ANTI-FLAG have released their 13th album Lies They Tell Our Children today, January 6, via Spinefarm. To celebrate the release, the band will be featured on the upcoming cover of New Noise. The issue includes a flexi-disc featuring the band’s take on the Dead Milkmen classic “Punk Rock Girl.” Additionally, the band has shared the video for “SOLD EVERYTHING.”
The video was directed by INDECLINE, who impressively shot SEVEN videos for the album tracks. Take a deep dive into the track by reading the document below.
2023 is an incredibly important year for Anti-Flag, as it marks three decades of profound punk rock.
“2023 — 30 years of Anti-Flag. If we’re being completely honest, this milemarker of longevity is both unbelievable to us and at the same time not a shock at all.
“The four of us have committed our lives to these songs, shows, and records. We have placed precedence on this work and believe it to be intrinsically tied to our value as people on this planet. If you would have asked the kids who started this band if we would still be Anti-Flag 30 years later, we would have probably thought we wouldn’t make it this long. But we would have collectively resounded that as long as we’re alive, we would be making music with the goal of unifying people and communities, positioning empathy over apathy, and using everything at our disposal to be agitators and disruptors of status quo, exploitative, capitalist politics.”
“LIES THEY TELL OUR CHILDREN represents a band that is still working on its craft, and we challenged ourselves to be better songwriters, leaving familiarity and comfort zones. Perhaps it’s too ambitious to make your 13th full-length album a concept record, but if we have learned anything through our privileged lenses of longevity, it’s to be true to ourselves. This was our plan. A record that is fulfilling emotionally and spiritually, we basically said ‘Fuck it, this is the record we wanted to make, the people we wanted to collaborate with, the type of song we want to play live and share across the globe.'”
“It’s a shot of optimism and inspiration to carry on, stay the course, created because it’s what we have to do. We hope that people like it, listen to it, stream it, or whatever… but truthfully, we would be doing all of this with or without an audience, it’s all we have known as Anti-Flag for 30 years and we don’t see that changing any time soon.”
Lies They Tell Our Children was recorded, produced, and mixed by Jon Lundin.
LIES THEY TELL OUR CHILDREN
Well, they sold all our bodies, collected our names / Sold all our fears, stole all our birthdates / Every thought we have exchanged for windfall / If they gave you nothing, you’d have nothing at all / Fuck all their borders and fuck all their wars / The violence of Wall Street and profiteer cures / Neo-liberal white saviors, Murdoch and Fox News / Fuck the Pittsburgh Police, and the president, too. / They sold everything. / You don’t mean a goddamn thing
Money is the ideal mechanism for implementing inequality. It is abstract: it seems to be able to represent everything. It is universal: people who have nothing else in common accept it as a fact of life. It is impersonal: unlike hereditary privileges, it can be transferred instantly from one person to another. It is fluid: the easier it is to change position in a hierarchy, the more stable the hierarchy itself is. Many who would revolt against a dictator readily accept the authority of the market.
When all value is concentrated into a single instrument, even the irrecoverable moments of our lives are drained of meaning, becoming tokens in an abstract calculus of power. Everything that cannot be financially quantified falls by the wayside. Life becomes a scramble for financial gain: each against all, sell or be sold.
To make a profit:that means to gain more control over the resources of society relative to everyone else. We can’t all profit at once; for one person to profit, others have to lose leverage, proportionately speaking. When investors profit on employees’ labor, that means the more the employees work, the wider the financial gap between them becomes.
A system driven by profit produces poverty at the same pace as it concentrates wealth
The pressure to compete generates innovations faster than any previous system, but alongside them it produces ever-increasing disparities: where equestrians once ruled over pedestrians, stealth bombers now sail over motorists and homeless people. And because everyone has to pursue profit rather than accomplishing things for their own sake, the results of all this labor can be disastrous. Climate change is just the latest in a series of catastrophes that even the most powerful capitalists have been powerless to halt. Indeed, capitalism doesn’t reward entrepreneurs for remedying crises, but for cashing in on them.
ANTI-FLAG ON TOUR 2023 WITH FLOGGING MOLLY & SKINNY LISTER:
2/2 — Austin, TX — ACL Live at The Moody Theater
2/3 — New Orleans, LA — The Fillmore
2/4 — Huntsville, AL — Mars Music Hall
2/5 — Columbia, SC — The Senate
2/7 — Knoxville, TN — The Mill Mine
2/8 — Nashville, TN — Ryman Auditorium
2/10 — Chattanooga, TN — The Signal
2/11 — Louisville, KY — Old Forester’s Paristown Hall
2/14 — Norfolk, VA — The NorVa
2/15 — Richmond, VA — The National
2/17 — Rochester, NY — Main Street Armory
2/18 — Montclair, NJ — The Wellmont Theater
2/19 — Hanover, MD — The Hall at Live! Casino & Hotel
2/21 — Charleston, SC — Charleston Music Hall
2/22 — Asheville, NC — The Orange Peel
2/24 — Atlantic City, NJ — Sound Waves at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
2/25 — Bethlehem, PA — Wind Creek Event Center
2/26 — Huntington, NY — The Paramount
2/28 — Worcester, MA — The Palladium
3/1 — Syracuse, NY — Landmark Theatre
3/3 — Madison, WI — The Sylvee
3/4 — Grand Rapids, MI — 20 Monroe Live
3/5 — Ft. Wayne, IN — The Clyde Theatre
3/7 — Fayetteville, AR — JJ’s Live
3/8 — Oklahoma City, OK — Diamond Ballroom
3/10 — Kansas City, MO — Harrah’s Voodoo Lounge
3/11 — Omaha, NE — The Admiral
3/12 — Boulder, CO — Boulder Theater
3/14 — Tucson, AZ — Rialto Theatre
3/16 — Las Vegas, NV — The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas – Chelsea Theatre
3/17 — Los Angeles, CA — Hollywood Palladium
3/18 — Riverside, CA — Riverside Municipal Auditorium
3/19 — Reno, NV — Grand Sierra Resort
2023 EUROPEAN FESTIVALS:
6/3-4 — Linz, AT — SBÄM Fest
6/15-18 — Dessel, BE — Graspop
6/24 — Münster, DE — Vainstream Rockfest
7/2 — Rimini, IT — Slam Dunk Italy
