25 Days Of Metal 2012: #21 Propagandhi – Failed States

December 5th, 2012

Jordan Munson

Rather than counting down the days until we can celebrate Christmas, this year we’re bringing you a series of metal posts will be celebrating the countdown until we don’t have to be inundated with Christmas music and decorations everywhere. To coincide with this countdown we’ll be posting our top 25 metal (and metal-ish) albums of 2012. 25 days of hell, 25 rad metal albums to make up for it.

Canadian punk rockers Propagandhi released their sixth album, Failed States, on Epitaph Records this fall to pretty solid success on the Billboard charts (#1 heatseeker, #107 on the Billboard 200) – both of which were better figures than those their previous album, Supporting Castle, received back in 2009. Failed States also marks the band’s debut with Epitaph Records. While it’s not a purely metal album, Failed States leans a lot more toward the modern Converge style of hardcore than the band’s earlier material, adding a number of pure thrashing sections throughout the album alongside some pretty furious shred sections. Fueled by political and social themes, Propagandhi filled most of the songs from Failed States with poignant and unabashed lyrics that tell their position on said issues. On a very surface level, Failed States has the appearance of a pretty run-of-the-mill punk/hardcore/thrash record, but the execution is so far beyond the average that it turns a would-be mundane record into an incredibly strong one, certainly deserving of a spot among the top metal-ish albums of 2012.