OUT OF THE BASEMENT. Basement shows are punk band Arms Aloft’s bread and butter, but their new record is launching them into huge rock clubs around the country. Photo: Nicole Kilbert

Up until this point, it was commonplace to find local punk band Arms Aloft, playing loud, sweaty, charged-up songs to sweaty kids in a basement. It’s what they know. This is a band that has sweat it out touring across the country, drinking way too much, sleeping in a van, playing powerful tunes and igniting a fan base at wee hours of the morning in some crazy venues.

But that was then. And this is now. Each member of the band – Alex Bammel, Seth Gile, Jack Gribble, and Matt Keil – is at least 30 now. Some have real jobs, some have families, but all of them still believe this music is worth making. The band, freshly signed to legendary Chicago punk label Red Scare Industries, is ready to take off into the world of big rock clubs and big tours, doing everything they can while they still can.

“We thought, ‘We’re in our 30s, so let’s just do all of it,’ ” frontman Seth Gile told me. “ ‘Let’s just start experiencing what we can.’ Even if it turns out we don’t like playing big rock clubs, at least we’re doing it, and now we know.”

Whatever they’re doing, it seems to be working.

Gile, for all of his band’s recent successes and everything he has to be proud of, is a humble dude. He’s also very funny. He’s quick to pepper in a self-deprecating joke or a funny aside when you’re talking to him (Example from our chat: “Making a punk song is only a hair smarter than throwing up on your shirt and going to sleep.”) So the title of their new record – What A Time To Barely Be Alive – is kind of a tongue-in-cheek play on Drake and Future’s bombastic 2015 mixtape What A Time To Be Alive. If Drake and Future’s collection was about the joys and stresses of modern culture, Arms Aloft’s new record is the polar opposite of that, instead focusing on everything in this horrible modern world that sucks.

“Everything’s terrible and we’re hardly paying attention,” Gile said of the album’s theme. “Everyone’s just numbing themselves and trying to get through it. It’s been a really dark year.”

Sure, it’s pessimistic in nature, but who said great art had to be happy? Their message is starting to resonate. When you listen to What A Time To Barely Be Alive, you get the sense that the band is really getting some demons out, throwing their anger into a microphone, hoping to find some kind of catharsis. Punk music is a fitting avenue for that.

Luckily for them, being a touring band allows them to unplug from society, see the country, and get away from the poisonous aspects of American culture in 2016 for a little bit. They live in a world they’d like to fix, but their only form of real power in a corrupt and broken system is their art, and something about that is kind of beautiful.

“You get to just check out the world, and be away from regular society for a little while,” Gile said. “For that night you get to be apart of something different. You get to make sh*t and go places, and that’s good enough.”

What A Time To Barely Be Alive maybe isn’t so glum and down-in-the-dumps about the whole thing as it seems. There are certainly moments of light-heartedness among everything else, especially in song titles like “Sloslylove Is Playing At My House” (a nod to both the beloved Eau Claire electronic producer and LCD Soundsystem) and “W. Grand Ave. Maria,” a tried-and-true ballad containing some of the band’s most biting lyrics to date.

And the band is already catching some great press for the record, having songs premiered on sites like The A.V. Club and getting some awesome shows and festivals booked (they’re playing huge punk festival The Fest in Gainesville, Florida, in late October), so things aren’t all that bad. To top is off, they leave for a long tour this fall with Chicago punk band The Falcon and standup comedian Kyle Kinane.

Their new album is a true testament to their growth as people and as a band. Though their statement is rather bleak, it takes a poetic turn in the final track “… A World To Win,” that says yes, things are bad, but yes, we have to keep trying to make them better: “Through thick and through thin and through thinner yet / Let the stuck down stick together.”

The digital version of What A Time To Barely Be Alive is out now, and the physical release is on Sept. 9. The band is celebrating with a knockout show at the House of Rock on Sept. 10, joined by The Chinchees, Distant Friends, Idle Empress, and sloslylove. To hear the record, go to armsaloft.bandcamp.com.

LISTEN: "What A Time To Be Barely Alive" by Arms Aloft