RISE AGAINST - “Ricochet”
Friday 8th August 2025
Written by: Annette Geneva
Everything we do echoes. That’s the spine of Ricochet.
Chicago punk legends return four years after Nowhere Generation with easily their most emotionally and politically alive album since the world started spiralling. It’s not just a punk record. It’s a map of consequences. A domino effect stuffed with distortion pedals. A ripple, turned tidal wave, turned scream.
Ricochet is an album made for people who are still here: exhausted, overwhelmed, enraged and somehow still standing. The album doesn’t even ask you to fight harder, it just asks you to understand what you’re fighting for.
Pictured: RISE AGAINST
Photo by: Mynxii White
Opening with ‘Nod’ a song already dubbed a “rallying cry” by Rolling Stone (so you know it’s serious), the band sets a tone of wary resistance. It’s punk with teeth, yes, but also with eyebrows furrowed in existential confusion. ‘Nod’ captures a kind of raw, silent solidarity. “Just nod if you understand me” reads like a punk rock version of “blink twice, if you are not okay” a lyrical lifeline tossed out mid-collapse. The verse leading up to it “And time alone can suffocate… I swear to God this can’t wait” builds like a panic attack in real time. It’s RISE AGAINST doing what they do best: turning personal unrest into collective recognition. This isn’t just about politics. It’s about survival. Connection. Getting one person to nod when the world won’t even listen. I didn’t understand why this was the starting point of the record until I unpacked the lyrics.
Lead single ‘I Want It All’ has sparked some predictable grumbling from the more rigid corners of the RISE AGAINST fanbase. While many embrace its classic energy and unapologetic call to self-determination, others have taken aim at its mixing, because apparently, having a song sound intentional and well-produced is a crime now.
Catherine Marks, whose fingerprints bring clarity and muscle to the track, delivers a mix that amplifies urgency without drowning in distortion. The mix is deliberate - crisp, wide, emotionally charged. But sure, let’s all pretend that yelling over blown-out guitars at 3,000 decibels is the only valid form of punk expression. Heaven forbid a woman brings texture, balance, and clarity to a genre that has been clinging to lo-fi as a personality trait since 1995. For fans clinging to a purist’s idea of punk, this might feel like a departure. For the rest of us? It’s evolution - and it sounds damn good.
The title song is the heartbeat of the record. This is RISE AGAINST at their most distilled: incisive lyrics paired with relentless energy, delivered with the kind of clarity that makes every line hit like a gut-punch. ‘Ricochet’ has teeth - snarling through verses that reflect the chaos of our interconnected world, before detonating into a chorus that dares you to ignore the consequences of your own impact. It’s the kind of track that grabs your collar, shakes you awake, and then leaves you wondering if you’ve been part of the problem. Spoiler: you probably have.
Lyrically, ‘Ricochet’ captures the violent chain reaction of existing in a world where every action triggers another - where even staying silent has consequences. Lines come like rapid-fire, packed with tension and momentum, like a warning shot ricocheting off every wall in your psyche. It’s a call to awareness in a collapsing system, a warning that we’re not just passengers - we’re participants. “Everything we do comes back,” - Tim McIlrath seems to say. “And it’s coming fast.”
With its growling bass-line and defiant energy, ‘Us Against the World’ is anchored by the biting lyric “Only one king can wear the crown” the song throbs with rebellious confidence. It channels that classic RISE AGAINST defiance, but with a laser-focused sense of purpose. It’s the sound of a band that’s not just fed up, but fully prepared to push back.
