As anyone who has heard the song “I Was a Teenage Anarchist” (was being the operative word) from 2010’s well received, if not completely commercial album White Crosses, can tell you: Against Me! have come a long way from the primitive one man anarchist project that Tommy Gabel conceived back in 1997. Once spearheaded by Gabel’s throat-wrenching political lyrics and a brash sense of leftist politics, the band has flourished into a stadium sized outfit with blue collar anthems that’d make Springsteen proud. And of course with such a progression towards a friendlier pop sound, there were bound to be detractors, but as of Houston’s sold out Warehouse Live show this past Tuesday, there were none to be found amongst the fist-pumping throng of die-hard (former) anarcho punks.

hit the jump for the full review.

– sunbear

With all due respect to the supporting acts on the bill (local toughs American Heist, the shoegazers Fences, and the 90’s inspired Cheap Girls), I arrived to a packed, and I mean sardined-in, Warehouse Live Studio to see the amps sporting angry punk-rock propaganda that were unmistakably property of Against Me! If I wasn’t already angry, I certainly must not have been paying attention.

A sense of tension stirred among those in attendance, most decked head to toe in black and sporting Chuck Taylor’s that have far surpassed their hay day, but not one of anger of political discourse, rather anticipation for a good old fashioned punk-rock show by Gainesville Florida’s best.

Taking the stage and kicking into the exhilarating drink anthem “Pints of Guinness Make You Strong,” the lead-off track from the band’s 2002 debut Reinventing Axl Rose, Against Me! unbottled the fiery intensity that their live shows are known for and didn’t once let any slack build in their breakneck set. Tom Gabel, wispy frame and wild hair flailing, was an incomparably commanding front man, his throat-shredding voice leading the catchy choruses of the band’s past five albums and all those singing along to them. All the fan favorites were there spanning their entire catalogue, from the dusty but biting “Sink Florida, Sink” to the aforementioned White Crosses anthem “I Was a Teenage Anarchist,” and all of them performed with the precision and attack of a band who spent their career on the road.

Recent AM! addition Franz Nicolay and Hot Water Music drummer George Rebelo might have been MIA, but the band didn’t sound any less beefy. In fact, with a flurry of furor, the young Jay Weinberg, son of elder Weinberg, Max (yes, that Max Weinberg), behind the kit, the band were at their meat and potatoes best. The enthusiasm Against Me! served was matched only by the raised-fisted mob in front of the stage; a whorl of rebellious energy that was all at once aggressive as it was comradely. In fact, there were just as many chummy arms around shoulders as there were angry fists in the air.

It’s not easy to pick a single stand-out moment in a sea of gang-chant choruses. It could have been the Bush-era taunts of “From her Lips to God’s Ears (The Energizer)” from 2005’s Searching for a Former Clarity, or perhaps the “Whoas” of sleeper ballad “Sink Florida, Sink,” from 2003’s As the Eternal Cowboy or personally, the ferocious eyes Gabel gleamed at me during the first chorus of “Walking is Still Honest.” (again, debut album). But the whole night coalesced in the, and I can’t say “anthem” enough, love/hate Floridian anthem of “We Laugh at Danger (And Break All the Rules).” There’s that last chorus where the band completely shuts off and lets the crowd carry the song, when all the camaraderie in the air lends itself into a single alliance of top of your lungs chanting that you feel you’re not just at an Against Me show, but part of a family of people whose differing interests and varied music tastes are brought together by the sheer brilliance of a band whose raw intensity and dynamic sense of melody transcends labels and backgrounds under a unified rousing Against Me! sound.

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SETLIST:

[Against Me!]

Pints of Guiness
The Energizer
Cliche Guevara
High Pressure Low
Don’t Lose Touch
New Wave
White Crosses
Rice + Bread
I Was a Teenage Anarchist
The Ocean
White People for Peace
Americans Abroad
Reinventing Axl Rose
Walking is Still Honest
You Look Like I Need a Drink
Turn Those Clapping Hands Into Angry Fists
T.S.R.
Because of the Shame
Thrash Unreal
Miami
Sink Florida Sink

encore:

Joy
Problems
Rapid Decompression
Stop!
We Laugh at Danger (And Break All The Rules)

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[PHOTOS]

CHECK OUT MORE PHOTOS OF THE SHOW ON MY WONDERFULLY TALENTED SISTER, ARIELLE GUTIERREZ’S FLICKR.

[TOUR]

CATCH AGAINST ME! ON THEIR CURRENT TOUR WITH FENCES AND CHEAP GIRLS. DATES HERE.