Flobots Fight With Tools

"So with those kinds of things," he goes on, "you want it to get to that boiling point. Because that boiling point is where the issues are, and when you get there you're really talking, and that rage can burn away and you've got your actual argument. If you frame it properly, if you give it a real space for it, it can be productive."

"Most people's idea of volunteering involves soup kitchens," Brackett notes. "But if we give people an actual skill set, we make that available, the amount of empowerment and the idea of change that they can bring to the world increases. And so the lies of our limitations start fading away, and the truth of what our potential is starts coming to the forefront.

"We're trying to create a holistic, sustainable model with our musicianship," he adds. "We want to walk the talk. I think a lot of what we respond to in hip-hop is what it does with the community. It's easy to have that rhetoric of positivity, where we're like, 'Hey, yo! Everybody be positive.' But we want to go past that, where people who are in the community see us visibly there. Our commitment to service is a core value of the band. We're trying to do whatever we can do to make music a full-time, sustainable gig, where we're sustaining ourselves and our community through our music and our message."

That message comes through loud and clear on Fight With Tools, Flobots' new album. Taking its title from a WWII propaganda poster, Tools finds the act pleading for an awakening with salvos like "There's a War Going on for Your Mind," "Mayday!!!" and "Stand Up." Despite at times seeming like a dystopian mash-up of Rage Against the Machine politics filtered through 311's sound system, the well-worn approach sounds fresh, thanks to Roberts's exceptional viola playing and Laurie's engaging rhymes and forceful cadence, perfectly augmented by Brackett's verses.

"I think our relationship in the band is very intimate, because it's also a friendship," Laurie explains. "So growth within the band is also growth of our friendship. I don't feel like there's a separate time where it's like friend time and then here we have band time. In the rehearsal space, a lot of times we're just playing around. Yesterday we were pretending to be video-game characters and walking into walls."

"The nerd stuff doesn't change," Brackett concludes. "Doesn't matter how many people come to your shows."