Propagandhi: “When we started this band, it felt like the possibilities were endless… Now we’re asking, ‘What was the point?’”

Chris Hannah has never been keen on compromise. First forming Propagandhi when he was just entering high school in 1986, a trademark blend of hardcore punk and thrash metal, unbending politics and offbeat humour made them a band unlike any other, and kickstarted an evolution – first into furious firebrands, then rocksteady elder statesmen.

Sporting a ‘World’s Greatest Dad’ shirt with a photo of his two young sons as we convene this morning, though, he ponders the trade-offs now necessary just to protect the world they will inherit, such as accepting new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney over Conservative populist Pierre Poilievre.

“I guess we got the lesser of two evils,” he shrugs. “But as a result of that we have a milquetoast, centre-right, recycled, neoliberal administration who are terrible on ending support for genocide. But when there is talk of the United States trying to annex us as a 51st state, even Canadians who are not particularly patriotic – even people like me – have to draw a line. I will not be American. It’s bad enough being born into the Canadian settler system [taking indigenous land]. But I think that’s worth protecting from a fucking buffoon like Donald Trump and the population that voted for him.”

Propagandhi do not make records unless there is something to say. Just their eighth album since 1993 debut How To Clean Everything, superb new release At Peace explores similarly ruminative, downbeat territory. Not that they are at peace. Locating his mindset somewhere between Zen spiritualism of German writer Eckhart Tolle and the violent societal critique of domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber), Chris wrestles with a world that’s just as volatile as when the band came to life at the height of Reaganism – and only seems to be getting worse.

“There is a sense of resignation,” he sighs. “It’s hard for me to imagine what the teenage or 20-year-old me would think if he saw where I’m at today. I have so many critical assessments of him that I wouldn’t necessarily care. But getting older has been like being that frog sitting in the saucepan as the water is slowly brought up to boil. The trajectory that we’ve been on has had no course-correction. It’s like some kind of cosmic joke. And I think if the young me could compare his single-mindedness and appetite for confrontation to mine now, he might be dismayed.

“The theme of the record – if there is a theme – is how we find meaning in our remaining years without resigning ourselves to rampant injustice and inequality, or going to jail. I honestly don’t have the answer.”

Existentialism was almost inevitable, Chris contends. Anyone who’s followed Propagandhi from their fiery youth into not-much-mellower middle-age won’t be surprised by the almost fatalist content of their later years. No Longer Young rages, ‘Life on the line, at this point what’s left to say? / We’ll die in a world still at war / Did we really try?’ Elsewhere, Rented P.A. is contemplative: ‘When you finally lower me into that grave / Take off to the Great White North sputtering out of a rented P.A. / Spare a prayer for wayward souls / I could use some help to find my way.’

Even the record’s more skeletal musicality, enforcing slower tempos and lower-gain guitar sounds indebted to early Black Sabbath and metal heroes Hallow’s Eve, is an effort to acknowledge they’re no longer the kids they were.

“In 15 years, I’m going to be 70 years old,” says Chris. “That’s fucking crazy. We’re almost literally done with our time on Earth. It kind of makes sense that the lyrical content is a little more contemplative. You start looking back on your life wondering if it’s been meaningful or if it’s just been a cowardly life, and trying to reconcile those things.”

Digging deeper, Benito’s Earlier Work seethes with frustration at the rebirth of fascism in the internet age: ‘My only remaining goal was to leave this world without actually killing someone / I find myself harbouring doubts.’ There’s gallows humour, too, in the wryly moralising Cat Guy, and a warning of environmental collapse on Fire Season. Most striking is Prismatic Spray (The Tinder Date). An oddball expression of Chris’ fascination with the “Disneyfication” of the United States and an ode to the comical darkness of late SNFU singer Chi Pig, its depiction of a romantic trip to a theme park at the end of the world lingers long in the memory.

“As someone who has lived adjacent to the United States my whole life, I’ve always been fascinated by aspects of dark Americana,” the singer explains. “Like, ‘What is this fantasy land?!’ One of the aspects that I’ve found most compelling is the whole corporate Disney endeavour: Disneyland, Disney World, Disney movies, Disney On Ice, the whole EPCOT thing. I’ve wanted to write about it for so long, but never knew how.

