Music Features

It only takes about 30 seconds of listening to Propagandhi’s fifth full-length, Supporting Caste, to realize that the Winnipeg band has radically changed up its sound. While initially noticed in the ’90s for its speedy pop-punk tunes, the veteran act’s current crop of complex prog-core bangers would sound more at home at a Voivod concert than at a Fat Wreck Chords social. For instance, opening number “Night Letters” kicks off the mind-bending disc with a hard-as-nails mosh groove, before spiralling into a series of time signature shifts, injected with slippery thrash riffs and an anthemic rawk chorus. While it’s a drastic change from the Propagandhi many grew up with, singer-guitarist Chris Hannah explains that the group’s current configuration is accomplishing what he and founding drummer Jordan Samolesky couldn’t when they first formed the band in 1986.

“What we were trying to do is similar to what we’re now able to do, but it was amateurish and embarrassing,” the vocalist tells the Straight from his Winnipeg home. “We were trying to put together elements of our favourite hardcore and metal records. Jord and I, we were 16 and couldn’t pull it off.”

Though over 20 years of playing together has naturally made the pair better musicians, Hannah credits the skills of bassist Todd Kowalski and six-stringer David “Beaver” Guillas as the driving force behind Propagandhi’s current fixation with technical prowess.

“Todd and Beav are way more adventurous with their vision for songs,” he says. “I don’t naturally have that inclination to be adventurous; I like to just stick to the hard and fast.”

Supporting Caste still has moments of sheer speediness—check out the frighteningly fast scissor beats of the ’80s-hardcore rager “Incalculable Effects”—but the album just as easily metes out mellow moments like the feathery acoustic intro of “Without Love” or the spacey prog riffs of “Last Will & Testament”.

Its musical tastes have changed, but Propagandhi remains just as politically charged as ever. While the group still criticizes war (“Night Letters”) and political ignorance (“This Is Your Life”), perhaps the most polarizing tune on the disc is “Dear Coach’s Corner”.

An open letter to Hockey Night in Canada host Ron MacLean, the track finds Hannah critiquing Canada’s game by pointing out the nationalistic implications of saluting the flag and singing the national anthem before a match, comparing this to the jingoism of the Nuremberg rallies.

“As far as the injection of a nationalist fervour, patriotism, or just an unquestioning support for Canadian imperialist military ventures overseas, the connection between hockey and ideology is blatant,” the frontman says.

Another controversial song comes in the form of “Human(e) Meat (The Flensing of Sandor Katz)”, a satirical response to radical food author Katz’s book The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, which purports that eating meat can be rationalized if an animal is raised and killed humanely. Hannah and his vegan bandmates consider Katz’s theory to be hogwash.

“I used his logic by applying it to a situation where I declared a craving for his flesh,” Hannah says. “I could acquire that flesh and satisfy my craving and treat him humanely at the same time.”

Inarguably Supporting Caste’s most unsettling moment, the track finds Hannah passionately singing atop shimmering open guitar chords about boiling the flesh from the author’s decapitated head and making it into headcheese. As far as agendas go, it proves that Propagandhi still loves offending its opponents.

“I think his response to it was with anger,” the singer says of Katz. “Which I think is the appropriate response to such an absurd proposal. I think it worked out.”

Propagandhi plays the Rickshaw Theatre on Tuesday (October 27).