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‘Writing this record, I spent a lot of time reflecting,’ frontman Tom Gabel tells MTV News. By James Montgomery Against Me! Photo: MTV News With 2007’s New Wave, Against Me! detonated the very notion of what it meant to be a “punk” act. Released on a very major label (Reprise Records) and produced by a very famous name (Butch Vig), the album featured big hooks, even bigger studio sheen and a boy/girl duet thrown in for good measure. For all the polish, frontman Tom Gabel’s snarl remained just as gruff as ever, and the targets AM! set their sights on — the impotence of the music industry, the ineffectiveness of the government, the embarrassment of peace-ified protest songs in an increasingly violent time — very much encompassed the scope of “the man’s” wrongs, circa the last days of the Bush administration. Which is to say that, no matter what AM!’s (many) detractors liked to say about it, Wave was still very much a punk album — and quite the forward-thinking one, at that. But when it came time to record the follow-up, Gabel didn’t find himself looking toward the future once again. Quite the opposite, in fact. “Writing this record, I spent a lot of time reflecting,” he told MTV News. “I spent a lot of time thinking about people I used to know, places I used to hang out, things I used to do — I grew up in the anarcho-punk scene, and I had many experiences in that — so that almost couldn’t help but show up on this record.” And the result of all that reflecting is White Crosses (due June 8), an album that matches the bombast of New Wave but, rather than pushing the envelope forward, is resigned to be a rather curdled love letter to Gabel’s punk-rock past. Songs like the title track, “I Was a Teenage Anarchist” and “Because of the Shame” detail his time spent kicking around suburban Florida as a knotty crust punk, and none of them are exactly what you’d call “fond remembrances.” It’s as if, by looking back, Gabel is even more disgusted by the punk scene. And when coupled with the fact that AM! wrap his barbs in a musical m