(written by Islander)
At this point Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Minneapolis” is probably the most widely heard protest song to emerge from the ICE invasion of the Twin Cities and the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. But it hasn’t been long, only 14 days since ICE agents shot Pretti to death, even though it seems much longer than that.
Undoubtedly other songwriters have already started releasing their own protests across many genres of music, though I wouldn’t know (you’re looking at the wrong dude if you want insight into the breadth of modern musical culture). Where I do tend to notice things are in the genres of extreme metal, and I guess a few “metal adjacent” realms.
Over the last week I noticed a handful of songs from those realms that were either protest songs or tracks designed to raise money in support of the resistance in Minneapolis to the sweeping seizure of immigrants (and racially profiled U.S. citizens). In the first section of this Saturday roundup I’ve collected those songs, and one other that seemed appropriate. Fortunately, the music’s good, in addition to the artists’ hearts being in the right place. (If you know of more, please leave a Comment.)
To round things out, I added three other very good songs that surfaced last week. I could have added 20 more, because it was a big week for new metal, what with yesterday being a Bandcamp Friday. But we do what we can.
Photo taken by Olympic skier Gus Kenworthy of his urinated words somewhere near Milano Cortina (story here). Every drop helps.
PROTEST SONGS
PANOPTICON (U.S.) / UPRISING (Germany)
Yesterday Bindrune Recordings and AOP Records announced they would be co-releasing a vinyl split by Panopticon and Uprising, and they released the songs digitally at the same time. They said a portion of profits from sales would go to “Minnesota Immigrant legal defense.”
Panopticon’s song, “Flag Burner Torch Bearer“, is one that appeared on that band’s self-titled debut album back in ’08. Austin Lunn has said this version, the one on the split, was “recorded and arranged in 2020 during the Minneapolis uprising in support of Minnesota black lives matter.” I’ve done some looking, and I can’t find that this new version has been released before now. It includes guest vocals by Azeta (Tvaer), Simon (DawnRay’d), and Jan (Uprising).
Uprising, as you may know, is a solo project of Austin Lunn’s good friend Jan van Berlekom, aka Winterherz of Waldgeflüster. Uprising’s side of the split includes two songs, “No Justice, No Peace” and “One Conviction Is Not Enough“. Jan wrote: “One song was previously released on a digital sampler, the other one is new as well.”
All three songs are furious and blood-pumping, and the drumming in all three is tremendous. Panopticon’s long one is thunderous and searing, breathtaking in its emotional intensity and sweep, and vocally explosive, but the music also seems to desparately wail and grieve. Uprising’s tracks are, if anything, even more blistering and bludgeoning, more feral and fanatical in their raging, and the vocals even more unhinged — but the first of them also seems to wail in stricken tones as it slows near the end and becomes more bleak.
https://bindrunerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/panopticon-uprising-split-lp
https://artofpropaganda.bandcamp.com/album/uprising-panopticon-split
https://thetruepanopticon.bandcamp.com/album/from-split-lp-with-uprising
https://uprisingblackmetal.bandcamp.com/album/panopticon-uprising-split
https://www.facebook.com/TheTruePanopticon
https://www.facebook.com/uprisingblackmetal/
LUCERNE HAMMER (Canada)
A friend of mine pointed me to this next song after I remarked on social media about my wish that metal bands would do what the Boss did. I can’t remember knowing about this Ontario “Anti-Fascist Black Metal” band, Lucerne Hammer, before getting the link to this track which they released on January 27th. After getting floored by the song I looked them up on M-A, and it shows that their first releases (incuding an EP named Vermillion Pyre) came out last year.
The lyrics of “The Grinder’s Song” invoke the need to sharpen blades, to “burn the kings men”, “off with their heads”. The words end with “ice out”. Before the screamed vocals begin, the song is slow and very sad, but although the pace doesn’t immediately accelerate the music becomes massively heavier and more caustic and wrenching. And then the rage pours out in a stunning torrent of high-speed percussive munitions, firestorm riffage, and berserk vocals, though the elaborately layered instruments seem to channel grief as well as flat-out fury.
Lucerne Hammer state that “all funds will be donated directly to Mutual Aid supporting folks in Minneapolis.”
https://lucernehammer.bandcamp.com/track/the-grinders-song-2
https://www.instagram.com/themossknightcometh
BIAŁYWILK (U.S.)
California-based Białywilk also released a protest song, just yesterday. Lyrically, it’s in line with the violent fury of Lucerne Hammer’s lyricisim. You could guess that from the song’s name: “Vivisect the Cowards“. Recited in ALL CAPS at Bandcamp, the words include this stanza, before ending with a furious chant of the song’s title:
USURP THE TYRANTS THRONE
LET THE PEOPLE SING
BURN DOWN THE MORONIC COURTS
OF THE FALSE KING
The song is a full-throttle rush, often sweeping in its scale, and throat-ripping in its vocal fury, but like almost all the songs that precede it in this collection, it also reveals melodic strands of sorrow and despair. In the song’s slower back half, it gets much darker and slugs damned hard, and the vocals also shift into abyssal roars, before the music takes off again for a turbocharged finale.
Białywilk has pledged that “Proceeds from the track go to Immigration defense law center.”
https://bialywilk.bandcamp.com/track/vivisect-the-cowards
https://www.instagram.com/bialywilkmusic/
VANISHING EARTH (U.S.)
Vanishing Earth is the Minneapolis-based musical vehicle of Sami Sati, once a key member of the now-defunct (and sorely missed) Oak Pantheon. Yesterday Vanishing Earth released a song with an Arabic name — تروح وترجع بالسلامه — which seems to mean (based on my quick research) “Have a safe trip and return safely”. Sami included this statement at Bandcamp:
The violence and corruption in this world is certainly real, but would-be tyrants also need us to build cages in our minds with fear to keep us under control. Freedom is a way of thinking…. For the time being, all revenue from this track will be donated to Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid designated towards assistance for immigrant law.
