Leave it to a bunch of angry Canadians to create the quintessential anti-George W. Bush polemic. Released in 2005 during the nadir of Bush’s presidency, Propagandhi’s “Potemkin City Limits” channels left-wing outrage into a blistering musical indictment that makes “American Idiot” sound like a “Kidz Bop” compilation.

Creating music as radical as their politics, Propagandhi abandons the standard verse-chorus-verse punk template—forcing the music to conform to lead singer Chris Hannah’s lyrical content instead of the reverse. And Hannah’s lyrical prowess has never been sharper as he shifts seamlessly from sarcastic to vitriolic to elegiac and back again within a single song.

The title “Potemkin City Limits” comes from the term Potemkin Village, meaning a facade hiding an unpleasant political reality. With the unpleasant realities of two wars and another Bush term, Hannah provides left-wing wish fulfillment. Lead track “A Speculative Fiction” depicts a tongue-in-cheek Canadian invasion over the use of laser-pucks in hockey games as a way to explore American culture while the rhythm section delivers double-time sonic explosions. The single “America’s Army” continues the exploration of pop culture and armed conflict over the use of a government-developed video game-turned-recruitment tool while the closer “Iteration” gives ex-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld the war crimes trial he never received.

While “Potemkin City Limits” is a relic of a (thankfully) previous era, it remains a benchmark of musical activism.