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There’s no shortage of material for punk stalwarts Anti-Flag to write about these days. Of course, the band’s twelfth album 20/20 Vision was written and released when we were still blissfully unaware of the COVID-19 crisis, but there was still plenty of material for an album’s worth of three-minute aggressive and progressive punk songs.

And the overarching theme of the record is perhaps even more relevant mid-pandemic. “I think that in a time where clarity of truth is at its most obscured, for us, we wanted to just make a record about trying to see through the smokescreen and really putting our emphasis on empathy for other people and all living things,” says Anti-Flag’s Chris No. 2.

He admits that the barrage of disastrous news in our current world can be a lot to manage. 20/20 Vision can help those of us who are feeling exhausted get the energy to keep going. Personally, the upbeat, Clash-like “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down” was exactly the anthem that I needed to hear at this moment.

There’s a surprising quieter moment on the album, too. Chris No. 2 says the swaying “Un-American,” which questions what’s considered unpatriotic, offers some insight into the way the band writes songs together.

“All of our songs begin this way,” he says. “We write them all on acoustic guitars, and they all come from a folk formula; whether it’s Phil Ochs or Billy Bragg or Woody Guthrie, they’re the inspirations behind 90 percent of Anti-Flag music. This one just kind of stayed in that form.”

This is the political album that you wish Green Day would have made this year. We’re lucky to have this band in Pittsburgh, providing a label home for other bands, making music and making us all think more urgently about the other people who are in this chaotic situation with us.