Rise Against talk returning to their political roots on new album Wolves

Rise Against’s Joe Principe has opened about why his band have returned to their political roots on new album Wolves.

The foursome’s 2014 album The Black Market saw the band move away from politics and into more personal territory, but they have returned to their roots for Wolves and are taking aim at Donald Trump.

Speaking to hmv.com about the album, Principe said: “When we were writing The Black Market the political situation wasn’t something that inspired us to write, that wasn’t the case this time.”

Asked why they’d returned to political matters, he added: “Our lyrics are always drawn from how we see the world, it’s a stamp and we’re representing what’s going on. It’s far more political, the election made it that way, the situation completely shaped it.”

He continued: “We started writing pre-election, we thought we were going to have the first female President, this great moment in US history and we got Trump. Once we realised that was real and the mess we were in, we had to re-think a lot of lyrics.”

Rise Against’s Wolves is their seventh studio album and is available here in hmv’s online store.