After 12 years of band life, Rise Against have announced that they will be taking some well earned time off before they put their focus towards any new material. Frontman Tim McIlrath explained to Rolling Stone (via Loud Wire) that the time off will be a much needed moment to “recharge”.
The band have been loyal to fans via regular releases and constant tours, and despite locking in time off, McIlrath is adamant that it will result in a new album: “We always have new ideas floating around, we always have new songs and new ideas,” he explained, adding “[But] we’re kind of focusing on recharging our batteries right now. We’ve been a band for 12 years. We’ve been hitting it hard and looking at this band like a marathon, not a sprint. We realize we need to invest time in our music and our songs, as well as invest time into ourselves, our lives, so I think for the next few months, that’s what we’ll be doing.”
The legendary vocalist believes that some time off with the family, in a familiar environment (as opposed to random venues and hotels all over the world) is just what the doctor ordered for the band to refill their creative pools.
Some ideas for the release have been tossed around amongst the Rise Against camp, with McIlrath eager to venture further into his softer side, having only scratched the surface with his cover of Bob Dylan’s The Ballad of Hollis Brown.
“It was something we hadn’t done before and I think we all walked away from the studio experience saying, ‘When we come back here, we need to tap into some of the things that we tapped into in this Bob Dylan cover’,” he told Rolling Stone, “We took our foot off the gas a little bit, allowed the guitar tones to come out a little more, played things more deliberate instead of as fast as a speeding train, and we realized this could still be heavy.”
