In high school, Against Me! were the most credible band anyone I knew might know, punk iconoclasts spitting fiery songs about anarchy, DIY, revolution—topics that feel essential when you’re a teen. Well, you can guess what happened next: deals with major labels, seemingly unbounded promise unfulfilled, and parts of a fanbase left behind to cry "sell out!" as the band (which swiftly shed original members) began to re-examine the ethos that brought them here. In 2010, they acknowledged their failures on "I Was a Teenage Anarchist", emphasis on the past tense: "Do you remember/ When you were young and you wanted to set the world on fire?" That those lines came on a milquetoast major-label album escaped no one’s attention.

Then, they found something new to scream about. In 2012, singer Laura Jane Grace came out as transgender, and, to general surprise, pointed out how some of the band’s earlier music had hinted at—but never fully explored—her gender dysphoria. On Transgender Dysphoria Blues, she was free to sing without obfuscation. Grace’s voice has long been one of rock'n'roll’s massively emotive battering rams, and she’s never sounded more unbridled. Against Me! were always best when proffering a firm hand in an uncertain society—their punk songs are love songs, built for comfort in times of crisis. Over blood-churning guitars and galvanizing hooks, Grace gives her love to unnamed trans women bearing the brunt of callous discrimination, and to her wife, Heather, who must navigate this journey along with her. That love might not be enough—Grace knows from experience—but it’s there for the taking, kindling for the fire. "There’s a brave new world that’s raging inside of me," Grace sings on "FUCKMYLIFE666", which combines insouciant rebellion—just look at the title—with bracing, poetic uncertainty about this next phase of her life.

It’s an autobiographical album, not a concept album, insistent and uncompromising, sung by a trans woman for trans listeners without any filtering or translation. That’s genuinely revolutionary, in ways that punk bands simply fixated on anarchy rarely are. So despite the "live fast, die young" history of the genre, Against Me! is a punk band making their most necessary album as they approach 20 years of existence. (The kids I knew in high school never would’ve predicted that.) As Grace told Rolling Stone in 2012, when Transgender Dysphoria Blues was only in the works: "However fierce our band was in the past, imagine me, six foot two, in heels, fucking screaming in someone’s face." Consider that promise finally fulfilled. —Jeremy Gordon