“I was really writing to save my life,” explains Against Me! singer-guitarist Laura Jane Grace when discussing the band’s newest album, Transgender Dysphoria Blues.

She’s referring to the fact that this LP is the long-running punk band’s first since Grace, who was formerly known as Tom Gabel, publicly came out as transgender in 2012. She penned the collection’s 10 tracks around the same time, and many of the lyrics were inspired by Grace’s transition.

“The experiences are autobiographical for sure,” she says of the lyrics. “With a song like ‘True Trans Soul Rebel’ or a song like ‘Paralytic States’, where the character kills themselves, obviously I’m still alive, so that part’s not necessarily autobiographical. But feeling suicidal and dealing with dark depression like that is autobiographical.”

Grace’s gender transition wasn’t the only major change going on in her life when the group recorded Transgender Dysphoria Blues. After having previously been signed to Sire Records and working with big-name producers, Against Me! opted to go DIY; Grace produced the new album herself and released it on her own Total Treble label. Unfortunately, the sessions didn’t go smoothly, resulting in a drawn-out process that saw the band recording the same parts numerous times.

“There were a lot of false starts at the beginning,” Grace remembers. “Then we got pretty much through recording and we lost our drummer at the time [Jay Weinberg]. And so then we had to go back and re-record everything, which was kind of a drag. And then we got right towards the end of re-recording everything—I had built a studio in Florida that we were working out of—and then a tree fell through the roof and destroyed the studio. So then we had a new studio to go to. And then the bass player [Andrew Seward] quit, blah blah blah.”

Although the process was arduous, the band’s hard work paid off with Transgender Dysphoria Blues, which teems with raw punk energy. The title cut charges out of the gate with barrelling cowpunk rhythms, explosively distorted guitars, and stunningly forthright lyrics; during the chorus, Grace howls, “You want them to see you/Like they see every other girl/They just see a faggot/They hold their breath not to catch the sick.”

Elsewhere, the growling “Drinking With the Jocks” is the loudest and angriest song of the bunch, as Grace seethes, “I’m drinking with the jocks/Yeah, I’m laughing at the faggots/Just like one of the boys.”

Speaking about the track, Grace observes, “So many moments in life, you find yourself in a situation where you’re laughing along with the joke when you’re really the butt of that joke and you’re kind of selling yourself out. Or not even the butt of the joke, but guilty by participation in transphobic or homophobic or racist behaviour.”

With the turbulent recording sessions now in the past, Against Me! has a new permanent lineup that features long-time guitarist James Bowman, bassist Inge Johansson, and drummer Atom Willard, and Grace enthuses that their current tour has “a really great vibe”.

Furthermore, by touring behind Transgender Dysphoria Blues, Grace is helping to raise awareness about transgender issues. “Just being trans in this day and age—we have a lot of health-care problems,” she says. “A lot of the laws targeted against trans people are things that I think people need to be aware of and I think need to be changed.”

Against Me! plays the Commodore Ballroom on Wednesday (March 26).