Track Review: House on Fire // Rise Against

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With their eighth studio album Wolves having debuted at no. 1 on Billboard’s Alternative, Top Rock and Hard Rock albums charts, Chicago quartet Rise Against have followed up the success of the LP’s lead single ‘The Violence’ with new track ‘House on Fire’. The band teamed up with director Daniel Carberry to create the accompanying visuals to their latest single.

The video explores the relationship between grandfather and granddaughter, through the metaphor of the innocence of childhood giving way to the chaos of adolescent years. However, as frontman Tim McIlrath explains, the song is actually about becoming a parent and dealing with fatherhood: “When you hear it you might hear a kind of classic love-and-loss-like love song… but [it is] actually is about becoming a parent.  I like to think I have the world figured out, once you throw a 13-year-old daughter your way you realise, I have nothing figured out. And this is an incredible challenge that’s at the same time worth it.”

Despite the track’s admittedly sentimental lyrical content, ‘House on Fire’ is fast-paced and driven by a punk-fuelled yet melodic riff. There seems to be an underlying sense of anger in the song which is felt when it explodes into its chorus of “So I’ll just hold you like a hand grenade / You touch me like a razor blade … / I’d burn you if that’s what it takes / To let you know I won’t let go of you”. The track’s parent album is deeply political in its anti-Trump message and bound to become a live favourite.

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