disc begins with the thrashy and extremely angry "Sodom, Gomorrah, Washington D.C. (Sheep In Shepherd's Clothing)," which tackles the religious right's entrenchment in politics. The next two tracks are strong and manage to mix the old call-and-response Anti-Flag found on discs like 1999's A New Kind Of Army with the bombastic sound (for them, at least) of their last two releases. But things fall apart upon reaching "We Are The One," and really don't get any better from there.

While it's admirable to want to make an album as soon as possible and to have the tracks on it speak to current events, perhaps putting a little bit more time into them would have been better. The People Or The Gun has some great moments, but in the end it just doesn't deliver.

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