Released 7 October 2008
Genres Hardcore punk, melodic hardcore
Singles Give It All, Swing Life Away, Life Less Frightening

Siren Song of the Counter Culture is the third studio album by the greatest melodic-hardcore band of all time, Rise Against.

(If you're looking for Obstructed View, or any of the other 2005 special edition bonus songs, try the miscellanious page!)

Life Less Frightening

In other Rise Against tracks, there's a common "call to action" in a lot of them. This song is like the tiredness after a fight.

I don't ask for much
Truth be told I'd settle
For a life less frightening
A life less frightening

art
2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 pre-2020s ???

collectables

blinkies

resources

most of these are specific to my local community (i.e. the Pacific Northwest) but a lot of the organizations have chapters in a lot of parts of the world, so if you're not local... don't sweat !!! these could still be helpful

Caesthoffe (Nano-celebrity)

selfie of a young white person with medium-length dark brown hair, black glasses, and a Black megadeth t-shirt closing their eyes and biting their bottom lip goofily in a dark bedroom

A selfie of the bastard.
Biography
Name(s) Aurora, Rory, Caesthoffe
Date of Birth 11 August 2003 (age 20)
Winnemucca, NV, U.S.
Origin Renton, WA, U.S.
Pronouns They/them, it/its, neos
Gender Non-binary
Sexual/romantic orientation Viramoric, aromantic
Years active 2022–present
Title(s) Musician • writer • artist
Signature

Caesthoffe (sometimes stylized in all lowercase), also known as Aurora or Rory is an American artist and online personality. They[a] are not known for doing anything important outside of the small community they occupy.

Show Content

Early and personal life

Caesthoffe was born in 2003 to a narcissistic mother and a father who was no longer in their life. They attended Hazen High School in Renton, and later Bellevue College before dropping out after their second semester. They've since taken many different retail jobs in the hopes of finally moving out.

Music career

Caesthoffe uploads acoustic covers of popular rock and metal songs onto Youtube[1] and less rehearsed/produced tracks onto Soundcloud.[2] On Youtube, they have amassed 1.6k views and currently sit at 50 subscribers as of 13 February 2024. Bands that have influenced Caesthoffe include Green Day, Rage Against the Machine, Rise Against, Nine Inch Nails, The Clash, The Smashing Pumpkins, and many of the grunge bands from the Seattle music scene. They've also been influenced by many of the local bands they've seen at smaller venues, such as sundogs (now Diazepam) from Las Vegas.

Activism

Caesthoffe has voiced support for left-wing political views and movements, and considers themselves an anarcho-communist. Raised by right-wing parents, they didn't question their political ideology until discovering online political communities on Youtube and Twitter. Left-wing content creators that were "more palatable" to a young conservative brought them out of the alt-right pipeline, and gave them the room to discover their queer identities as well. They support many different beliefs and movements including the freedom of information, the right to privacy, pro-piracy, queer anarchism, relationship anarchy, anti-amatonormativity, and more.

Entertainment

Whereabouts Unknown (or The Metal March, according to Tim) is the closing track of Appeal to Reason. it's one of the softer songs on the album, and closes the entire thing out on a shakespearien story of heartbreak. about two long forgotten friends, on opposite sides of the battle field.

there's a lot of poetic tragedy in this tale, and i think it especially shines through in the second half of the track. whereas the first part is mostly some exposition about the characters, the second half gives some absolutely fucking gut punches:

Another place, another time
We toed the same side of the line
Yeah, we saw eye to eye
Even then the saddest sounds
Were nothing laughter could not drown
But we are not laughing now

I see your face
In my sights
I hesitate
And then look for a sign
Somewhere in the sky

the juxtaposition between the two is stark; firstly, he talks about his brotherly comradery. toeing the same line, seeing eye to eye, drowning their sorrows in laughter. the last line of the verse, though, brings us back to reality. the protagonist looks down the sight of (assumedly) a sniper rifle, at a friend he once loved and hesitates as he aims. i can't express how great this dichotomy is.

i also want to just higlight the chorus, because it's easily the most impactful part of the song. specifically the chorus after the bridge, the one that closes the track (and album) out. if the verses/pre-choruses are the sort of level headed commentaries on the state of their relationship, the chorus is a plea for the future of it.

