(written by Islander)
Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Hungry is a UK-based charitable organization that has been releasing music to raise funds for various causes. On February 6th they released four massive compilations of music with the pledge that all proceeds will be contributed to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. Each compilation has its own title and artwork, and they organize tracks contributed by bands into these four genre categories:
Death Metal & Grindcore (33)
Black Metal & Noise (35)
Heavy & Atmospheric (35)
Punk, Hardcore, Thrash & Madness (34)
Altogether, the compilations include music from 137 bands, and many of them will be familiar to our visitors. The number of songs included on each comp is in parentheses above. Each compilation is very modestly priced — £3.50 per comp — but purchasers can pay more if they wish, and of course the charitable purpose of this endeavor provides a good reason to do so.
The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund is a charitable organization that was founded in the U.S. in 1991. You can find its official site here (the second link provides a synopsis of the organization’s activities):
https://www.pcrf.net
https://www.pcrf.net/about-us
To help highlight the four compilations that were released last Friday, I’ve picked some of the songs from each one that have not been previously released, i.e., brand new songs. But obviously, each comp is so packed with music that they provide a way for people to discover music that’s new to them, even if the songs were previously included on other releases by the bands.
FRESHLY BAKED SOULS (DEATH METAL & GRINDCORE)
Of course, I’m going to start off with a brand new song from Beyond Grace, the UK band whose lyricist and frontman is our very own Andy Synn. It’s the leadoff track on the compilation named Freshly Baked Souls, which collects Death Metal and Grindcore songs. The name of this comp is taken from the title of a poem by the late Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian writer, poet, professor, and activist from the Gaza Strip.
Here is Andy’s statement about the Beyond Grace song, “First as Tragedy“:
As a beloved game (and now tv) franchise likes to say… war never changes.
From the genocide in Gaza to the invasion of Ukraine to the civil war in Sudan, and all the other ongoing conflicts whose existence is almost taken for granted as “the price of doing business”, technology progresses while humanity regresses to its basest form.
Tragedy breeds tragedy, atrocity justifies atrocity, history is twisted to validate any claim of racial, religious, or social superiority… the words we use may change but the story remains the same.
“First As Tragedy” (inspired, obviously, by one of Marx’s most infamous observations, but also the likes of Hegel, Ingersoll, and Gibbon, and of course Omar El Akkad’s eye-opening One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This) was my/our attempt to grapple with this, the sense of despair and impotence that comes from being forced to bear witness to this endless cycle of violence and death.
By sheer coincidence the (slightly delayed) recording of our new EP (the 3rd and final part of our Welcome to the New Dark Ages trilogy) lined up almost perfectly with the release of this compilation and we were proud to be able to submit this track (an alternate version of which will appear on the physical CD/LP version of the album) in support of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.
The song itself is a changing affair that moves from violence and chaos into grief. At the outset it’s a savage rager, driven by thundering and plundering drums, gut-busting bass lines, ferocious roars, and sand-blasting screams. While the grooves jolt like high-powered battering rams the guitars viciously swarm, blare like demented sirens, and frenetically convulse. There’s also a daunting breakdown which serves as the setting for grimly spoken words, followed by another battering assault in which guitarist/co-vocalist Tim Yearsley sings in haunting tones (really good singing too!) and leads the music into a sorrowful conclusion.
This compilation also includes new songs from six other bands. The second one I’ve picked to highlight in this section is “Of Creation and Cancer” by the UK industrial/black/death metal band The Machinist.
This one is a head-spinner. On the one hand it inflicts a cold, traumatic beating with the kind of booming and bludgeoning hammer-blows that loosen teeth and fracture skulls. On the other hand, the fleet-fingered riffing maniacally swarms and frenetically darts about like sonic manifestations of dementia, and the vocals, gag, growl, yell, and chant with unhinged fervor. The soloing is a strange and chilling affair — it vibrates, swirls, wails, and begins to sound like a psychedelic saxophone (maybe it is one!).
And then the song as a whole gets even more strange. Drums beat like a heart, percussion clatters, and something else sounds like the warped wailing of a female ghost. Militaristic snare patterns start spinning the song up again; the industrial beatings resume, and the grooves vividly jump; but the surrounding sounds elevate, eerily swirl, and flow in sorrow-stricken symphonic cascades.