“So, here, I imagined a guy on a date at Disneyland. He gets to the top of one of those huge rides, looks down and suddenly realises the problem with western culture, its obsession with technology, its celebration of expansionism and dispossession. The chorus line, ‘We see just what we want to see / Believe with total certainty / Believe in any old fantasy,’ says so much about the mindset of the western world. Perhaps the whole world!”

Edgar Samuel Paxson’s 1899 painting of Custer’s Last Stand is a typically provocative choice of artwork – its vision of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, scene of a slaughter of natives by the U.S. 7th Cavalry, challenges viewers to confront misguided ‘patriotism’ and the tradition of atrocity that continues to this day.

A parallel one can draw here is to the current situation between Israel and Palestine, a topic on which Chris is a knowledgeable and well-read man. He says he is “exhilarated” by finding like minds willing to challenge the status quo. But he’s also frustrated by the unwillingness of many musicians to say something, and the marginalisation of those who do – like Irish rappers Kneecap, whose recent unsubtle and controversial rabble-rousing at Coachella sparked media outrage across the globe. So, why aren’t more artists using their right to protest?

“Has punk ever really spoken up?” Chris asks, pessimistically. “I guess in the ’80s there was more strident, analytical, truly rebellious messaging. What those artists were saying was truly brave, things that would get you beaten up. We don’t really see that in the punk scene of today, to the extent where it’s an Irish hip-hop act who are the ones taking a strident, probably righteous stand, and likely paying the price for it.

“Not many punk bands are likely to come to their defence, or to offer the same kind of courageous stance that they did. On the flipside, I hadn’t heard of Kneecap a few weeks ago, and now I have. I hope they end up coming out alright on the other side of this, maybe with an even higher profile from all the attention they’re receiving.”

If there’s one thing that separates Propagandhi from punk peers of the ’80s and ’90s, it’s that they’re still still on the cutting edge, lighting the way for youngsters following in their path in 2025. Yet even rolling into the final act of an iconic career, there is no thought of legacy.

“People ask us how much responsibility we feel for those listening to our music,” ponders Chris. “None. Zero. I feel no responsibility other than to myself to be as authentic as possible. It can be hard to articulate that without sounding like an ass. If you fixate too much on legacy, you end up inauthentic. If you think too much about what people are going to say about what you’re writing after you’re gone, you’re not living in the moment. You have no control of how you’re remembered.

“And what does it matter, anyway? In my younger years, maybe I did care about something that had real meaning or was going to stand the test of time. Pre-9/11, when we started this band, it felt like the possibilities were endless. Culturally, politically, there were signs of mass mobilisation changing the economic order of the planet. Now, we’re asking, ‘What was the point of it all?’ I’ve been in a band my entire life and it almost feels like things are worse than when I started – like an abject failure. But the whole point of this endeavour is that it was for us. If I’m going to look back on it, I’m looking back on it as our journey. Whether it was right or wrong, shitty or great, that’s life.”

Even vindication is no consolation. Harking back to the lyrics of 1993’s Haillie Sellasse, Up Your Ass (‘The West Bank, The Gaza strip / Soon to be parking lots for American tourists and fascist cops’) there are chilling parallels with 2025’s AI-generated vision of a ‘Trump Gaza’. But Chris sees no point in being congratulated for predicting a dystopian future “so obvious an idiot teenager from Manitoba could figure it out”. It’s as satisfying, he stresses, as saying ‘I told you so!’ to the person next to you alongside the mass grave as an executioner makes his way down the line.

“People are okay with facing the darkness, but they want there to be hope,” he concludes. “I’m not totally without hope, but I just have no concrete sense of what that hope is for. And I am shielded by privilege. I am able to sit on the bench at my kids’ hockey games and feel the rest of the world disappear as I get lost in the moment. I guess I hope that everybody can be afforded the same level of privilege where they can have those moments without worrying whether they’re going to eat today, or get shot at today, or die today.

“The last song on At Peace, Something Needs To Die But Maybe It’s Not You, is from the interpersonal perspective of one downtrodden person trying to lift another,” he concludes. “In certain moments, maybe this could be described as a hopeful record. But in many, many others, it’s all about hopelessness.

“Because not everything is going to be okay…”

At Peace is out now via Epitaph

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