It’s no secret that hardcore punk has always been at the forefront of pointing out social ills, political hypocrisy and the complete shit hammering the 99% suffers at the hand of the powerful 1%. While the rich, powerful and militarily connected continue to run rampant over the rest of us, you can always count on a bunch of folks decked out in Tragedy patches, Anti-Cimex hoodies and Disfear longsleeves to point out how fucked up things actually are.
On the surface, Sweden is a beacon of worryingly tall and blindingly blonde people revelling in placid neutrality. Scrape a few layers away and the grime and slime gets exposed which is where Ett Dödens Maskineri come in. The band’s second album, Kulturkriget (translation ‘The Culture War’) tackles the various battlegrounds society finds itself killing itself on to the tune of some absolutely slamming, metal-infused ‘kångpunk.’ The album is set for release in late November on Suicide Records, but we’re giving you the opportunity to give it an advance whirl in the name of all that tries its mightiest to stick two fingers in the government’s eye, if not bunghole. When asked about their new album, the band had this to say:
“Armament, exports of weapons to dictatorships, forthcoming NATO membership, the Swedish ‘neutrality policy,’ and the self-image of being a beacon of democratic values has long been nothing but hypocrisy, where export and profit has been superior to moral and ethics. More than a third of Swedish arms exports go to countries with major democratic deficiencies. Despite regulations, we manage to export military equipment not only to belligerent countries such as the USA, India and Pakistan, but also to belligerent dictatorships like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. With a membership in NATO we’ll end up in alliance with Turkey, Hungary and the next “Trump-alike” in the White House. Through this we’ll risk being drawn into defence of authoritarian powers. These are truly sad times, where politicians rely on public fear and where agitators propagate for rearmament, without a single thought of what world we are building for our future generations.”
Give Kulturkrinet a listen while you still can, whether it’s burgeoning totalitarian regimes clamping down on questionable materials or the lot of us getting blown into smithereens.
