PROPAGANDHI
Potemkin City Limits
G7 Welcoming Committee
· The soundtrack to the voluntary human extinction movement plays on.
Propagandhi have chosen a highly evocative title for their third full-length release. Simultaneously referencing the corrupt 18th-century Russian bureaucrat who erected false-front villages along the banks of the Volga River to convince Catherine the Great that her domestic policies were working, and Serge Eisenstein’s classic film of the same name that recounted the Russian Revolution (with the Bolsheviks receiving artillery support from The Battleship Potemkin), it also calls to mind the legendary long-running PBS music concert series Austin City Limits. Propagandhi spell out their musical ambitions, leftist leanings and political discontent with just three words.
The carefully constructed metaphors and images don’t stop with the title either. While Propagandhi still haven’t found a replacement for John K. Sampson’s sense of wordplay, the love of hardcore and metal that pronounced itself on Today’s Empires, Tomorrow’s Ashes has been tempered somewhat, making this a slightly more accessible album, without sacrificing its edge. That said, there are no pop moments here, and few moments of humour. The overwhelming emotion is one of anger as the band re-evaluates Canada’s relationship to our neighbours to the south and in the rest of the world and finds that things have become worse.
Those waiting for a musical signpost for these troubled times need wait no longer. It won’t sell as many copies as Green Day’s American Idiot, but this is the best punk album, musically and lyrically, since Bad Religion’s Suffer in 1987. When you think of punk, of anger and energy, of questioning authority, of refusing and resisting, think of Potemkin City Limits.
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