Notes on Propagandhi's 'At Peace'

Since May is my birthday month, I can’t help but ascribe cosmic significance to a new album released this month by a band I love. This is especially true when the band I love infrequently releases music, so every new album drop feels like an event. Here, I’m talking about the Canadian punk band Propagandhi – a group whose music awakened and alerted me to worldwide systemic injustices all the way back when I was a middle schooler on the Navajo reservation. They’re the band that compelled me to read Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn when I was in high school. Whenever they offer up a new album, I embrace and savor it, anticipating what else I can learn from this thrashy rock band. 

For Propagandhi, their existence is rooted in politically charged messaging. For over 30 years, they’ve been sounding the alarm against white nationalism, imperialism and fascism. In my ongoing questioning of how to move forward in an unjust world, I’ve always looked to Propagandhi for profound answers. So when they announced a new album in 2025, their first release in eight years, it seemed like that would provide some reassurance to the chaos unleashed by brainless men in power. I expected some comfort in Propagandhi’s frantic noise, and I expected that to be coupled with lyrical wisdom about persistence. But this time around, the band subverted my expectations. With their new album, “At Peace,” I find myself reflecting on what it means to grow older in a world that’s failed us. 

The album opens with “Guiding Lights,” a brooding, mid-tempo track with lyrics that paint a bleak picture of a society that celebrates death and massacres. For a band that’s always relied on speed to unleash anger, the slow groove of “Guiding Lights” demands that the listener sit with these scenes of normalized carnage. One recurring lyric reads: “Killing; cathartic for the soul/ Euphoric are these nights of blood/ How can you say that you’re appalled?” In another verse, the song dispels fantasies one may have about saviors: “Our guiding lights are here – vile and miserable.” Perhaps there’s a double meaning to the song’s dismantling of beacons of hope. It could act as a critique of people in power, while reminding listeners that the people in this band are also imperfect humans who don’t have all the answers. 

Forgive me, but as the record plays, my thoughts are spinning, and I’m realizing that the artists I relied on for answers are also searching for answers. The recipe for Propagandhi’s early music was a mixture of speed punk/metal combined with polemical lyrics against capitalism and colonialism. With “At Peace,” the band is slowing down and asking existential questions about surviving as a compassionate human overwhelmed with despair. “Life on the line/ At this point, what’s left to say?/ We’ll die in a world still at war,” croons bass player Todd Kowalski on the track, “No Longer Young.” Kowalski then asks: “Did we really try?”  

There’s something contradictory about a socially conscious band releasing an album titled “At Peace” in a time of multiple climate and social crises. It feels like they’re throwing a wrench in the emotional urgency demanded by the present. I mean, I’m captivated by the album’s mid-tempo ambient rock soundscape. On every song, the band creates nuanced textures and atmosphere. As they pace themselves, I appreciate how I can hear the anger and sadness in the vocals. I find myself absorbing the emotional landscapes they carve out. In other words, the more I listen, the more I appreciate being able to pause and take in everything – the world in all its beauty and bleakness. 

And perhaps we’re not entirely destined for eternal damnation because the album closes with the track “Something Needs to Die But Maybe It’s Not You.” Here, more life-sized questions are asked: “What’s the point of all this? What does any of it mean?” The song sounds like all the doubts that cloud my thoughts on a restless night, where sleep and sunlight feel like they’ll never arrive, and I’m trapped awake in darkness. The guitars ominously move up and down the fretboard as the lyrics grapple with uncertainty. And then the last verse offers something open-ended: “You may feel ill-equipped and aimlessly adrift, but you were sent here with a gift. What will you do with it?”

I share a birthday with Joey Ramone and Malcolm X, so maybe that sealed my fate as an anti-fascist punk rocker. In any case, I’m 37 miracles into this life, and I’m still learning how to gracefully carry rage and love for the world while living through a collapsing empire. Perhaps that is the core message from Propagandhi on their latest record. Who knows what the world will look like when they release another album? Presently, I’m grateful this band is still around. And dear reader, I’m grateful to share this timeline where we’re all on the same journey, figuring out how to survive what comes next.