Prayers for Atheists

Rhode Island's Prayers for Atheists is a band with incendiary political convictions, the kind that can land dudes in jail. At the 2008 Republican National Convention, vocalist Jared Paul was arbitrarily arrested while covering the convention for quarterly publication The Agenda, and he and the rest of his bandmates have since made it a mission to voice their political frustrations with a fiery Zack De La Rocha-like delivery. On the act's self-titled debut, Paul tells the story of the RNC arrest on the song "Psalm for St. Paul," presenting himself as a martyr for the politically frustrated and socially unfulfilled. With this sort of rhetoric, Prayers for Atheists is waiting patiently for the torch to be passed from social heavyweights like Rage Against the Machine — perhaps only to drop it and then watch it all burn.