Your whereabouts unknown
Please know you can come home
It's alright
I long for the moment
Our silence is broken
It's all right
It's all right
It's all right

It's alright now
It's alright now
'Cause all is forgiven
If you could just listen
It's all right
It's all right

even though this song is inherently political, i do like how almost everyone can relate to this in an a-political way. not everyone knows a Christo-facsist soldier, but everyone has a friend that they've lost touch with. everyone has a friend they miss. the repetition of that last line, "it's alright," is filled with desperation but also love. and his final speech, about forgiveness, ends the story unresolved... which leaves the album with a strange unfinished feeling. like there should be more to listen to, more stories of love and war and the weird ways they intersect. overall, it's just a fantastic song and an incredible end to a phenomenal album.

information

"One fallacy, I think, of anti piracy arguments is that a lot of them seem to assume that if I'm unable to pirate something I'm going to pay for it instead rather than going "oh! that's a terrible shame" and then quickly forgetting about it"

—werewolfetone on

resources

OTHER

BOOKS/ARTICLES

gallery

bouts" doesn't exactly have the same ring to it (and not a lot of things rhyme with whereabouts anyways). Even though this song is inherently political, I do like how almost everyone can relate to this in an a-political way. Not everyone knows a Christo-facsist soldier, but everyone has a friend that they've lost touch with. Everyone has a friend they miss. The repetition of that last line, "it's alright," feels like a plea to this person.

The next verse doesn't have much to talk about on it's own, as it's mostly just more ways of saying what we already know by this point and serves as sort of a "flashback" than anything. Coupled with the pre-chorus, though, is where it gets interesting.

Another place, another time
We toed the same side of the line
Yeah, we saw eye to eye
Even then the saddest sounds
Were nothing laughter could not drown
But we are not laughing now

I see your face
In my sights
I hesitate
And then look for a sign
Somewhere in the sky

The juxtaposition between the two is stark; firstly, he talks about his brotherly comradery. Toeing the same line, seeing eye to eye, drowning their sorrows in laughter. The last line of the verse, though, brings us back to reality.

The protagonist looks down the sight of (assumedly) a sniper rifle, at a friend he once loved; hesitating

Chamber the Cartridge

Chamber the Cartridge immediately sets the artistic tone that persists throughout The Sufferer and the Witness. The song begins with some radio chatter, as Brandon Barnes plays this militant drum fill that gets faster as the introduction goes on. After a moment, you can hear a robotic voice announce "this is Noyes." The intro uses a sample from the Noyes station Chicago train line; not only a nod to their roots as a Chicago-based band, but a tongue-in-cheek self awareness that they are quite literally making noise
.

The first verses are spoken incredibly quickly. Which is, honestly, a little unfortunate given the amazing imagery that Tim McIlrath uses.

Down beyond these city streets through gutters filled with black debris
In alleys void of any light where nameless things live out of sight
Down through the scrapers of the sky past neon words glowing all night
Echoes my name between each car, "Are you happy where you are?"

He manages to make these lyrics come alive, like a camera is panning around this Gotham-esque city. He could've called them "neon signs," but instead he says "neon words glowing all night." He could've said "sky scraper," but instead he says "scraper of the sky." Which may sound like an immature and childish change, but I think it enhances this section a lot. At a first hearing, you don't really understand all of what he's saying. Unless you physically read the lyrics, he's just speaking too fast and aggresssive to understand it. That small change adds an air of mysticism to itself.

Injection

Injection blends together the themes of politics and personal strife into a wonderful concoction of desperation. The equivalent of watching someone trapped in a tank of water try and claw their way out.

The chorus is so fast-paced, and by the end Tim McIlrath is pleading to the listener:

Give me the drug, keep me alive
Give me what's left of my life
Don't let me go
Pull this plug, let me breath
On my own I'm finally free
Don't let me go

Ready to Fall

Ready to Fall, the first single and third overall track of the album, is so fucking catchy it's crazy. A soft riff begins and, after the first two measures, breaks out into the main part of the song. The first verse plays out as a conversation between two people, going something like this:

"Hold on slow down again from the top now, and tell me everything."

"I know I've been gone for what seems like forever, but I'm here now waiting. To convince you that I'm not a ghost or a stranger, but closer than you think."

She said, "just go on to what you pretend is your life, but please don't die on me!"

The pre-chorus and chorus tackles the narrators willingness to die, with lines like:

Wings won't take me
Heights don't faze me
So take a step
But don't look down
Take a step

Hinting that he's afraid to follow through, and other lines like:

I found a shoulder to lean on
An infallible reason to live all by itself
I took one last look from the heights that I once loved
And then I ran like hell

Indicating that he is scared to follow through.

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the big ones

lgbt+

aromantic

non-binary

transgender



microlabels & xenogenders

aroallo

viramoric

toric

nblm

grungic

metalgender

nu-metalgender

punkgender

ramgender

cool custom pride flags :0



non-LGBT pride flags !!!