Propagandhi: Supporting-Cast Heroes
By Greg Pratt

We should have known that Winnipeg hardcore/thrashers Propagandhi wouldn’t let us down.

Their first disc, 1993’s How to Clean Everything, took the pop-punk sounds of the time and added in a radical, unexpected political edge. 1996’s Less Talk, More Rock took the lyrical approach to an extreme and refined the tunes, adding in a hardcore sound. Today’s Empires, Tomorrow’s Ashes (2001) was the beginning of a new era, with a line-up change and a shift away from pop-punk and towards hardcore and metal. With 2005’s Potemkin City Limits, the band explored longer and more elaborate song structures and put a greater emphasis on melodies, particularly in the vocals.

The band’s new disc, Supporting Caste, manages to (pardon the cliché) keep moving forward while maintaining the Propagandhi sound. Between raging thrashers like opening cut “Night Letters” and more melodic material like the tune “Potemkin City Limits,” the disc flat-out rules.

There’s nothing that will be released this year that will be better than this. Maybe I’m biased (full disclosure, flying in the face of being a professional music critic: this is my favourite band and I make no qualms about it), but I can’t say enough good things about the album.

To which guitarist/vocalist Chris Hannah replies, in typical deadpan fashion, “That’s weird.”

Joking aside, the band—rounded out by drummer Jord Samolesky, bassist/vocalist Todd Kowalski and new addition, guitarist Dave “Beave” Guillas—is stoked on the disc, one that finds them leaving long-time record-label home Fat Wreck Chords in favour of having the record released in different territories around the world by different small labels (here in North America it’s G7 and Smallman co-handling it).

“I’m over the typical post-partum depression,” says Hannah about the disc. “I think I enjoy it now. I hear things, obviously, that I wish were a bit different. The recording process and, specifically, the mixing process, got pretty tense between different visions between the band and the guys down at the [recording studio] Blasting Room but I think we found some common ground that made both parties unhappy and happy. I think, overall—especially for the very short time, for us, that we spent on it—I’m pretty excited about it now.”

“I listen to the other ones and they seem like something’s not there yet,” adds Kowalski. “But I always feel that way, even with this one—it still feels like we’re headed somewhere. It just seems like where we’re headed is a lot better. Nothing ever sits exactly as your wildest dreams, but this one certainly is way better for me.

“Music, the way I try to think of it, is it’s not a final thing, it’s ‘here’s where you are at this point in time,’” he continues. “People listening don’t tend to see stuff like that. When you a buy a band’s CD you don’t know what the future’s going to bring. It’s like you fear your favourite bands’ CDs coming out because you’re afraid it’s gonna suck or not be what you’re hoping. I know that feeling the other way too. And if a band has a shitty CD but then they come back and blow you away again the shitty one doesn’t seem so bad, because it isn’t their end point.”

Having shitty CDs is something Propagandhi don’t need to worry about (well, there was Where Quantity Is Job #1, but even that half-ruled). Supporting Caste follows up the mighty Potemkin City Limits, an album that showed them stretching their wings musically and dabbling with an atmosphere of melancholy. Although the guys aren’t too quick to admit it, everyone hears sadness on that album; it was a disc that shredded hard but sounded like after the shredding was done, the guys were trying hard not to go mope in a corner somewhere (and, just to clarify, this is no slag: it’s my favourite of their discs.)

“That could be true,” says Hannah on Potemkin’s downer vibe. “I guess morale now is probably higher now than it was around the time of Potemkin City Limits. Potemkin is one of my favourite records that I’ve made, but it was made at a time before Beave was in the band and I knew something was missing. There was a missing link, which turned out to be Beave. Also at the time we were feeling fairly marginalized by the music scene that people identified us with; I think maybe that got to us a little too much and the gloominess of that record was a reflection of our true gloom.”

“We weren’t bummed out on the tunes,” adds Kowalski. “We were bummed out on society or something. Almost to a depreciation of our mental…” He pauses, and stops mid-thought. “I still feel that way, though. I just tried to avoid putting it on the [new] record so much.”

So, less gloom, more shred, back to basics in a way compared to the last disc, but with a new element musically, an element of layering, tones and fucking dual-guitar Hanneman/King, Tipton/Downing shredding. Call it Hannah/Beave interplay, I guess.

“I like the way Beave plays, and he’s a nice guy,” says Kowalski. “It’s good to have someone else in there to get what they have to say about things. Playing live is way, way, way better. I’m embarrassed to see us before. It’s just fuller, it sounds like a musical band now instead of three guys slogging through it. It’s one-hundred times better. And I don’t feel lonely up there on stage.”

“Working with Beave in general is awesome,” says Hannah. “He’s a great guitar player in that very rare, subtle style where he doesn’t try to jump in front of everything and he likes to create depth and dimension and mood with the songs, which is great for us because we often only have two gears—off and on. I think he made a lot of contributions to the new record, but they seem very seamless, it’s not like there’s this brand new sound. That’s kind of important to us.”

For Hannah, the addition of a second guitarist is another in a long line of nods from the band to the old school of heavy music.

“If you listen to old Raw Power records or SNFU records, you can hear that this guy thought this part should be like this and the other guy thought this,” he says. “If you were to actually hard pan your home-stereo speakers you’d almost get a different song from each guy. There’s more room for creativity.”

One of the major differences on Supporting Caste is a slight lack of Kowalski tunes. In the past, he’s offered up a handful of tunes that were either straight-ahead hardcore ragers, like his material on Today’s Empires, Tomorrow’s Ashes, or strange, off-kilter, melodic songs, as on Potemkin City Limits. Here we only get three Todd songs (two of which are over before ya know it), and it’s mainly shorter-faster-louder material, harkening back to his days in hardcore band ISpy. Reason there’s only a triad of Todd tunes is that he hurt his throat so couldn’t lay down the other songs he had written for the album.

