When the noise of the world is at its loudest, Rise Against have always cut through with clarity. Four years since their last release, the Chicago rock veterans return with Ricochet — an album massive in sound yet centered on the smallest sparks of change. Out today, August 15th, via Loma Vista Recordings, the record arrives in an age of endless scroll and engineered outrage, where, as frontman Tim McIlrath puts it, “everything you do is going to affect somebody… it’s all one big ricochet effect.”
Across twelve tracks produced by Grammy-winner Catherine Marks (Boygenius, Foals, St. Vincent) and mixed by Alan Moulder (Nine Inch Nails, Paramore, Queens of the Stone Age), the band pushes their message and their music further than ever. Singles like “Nod”, “Prizefighter”, and “I Want It All” have already hinted at the album’s reinvigorated edge, but Ricochet as a whole wrestles with bigger questions: who benefits from division, and what happens when we choose connection over conflict?
“Ricochet is about our collective inter-connectedness,” McIlrath says. “We started with the title track and that being about how we’re all — whether we like it or not — stuck in the same room, so to speak. Everything you throw will affect the next person. We’re connected to other countries, other economies; we’re connected to undocumented immigrants. We’re connected to every decision our leaders make.”
For a band nearly three decades into their career, Ricochet feels less like a return and more like a reset — a reminder of Rise Against’s ability to meet a fractured moment with songs that demand we look inward and outward at the same time. To mark the release, Rolling Stone AU/NZ caught up with McIlrath as he walked us through his favourite song from every Rise Against album, including the brand-new Ricochet.
The Unraveling (2001)
A favourite song for me from The Unraveling is “Reception Fades”. I’ve always loved the intro of that song. And it’s funny too because it’s now a 25-year-old song and the chorus is like: “is the best yet to come, or did it pass by long ago?”. It’s funny to think of a 23-year-old me singing that line.
Revolutions per Minute (2003)
This was really a record that introduced us to so much of the world. It was where we finally got our legs, and we started collaborating more as a band. For my favourite song from this one, I’m going to say “Like the Angel”. I feel like that was a song that really broke out of that record and it reached a lot of people. It ended up being used on some video games and that kind of thing too. It’s one that still makes it into our setlist today, and I think it started to show us what we could do as a band, and what our strengths are as a band.
Siren Song of the Counter Culture (2004)
There’s so many good songs on this album, “Give It All” and “Swing Life Away” were the two that people really grabbed onto from this one. “Swing Life Away” was a last minute decision because we’d already previously released it on a compilation called Punk Goes Acoustic for Fearless Records. It was our A&R guy who was like, “you guys should re-record that and put it on the album”. I thought, “ok!”. As a band that was known for doing punk stuff, doing an acoustic song was kind of a controversial move. But it turned into a song that changed our lives. Machine Gun Kelly would go on to cover it, and things like that happened. So for Siren Song of the Counter Culture, I’ll have to go with “Swing Life Away”.
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The Sufferer & the Witness (2006)
This is when we really started to hit our stride. We took out what we had learned about ourselves as a band at that point, and we took it back to our old school studio where we did Revolutions per Minute and that production team, who had also gotten way better at what they were doing in those years. Because of all of that, I feel like we finally made a record that was just perfect Rise Against front to back, and perfectly captured by The Blasting Room with Bill Stevenson and Jason Livermore. There are so many good songs on this record, “Ready To Fall”, “Prayer Of The Refugee” and “The Good Left Undone” all ended up being singles. But “Under The Knife” is one we’re playing live on this tour we’re on right now, and it became one of those songs that was never pushed or promoted – but fans grabbed onto it. And it still turns into a song that gets a lot of attention. We were surprised when someone showed us: “Here’s the songs people are streaming” and that one was near the top of the list. It was like, “woah, that’s crazy, people found that song!”. I love those moments.
Appeal to Reason (2008)
Appeal to Reason was a lot of fun because off of the success of what had come before it, we just doubled down and made a record with some of our biggest songs to this day. This was the record that brought people to “Savior” and “Hero Of War” and “Re-Education (Through Labor)”. But I’m going to go with a song called “From Heads Unworthy”, especially from the perspective of being an American in 2025 and watching the power structures change. This song talks about toppling kings and crowning people, all that sort of thing, so it’s a song that’s on my mind.
Endgame (2011)
For Endgame, we went back to the same studio, The Blasting Room in Fort Collins. “Help Is On The Way”, “Make It Stop (September’s Children)” and “Satellite” were the big songs that came off this record. I’m a huge fan of “Wait For Me”, but I’m going to say “Make It Stop (September’s Children)” is one of those songs that I think reaches the most people around the planet. This is a song that people still come up to me and say, “this song really meant something to me at this time in my life”. And I feel like that happens with “Make It Stop” disproportionately more than a lot of our other songs.
The Black Market (2014)
The Black Market is one of my favourite records actually. Yet again, we went back to the same studio, but I feel like we captured a different sound with this one and really came into our own. “I Don’t Want To Be Here Anymore” and “Tragedy + Time” were songs on this one that we made videos for. But I’m going to go with “The Black Market”. That song itself is one of my faves, and we recently resurrected it for a tour last year and I was surprised by how well it stood up.
Wolves (2017)
For Wolves we went down to Nashville, Tennessee to work with a guy named Nick Raskulinecz, who had done Deftones and Alice In Chains and Mastodon, and we made Wolves. And it was a lot of fun! I think my favourite song on this record, there are so many good songs, but I like the song “Wolves”, the first track. It’s a call to action, rally-ish classic Rise Against song. I love the cover art for Wolves too. We were working with some artist who kept sending us things that we didn’t like so we were like, “shoot, we have to pivot and find somebody else”. We found somebody else and that cover was the first thing they sent. And we were like: “this is perfect!”. It was awesome.
Nowhere Generation (2021)
Nowhere Generation was our pandemic record. We actually finished it before the pandemic. We were in the studio while they were telling us to go home, hotels were kicking us out and that kind of thing. We returned to our studio in Colorado, The Blasting Room, and made that record. And I think we managed to create some songs that really fit well into the Rise Against story. The first song on the album, “The Numbers”, is a favourite of mine because I really enjoyed the way it came out. It just hits you in the face the way that a Rise Against song should.
Ricochet (2025)
And lastly for Ricochet, I’m going to go with the song “Ricochet” because I think it’s a big departure for Rise Against at a time where Rise Against needs a big departure. I think it’s a song where people will hear it and say, “oh, this is Rise Against?”. That was the goal for me this year, “let’s create something that takes people by surprise a little bit instead of creating something that just fits seamlessly into our catalogue. Let’s make something that’s a little bit more of a curve ball”, which is hard to do as guys who have been playing in the band for almost 30 years. We’re sort of congealed and we’re stuck in our ways. We’re old dogs but these are new tricks. And the fact that we did that? I’m pretty proud of us. “Ricochet” might’ve been the first or second song that we put together for the album, which was cool too. I think it gave us permission to be like: “all right, we can do anything. Let’s have fun!”.
