MEMORIAMare one of the too few bands that kept me sane the last few years when everyone else and their mother was either turning right wing edgelord, bickering amongst themselves over dumb shit and undermining productive coalition building or wallowing in their privilege instead of accepting genuine critique. This band stayed strong and released killer record after killer record! They spread an “old school death metal and political awareness can be good bedfellows” message that never sacrificed tunes over schooling the masses yet still manage to not skimp in the important knowledge department either (even when banging skulls together)!
The band consists of Bolt Thrower’s iconic Karl Willetts alongside ex-members of Benediction and Sacrilege and will never let you down.
To The End, the group’s triumphant latest, will be out via Reaper Entertainment in late March. Order it HERE.
Karl Willetts states:
“This is one of the first songs that came together for the new album. A song, we got a serious political theme to it, written in the whole time span of the “black lives matter” demonstrations.
So this song is inspired by these events and it is inspired by a friend of mine, who was involved in one of these demonstrations in the USA. She was there to video the event.
And in the process of this, she managed to get arrested and received 80 hours of community service for her work on the demonstration. But she managed it to get very good video footage of the police, warning the crowd and threatening to use chemical weapons to get them off the streets. It was frightening to see these scenes and it inspired me to write the lyrics of the song.
So the lyrics fit very well with the music, which is very hard and hitting. This song is a tribute to all people who was part of the black lives matters demonstrations and of course to my friend.”
Along with Boston hardcore band Move‘s explosive and must hearFreedom Dreams, MEMORIAM’s “Failure To Comply” rounds out a really solid week for informed and meaningful new material in the heavy music scene!
The gnarliest punk album of the year just dropped. Love Is A Lie, Filth Is Eternal from Filth Is Eternal (formerly F'd and B'd) reminds us that there was a time when Seattle bands were considered dangerous, when Mudhoney might jump on your face and half the roster of Sub Pop didn't look like even Starbucks wasn't gentrified enough for their tepid, pale faced indie rock bullshit. Filth Is Eternal plays an explosive blend of go for the throat, not a moment wasted punk n' roll married to Sonic Youth flirting dissonance and with tones ugly enough to make Fudge Tunnel blush and The Bronx seem like Captain & Tennille. Fronted by an actual snarling wild animal over some of the best riffs and beats you have ever heard.
This record reminds me of a show I played in 1997 with my old band Fuse where I got wasted on unclean tapline Rolling Rocks and bottom shelf whiskey after getting a tattoo and ended up rolling on a country bar floor half nude and bleeding and smearing black grime and tattoo inky residue and blood everywhere, waking up the next day feeling kind of aroused and ready to fight literally anything but also half dead. Sirhan Sirhan is gonna get out of jail and be all stoked to enter polite society and this shit will play and it will retrigger a hypnotic trance and make dude go all Winter Soldier on some dudes.
If your band doesn't bang as hard as the ending of "The Dog", just quit now.