“Yeah, just yelling too much,” he says about the damage done. “I’ve been going to see some specialists and shit. They say I don’t have any nodes or anything on my throat, which is good. But I guess I’ll go to a therapist soon. Some people can do it forever, but fuck me, I don’t know if I’m unlucky or what. My ears ring, my throat hurts, my eyes can’t see, the whole batch (laughs).”

But even though Kowalski has less songs this time around (“I think it all worked out for the best,” he says. “Who needs a CD with 15 songs on it anyway?”) he did manage to get the opening track, an awesomely heavy song by the name of “Night Letters.”

“That was Beave’s suggestion, which was nice,” says Kowalski. “To see that he believes in it, that was good. Chris thought it was a good idea, so I was stoked on that. I don’t really suggest it myself, or I try not to. I’m glad it’s there. The CD just starts so heavy. I like that.”

Another different aspect of the CD is a Hannah tune called “Without Love,” with shockingly—for a guy that cut his lyrical teeth with songs like “Pigs Will Pay” and “I Want to See Oka Everywhere”—personal lyrics about coping with those close to you passing away. It seems like a song that Hannah wouldn’t have been ready to write until this point in the band’s career. But he says that’s not entirely true.

“Right. Or…” Hannah pauses, looking for the words. “Yeah. I think something that ties the record together, trying to be objective about it, is the struggle for meaning in peoples’ lives. And what consequences certain pursuits of meaning can have for others. If someone finds meaning in religion or finds meaning in race or finds meaning in patriotism or war, which people do, what does that mean for other people? And on a personal level, where am I going to find meaning? What does it all mean? It’s more of an inward look, but it’s still connected to the outside political world. It was supposed to be on Potemkin, but it wasn’t ready. It wasn’t that I wasn’t ready to grapple with those lyrics because I think we all, from a young age, grapple with issues of mortality and stuff like that, but the song was pretty not ready to be heard.”

Going back to Potemkin again, there is a tune on this disc called “Potemkin City Limits.” It’s sort of a Zep move, if you know what I mean (and you fucking should); but, again, it was a tune that wasn’t quite ready for that album. And while I first thought it was a song about worker’s rights or a disgruntled employee coming back to the workplace toting a gun, then I thought it was about aliens observing humanity (me smart), the song is actually about a pig named Francis. It’s one of the best songs on the album, even if Hannah did crib a phrase from a Consolidated song in there (it’s okay, Chris, your secret is safe with us).

“That song, I didn’t invent Francis or his story,” says Hannah. “If you go to Red Deer, Alberta, and if you go to Gaetz Street downtown, there’s a statue of a pig and it has a stone on it with some writing that tells the story of Francis. The stone is sponsored by the local butcher, the local hog industry manufacturer, and they tell the story about how Francis escaped from an abattoir around town without being captured, in the parklands, and then was captured and sent to a ‘farm.’ They gave him a name, they did the anthropomorphizing, they called him the ‘freedom-loving pig’ on that stone, I’m not projecting these things on the pig; I’m not being the sentimental one, they did it all, and then they made the statue for him.”

“That song was actually supposed to be on the last record too, hence its name,” he continues. “But it was a totally different sounding song at the time. Every time I go to Red Deer, Alberta, which is often because I have relatives there, I go visit it, because it’s so topsy-turvy to me. It’s so crazy; they actually say on there ‘Francis, the freedom-loving pig, reminds us of the value of the hog industry to Alberta’s economy.’ Is that what he reminds you of? If you’re ever in Red Deer…”

Another highlight of the album, both lyrically and sonically, is “Humane Meat (The Flensing of Sandor Katz).” I must admit to being unfamiliar with Katz, so had to ask Hannah where this one was coming from lyrically.

“He writes a lot about food politics and fermentation is sort of his main area of expertise,” he says. “The stuff he generally writes about, where food comes from and food politics, I think people should read his books for the bulk of it. But a particular section in one of his books where he rationalizes, as many do, the killing of animals for their flesh and secretions, it’s not logically consistent. If you take the logic and apply it to a human situation it reveals across the board the absurdity of saying that you can humanely kill another living, thinking creature. In my mind, at least. So it’s sort of a tongue-in-cheek way of addressing that budding post-vegetarian movement. The movement probably won’t gain a lot of ground. But otherwise, I do recommend people read his stuff. Same with guys like Michael Pollan, who wrote The Omnivore’s Dilemma. There’s good stuff to be read in those books but for me it all falls flat on its face when they talk about killing animals for food.”

Perhaps the album highlight, and an instant Propa-classic, is “Dear Coach’s Corner,” a song that many Canadians will find solace in as they relate to trying to watch hockey broadcasts while coping with the accompanying commentators. In the tune, Hannah addresses said commentators and concedes that there is a “spiritual connection” between him and them as they “both love this game so much we can hardly fucking stand it.” But while the game means so much to these prairie hosers, they’re frazzled at what they have to hear during the program.

“Beave and me and Jord will watch Hockey Night In Canada every week,” says Hannah, “and enjoy the game and roll our eyes and make negative comments during the requisite Armed Forces appreciation nights or during the Coach’s Corner segments, where Cherry kinda fetishes dead soldiers.”

Hockey, a love of sincere heavy music, the politics of food and dual-guitar madness. It all adds up to what the lucky ones realize is the best album of ’09 and what will probably be the best album period until Propagandhi put out their next, in my opinion. And Chris, there’s nothing weird about that.