Catherine Marks’ fingerprints are all over Ricochet, but nowhere is her influence more distinct than on ‘Black Crown’. Marks brings a brooding, immersive quality to the track that feels like a detour into post-rock territory. It’s a welcome shift, a moment where RISE AGAINST trades volume for vulnerability, fury for focus. It’s not just a standout track, it’s a sign of a band unafraid to stretch beyond its genre. “Now the ocean has no water” is the kind of devastatingly abstract imagery RISE AGAINST rarely indulges in, but here it lands like a punch to the soul. Andy Hull (MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA) lends his voice to the song, turning it into a devastating duet of weary idealism and existential ache. His voice blends with McIlrath’s like two sides of the same wound - one cracked, one raging. It’s not just a guest spot; it’s a collaboration that shifts the entire emotional weight of the album. It’s what you play when you want to cry and punch capitalism in the face, simultaneously.
‘Forty Days’ roars like a middle finger in motion. It may be one of the leanest, fiercest declarations of resilience the band’s ever penned. “I draw my own damn breath” is an instant classic - a line destined for tattoos, breakdowns, and shouted choruses at live shows. It’s not about heroism. It’s about persistence. RISE AGAINST distills their ethos into one blistering declaration of self-reliance. It’s less a song and more a survival mantra, punk not just in sound, but in philosophy. The track captures that weary determination, the kind where your fists are bruised but still up, and you’ve run out of reasons not to keep going. Gritty, sharp, and unapologetically pissed, it’s a shout from the gutter that echoes all the way to the rafters.
Then there’s ‘State of Emergency’ a song so timely it should come with a trigger warning and a voting registration link. ‘Gold Long Gone’ is the closest RISE AGAINST has come to writing a folk-punk elegy, offering a brief pause before the final punches.
But it’s the final song ‘Prizefighter’, that will end you in the best way possible.
The emotional precision of ‘Prizefighter’ isn’t accidental, it’s a direct result of a brutal, beautiful collaboration between Tim McIlrath and acclaimed lyrical warlock and emotional sniper Jennifer Decilveo. Lines like “I am not a prize that you compete for / or a horse that you can break” don’t just reject ownership, they demolish it. The result is an unflinching statement of self-possession that leaves nothing on the table.
There are songs you like, songs you respect, and then there are songs that quietly hijack your streaming history and demand permanent residency. ‘Prizefighter’ is the latter. With its devastating honesty and cathartic defiance, it’s almost guaranteed to show up in your end-of-year Wrapped. It’s like: “Congrats, you played this 79 times and screamed it into your pillow for 40 of them.”
And you will play it over and over again. Not just because it slaps (it does), but because it gives you your spine back. This will end up in your streaming wrap-up next to whatever else you listen to when you’re trying to stitch your identity back together at 3 am - It’s that song. That kind of song.
Everything you do echoes. This record just shows you where it lands. And through it all, there’s Tim McIlrath’s voice: unmistakable, unwavering and somehow even more raw than ever. It’s not just a delivery system for anger or urgency; it’s a balancing act between fury and fragility. On tracks like ‘Nod’, he trembles at the edge of collapse. On ‘Prizefighter’, he spits fire with surgical focus. And when he growls “I draw my own damn breath” on ‘Forty Days’, it doesn’t sound like a lyric, it sounds like a vow. McIlrath doesn’t just perform conviction, he embodies it, track after track, line after line, in a way that makes you feel like he’s not singing at you, but with you.
Across its 12 tracks - Ricochet doesn’t just explore chaos - it diagrams it. The album is built around the idea that every action has a reaction. Whether it’s political discontent, emotional burn-out, or social disconnection, RISE AGAINST threads together a ripple effect of modern living, where apathy spirals into injustice, and silence becomes complicity. It reminds you that we’re not living in a vacuum. And at the center is the listener, asked not to scream louder, but to listen closer. Ricochet isn’t telling you to fight blindly. It’s daring you to understand why the fight matters in the first place.
And if you really get it, if you’ve listened - it’ll stay with you. In the pit of your stomach. In the back of your throat. In the quiet moment right before you say something you can’t take back.
RISE AGAINST never lose the thread: community isn’t just a punk rock ideal, it’s a survival mechanism. And if Ricochet teaches us anything, it’s that in a world built on division, the most radical act is refusing to be flung apart.
