This Iconic Punk Band Isn’t Worried About Alienating Fans. In Fact, They’re Purposefully Trying To
Rise Against has no issue with losing fans. In fact, as frontman Tim McIlrath puts it, they are actively “trying to alienate people all the time” with their music.
McIlrath appeared on a September 2026 episode of the Artist Friendly podcast, hosted by Goodf Charlotte’s Joel Madden. During their conversation, the punk rock frontman opened up about the band’s political activism. Specifically, he noted that the community-building they’re doing is designed to exclude certain ideologies.
“I think that that’s the backwards part of Rise Against and being in the music industry, is that the idea is that if you’re in the music world or whatever, you’re not trying to alienate anybody,” McIlrath explained. “Like, we’re trying to alienate people all the time. It’s just sort of baked into what we do. We’re just going to. If we’re doing our job, there’s somebody being alienated from this community that we’re creating.”
“‘Cause there’s a community that we are creating that people are,” he paused before continuing. “We want people to come in, and then there are people that we are trying to actively reject and say, ‘You’re not welcome in this world.’”
The singer then offered some insight into exactly what types of belief systems they look to weed out. “This world that we’re creating is going to be free from racists and sexists and homophobes,” he said. “If you fall in that category, we’d love to convert you, but you’re also just not welcome in this community.”
“So having that compass of Rise Against from the [get-go] has made it not a debate. We don’t debate about who we are. It’s just sort of to where we, like, put our foot down from the day we named our band Rise Against.”
In other Rise Against news, they’re currently touring with fellow Chicago punk rockers Alkaline Trio.
The bands recently dropped a two-song swap EP, with each covering a track originally by the other, as part of the tour rollout. See below for all upcoming concert dates.