IF I MUST DIE (BLACK METAL & NOISE)
The next new songs are included in the compilation titled If I Must Die (also taken from a poem by Refaat Alareer), which includes Black Metal and Noise.
The first of the four new songs I picked from this comp is “Silence” by a new band named Black Daija. It has an intriguing overture, a slow and solemn melody that sounds like it was performed on a Japanese koto. Announced by a harrowing howl, the song suddenly erupts, with drums hammering, corrosive guitars swarming, and a high-pitched harmonized melody slowly flowing and flickering — a melody that itself sounds connected to the overture.
The mood of the music is distraught, and the fervent harsh vocals are even more harrowing. The cross-channel interplay of trilling dual guitars is distinctive and affecting, unusual and engrossing even though melodically distressing.
Next up is a song from this comp by another new band, Corrughadh. This one, “Kings Bleed“, is a formulation of raw black metal that surges without warning. Featuring a lo-fi production, the fuzzed-out riffing froths around maniacally hammering blasts and bestial snarls. The music’s movement is part whirlpool, part tide, and the corroded melody also seems to dismally moan.
The band add dynamism through vicious jolts and expansive, elevated riffing that channels sorrowful agonies. The song succeeds in digging under the skin: Those bleak and scouring steel-wool melodies continued cycling through my head well after the song ended.
SEVEN WARS OLD (HEAVY & ATMOSPHERIC)
The third compilation collects songs characterized as “Heavy and Atmospheric”. Its title, Seven Wars Old, is taken from a quote in the article by Refaat Alareer “In Gaza, We Have Grown Accustomed to War”.
One of the new songs is the UK band Cattle Hammer’s cover of the song “TV Dinners” by the British anarcho-punk band Flux of Pink Indians, originally released on their 1982 album Strive to Survive Causing Least Suffering Possible. I probably should have listened to the original, but so far I haven’t.
The cover is quite a musical kaleidoscope. It includes reverberating spoken words enunciated through electronic ambient sensations that made me think of a starship’s computer or a cybernetic organism. What the voice describes, however, isn’t sci-fi but a terrible reality.
Eventually, an enormous bass (and/or kick drum) begins to throb, caustic chords ruin and reverberate, and voices rip their larynxes open in tormented screams and raging roars. Seizure-like guitars and searing synths climb high in spasms of fear and rage; rhythmic grooves hit like pile-drivers; the riffing churns like acid and grit on the boil. The song is a relentless muscle-mover and a mind-broiler too.
The second new song I’ve chosen from this compilation is “DEVASTATION” by the UK band Brookdale. It’s a thumper, its big floor-shaking beats even faster than the device used by Fremen to call Shai Hulud. The thumps seem to echo poisonous pulses, and the distorted vocals generate an ugly, gurgling croak that cycles through the song in a near-non-stop refrain. The track activates the reptile brain.
Brookdale also infiltrate the song with strangely warbling and screeching electronics, throbbing snare-drum bursts, tom-like variations, and glitches of shrill static. The combined effect is futuristic and nightmarish — especially nightmarish in the cacophonous, ear-shredding finale.
AND WE LIVE ON… (PUNK, HARDCORE, THRASH & MADNESS)
Finally, we move to the fourth compilation, which collects “Punk, Hardcore, Thrash & Madness”. Its title, And We Live On…, was suggested by Helene Heath of the UK hardcore band Black Mould, and the cover art is taken from a drawing by a three-year-old Palestinian girl named Mira (her story is described in this article).
Black Mould is (as I understand) the only band on this comp to contribute a brand new song, and that’s the one we’ll highlight here. Its name is “Liberate“.
Prepare for a humongously heavy stomp, like the staggering march of an angry giant, but laced with punishing jolts. Prepare also for riffing that abrasively sizzles, crackles, and wails, creating a bleak experience. But there’s fury and fight in the music too, which flares through scorching screams, battering beats, bone-gnawing bass lines, and guitars that writhe and sear.
The pacing is in constant flux, and when the momentum slows again, ragged roars join the unhinged screams, and the song inflicts bursts of teeth-loosening jackhammer blows and another brutish, pavement-cracking stomp.
To find and acquire all four compilations, use the first link below, and I’ve also included social media links for Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Hungry.
https://hungercompuk.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/hungercompuk
https://www.instagram.com/hungercompuk