I wouldn’t call this a protest song, but more a song of support, inspired by the tyrannical events in Minneapolis. Rather than raging, it features bright and vividly strummed acoustic guitars, vibrantly darting bass-lines, and slowly drifting ethereal melodies that might make you think angels are singing — though they become distraught at the end.
https://vanishingearth.bandcamp.com/track/-
https://linktr.ee/vanishingearth
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61576340474905
LAST SADNESS (U.S.)
Last Sadness is one of the many musical vehicles of Josh Hines, whom many of you will know best as the person behind Starer and Snow Wolf Records. I would have to say that Last Sadness is “metal adjacent,” simply because of Hines’ other endeavors, rather than metal, but the music appeals to other tastes I have which are of longer duration than my obsession with metal.
Last Sadness released this next song on January 25th. A friend of mine called it “a Depeche Mode cover of Megadeth“, and indeed it is a post-punk cover of Megadeth’s “Symphony of Destruction“. It kind of turns the original song on its head, and will get your own head moving. The vocals are really good, and my friend’s Depeche Mode reference is pretty spot-on. As the artist’s inspiration demands, it’s shadowed by darkness, though with swirls of brightness overhead (and a great guitar solo) in the mix.
Last Sadness included this statement about the song at Bndcamp:
FUCK MAGA. FUCK ICE.
This is set to free but any money donated will go to www.immigrantdefenseproject.org
https://lastsadness.bandcamp.com/track/symphony-of-destruction
https://www.facebook.com/SnowWolfRecords
FOTOCRIME (U.S.)
This last song in the first segment of today’s roundup isn’t quite like the others (though musically it follows pretty well from Last Sadness). It was written and recorded before the lethal ICE depredations in Minneapolis and there’s no fundraising appeal that accompanies it. But it still made sense to me to put it in this collection, for reasons I suspect you’ll understand.
This song, “Unthinkable“, is described as “an examination of our current state of geopolitical panic and impending global conflict, inching towards total annihilation.” In addition to the current Fotocrime trio of founder Ryan Patterson, Benjamin Clark (guitar), and David Cundiff (bass), the song features drumming by Jay Weinberg (Suicidal Tendencies, ex-Slipknot) and a guest appearance by Barney Greenway of Napalm Death on co-lead vocals during the song’s second half — and we get to see all of them in the video that presented the song last week.
The song’s heavy and hammering grooves will get most people’s legs and heads bouncing, but it’s got some meanness in it too, including the grit in Patterson’s singing voice, the growliness of their very burly bass lines, and the vicious edge on the riffing. To these ears it sounds like an instant dark post-punk classic.
“Unthinkable” is off Fotocrime’s new album Security, which will be out on March 13th (vinyl on Auxiliary/Shirt Killer, CD/digital on Artoffact).
https://fotocrime.bandcamp.com/album/security
https://shirtkiller.com/collections/fotocrime
https://www.fotocrime.com/
https://www.facebook.com/fotocrime
AND MORE…
Now I’ll move on to three more songs I want to recommend today from the great flood of new metal that surged through the last week of time.
EGREGORE (Canada)
Vancouver-based Egregore is a trio of ex-Auroch performers who are also members of Bone Chalice, Mitochondrion, and many other groups (the names most likely to catch your eyes are Sebastian Montesi and Shawn Haché). They released their debut album The Word of His Law in 2022, and in March of this year 20 Buck Spin will release their second full-length, It Echoes In The Wild.
The album’s first single, “Stair Into the Vortex” (which I keep thinking of as “Stare Into the Vortex”), arrived last week with a video of the performers that manages to magnify the song’s adrenaline rush. And it really well get your adrenaline going as it discharges a crazed, occult, black/death metal war charge. It really does sound maniacally and viciously ecstatic, the kind of revelery that leaves blood spray and broken bones in its wake.
https://20buckspin.bandcamp.com/album/it-echoes-in-the-wild
https://linktr.ee/egregore137
https://www.facebook.com/Egregore137
TRANSILVANIA (Austria)
In March the Austrian band Transilvania will return with their third album, Magia Posthuma, to be released by Invictus Productions. My next pick today is the album’s first advance track, “Set the Tombs on Fire“, and the video that presented it last week (which, like the one just above, gives us good views of the barbaric performers as they work).
I think this song pairs very well with the one from Egregore. It’s hard-charging, feral, head-hammering, and jubilantly fierce, but it also has occult aspects, thanks to vibrantly swirling, witchy melodies overhead. The vocals are scorching; there are frantic and exhilarating guitar solos in the midst; and there’s zero relent in the music’s speed and hellfire intensity, so gulp some air before you begin.
https://invictusproductions666.bandcamp.com/album/magia-posthuma-2
https://www.facebook.com/transilvaniaaustria/
KATHAREIN (Romania)
On New Year’s Day of this year I included in another of these roundups a lyric video for a tremendously infectious song (“Ain’t Nobody”) by the Romanian band Katharein. That song was off their 2024 debut album Lucky Shots. A few days ago they released another lyric video, for a song called “Signs Of Warning” that’s also on that Lucky Shots album.
This song confirms that Katharein are very good songwriters, both lyrically and musically, and that vocalist Silviu Stoica has a great Ozzy-esque singing voice. Yes, this is another well-earned exception to our “rule” about singing, and it’s also very infectious. And I predict you’ll think about the words too.
https://kathareinmusic.bandcamp.com/album/lucky-shots
https://www.facebook.com/kathareinband