The Sufferer & The Witness

The Sufferer & the Witness is the fourth album by American punk rock band Rise Against. The album was released on July 4, 2006. It was their second release on major label Geffen Records, following 2004’s Siren Song of the Counter Culture.

Rise Against returns with a rollicking wallop of an album that further establishes the Chicago-based outfit as one of the great bright hopes for the future of alienation rock. Cut from the same savvy cloth as Bad Religion and Black Flag, Rise Against rocks hard during the martial opus opener, “Chamber The Cartridge,” the melodic “Injection,” which asks us to imagine that Iron Maiden came from sunny California and not some dreary part of London, and “Ready To Fall,” which may be one of the greatest anthems of adolescent estrangement since The Who’s “Baba O’Riley.” The band also isn’t afraid of a good hook and scintillating melody (“Under The Knife”), exploring complex emotions (“Roadside”), or unleashing a bit of old-school breakneck fury sans apology (“Bricks”). All of these things demonstrate that Rise Against is drawing from a broader palette than many of its counterparts, one of the reasons it will (indeed, already has) rise above the masses of sound-alike acts vying for the attention of the MySpace generation.