Though the band's music skews more toward the political than the personal, Rise Against [ tickets ] frontman Tom McIlrath says it's still not unusual for him to hear intensely private stories from the band's fans.

"It's scary," McIlrath said during a recent telephone interview. "It's hard to even grasp--especially when I'll talk to a fan out back by the bus before a show for 30 seconds because I'm being rushed off to do something. Someone just opens up to you in those 30 seconds, tells you something incredibly moving, and it's just something so huge that your brain can't even grasp it.

"They tell you that you changed their life. Next thing you know, you're shoved on the stage to do a show. It's hard to really even grasp what that person's actually telling you: How they've been sitting outside of the bus for an hour waiting for you just to tell you that, realizing they'd have no more than 15 seconds to talk to you, but they just wanted to let you know. It's incredible. Bands were that important to me as a kid, too. I understand it. I'm in their shoes, too. The bands I listen to changed my life. They're the reason I'm here today. I know how they're feeling. I never thought they'd be feeling that about me or my band."

McIlrath and the rest of his group are releasing a DVD, "Generation Lost," on Dec. 5 that tells the stories behind the fans and the band. It was created by Davy Rothbart, who writes for Found magazine and books, and produces documentaries for NPR shows such as "This American Life." Rothbart and McIlrath are former roommates.

"[Rothbart is] a really amazing, amazing individual," McIlrath said. "He's been on the road with us before just as a friend, just for fun. He kind of wanted to get back on the road with a camera and get a slice of our lives. He did that. He came on the road with us for the Warped Tour for about 10 days. He shot a lot of us, our fans, our families, a lot of our shows, our friends. He got a really cool perspective on what it's like to be in this band, not just from us either.

"He went out and talked to a lot of our fans. He didn't just talk to the fans. Sometimes he would follow the fans home and go hang out with them. Film, like, their lives, what their life is like and where Rise Against fits into it. It was really eye-opening for us. We don't do that. We just never get that insight into a fan's life--like the kid in the front row, who's singing along. We never get that insight."

Through the making of "Generation Lost," McIlrath--who is joined in the band by bassist/vocalist Joe Principe, drummer Brandon Barnes and guitarist Chris Chasse--learned Rise Against attracts a wide variety of fans.

"There are different types of people who listen to our band--everyone from a 50-year-old conservative Republican living in Kentucky to a black kid who lives in the inner city. All his friends listen to hip-hop and he listens to punk. And he gets a lot of s--- for it. There's this broad spectrum of different kinds of fans out there. Apparently, Rise Against means a lot to all of them, which is really cool."

Those fans helped give Rise Against its first Top 10 album. Released July 4, "The Sufferer and the Witness" hit No. 10 on The Billboard 200 chart.

"We were definitely surprised," McIlrath said. "It was crazy. To have somebody wake you up in the morning and say, 'Guess what? You have the 10th best-selling album in America.' It was like, 'Whoa, really?' It was somewhere we never thought we would be, especially being just a punk band from Chicago playing in garages and basements and Knights of Columbus halls. All of a sudden, we're up there with these new artists that we'd never thought we'd be up there with."

McIlrath said Rise Against, which has been releasing albums and demos since 2000, did not change its style to reach the Top 10.

"I think this album and our band have touched a lot of people, not necessarily because of anything we've done," he said. "But I think that, all of a sudden, there's an audience for what we do. I think we live in such scary times now. With everything that's going on, I think people are now looking for a little bit more from their music. They're demanding more from the things they put in their CD player. They're demanding more from the artists/musicians that are out there to reflect the current environment we live in.

"In that sense, people have come to us. They found us. I don't think we're doing anything different. I think people are more open to what we do. They want to listen to music that reflects questions they have about the world, and perhaps an attempt to answer those questions. All of a sudden there are people out there a little more angry, a little more confused about what's going on and a little more sad about what's going on in the world, and the direction the world is going in. So they look to bands like us."