Credit: Found On Internet

It’s almost a decade since Pittsburgh’s Anti-Flag released their debut. In the time that has past they’ve grown into the most prominent political punk-rock band. Like many successful punk bands from the underground, the major labels came knocking. Anti-Flag would be have probably been the band voted least likely to make the move, but last year it happened. The major label debut “For Blood and Empire” is available now. Music Towers caught up with drummer Pat Thetic to see if things are working out how they had hoped.

“In some ways yes, and some ways no. I think from the activist point of view definitely. We have talked to many more news outlets than would’ve talked to us in the past. In the UK and around the world we’ve been talking about depleted uranium and the munitions that are tipped with depleted uranium that are turning southern Iraq into a toxic waste dump. In that sense we have definitely succeeded. As far as being a rock band, and being rockstars, no not so much. So far, we’ve sold pretty much the same amount of records we did with the last record. From my point of view, the goal of being able to talk about issues is much more important than selling records.

I presume you had the majors on your tail for a while, why now?
We did for sure, and none of them would give us what we wanted. It may have been because we weren’t as successful at the time as we were when finally RCA finally stepped up to the plate. But we had told them all, RCA included, that unless you are prepared to give us these things, there’s no point in writing music if we can’t talk about the issues that are important to us. RCA said “we’ll give you that, we trust what you are doing and we think it’s valid.”

It almost decade since your debut. How does the Anti Flag of now compare to Anti Flag back then.
You know what, and I’m sure this’ll sound like crap to people on the outside, but on the inside very little has changed. We’re still playing shows the way we’ve always played shows, interacting with people the way we’ve always done it. I think that we have gotten to be better musicians and I think we can play our instruments better. We’re still not very good, but we are getting better. I attribute that 150-300 shows a year, sooner or later you get better whether you want to or not. It just sort of happens.