‘Before we can forgive each other, we have to understand each other‘ – Emma Goldman (essayist, anarchist, activist)
‘Why don’t you fuck right off’ – EMMA GOLDMAN (sasscore/skramz band)
These quotes may seem incompatible with each other, and they are from two separate people. However, Emma Goldman (famous anarchist) also said, ‘one cannot be too extreme in dealing with social ills; the extreme thing is generally the true thing.’ It is in this extremity that EMMA GOLDMAN (Vancouver band) carries their namesake of the essential anarchist essayist. On their full-length debut album on Zegema Beach Records, all you are is we, EMMA GOLDMAN channel radical political thought into raucously fun, aggressive hardcore with a distinctive sasscore and skramz flavor. Liberation politics, as a bookstore owner friend calls them, are comfortable bedfellows with hardcore punk and screamo, channeling the inferno of ire against unjust authority into caustic and heartfelt art that opens up mosh pits and minds.
It is some of my favorite music, and all you are is we captures all of the angst and creativity that makes a killer record. Essayist Goldman also said, ‘if I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.’ While I can’t imagine slam dancing and crowd killing before Goldman’s passing in 1940, I sincerely think she would approve of the Canadian four-piece. At the very least, they nail the politics.
After a warbly electronic intro entitled “an introduction to real estate induced psychosis” EMMA GOLDMAN launches into “at rock bottom I was a piss girl” that starts with a filtered guitar riff that sounds like an inverse of The Blood Brothers‘ classic song “Ambulance vs Ambulance” before erupting into a dual vocal, full-band assault that only slows down long enough to get heavier and more ferocious. As the song closes, sung-spoken clean vocals contrast against harsh screams in a familiar yet thrilling execution of emo vocal dynamics. This shit slaps.
On “I seem to be an adjective,” EMMA GOLDMAN adds some more groove to the mix, the low end cleverly contrasting with sasscore’s signature flaming banshee vocals and higher-toned guitars. Add some blast beats and vicious breakdowns while contemplating the stigma of drug addiction and the epidemic of harmful use, demanding humanity and compassion against even more harmful stereotypes and statistics. People reduced to numbers and name-calling are easy for society to shrug off, and that is a fuckshit approach to dealing with people in your community.
The grooves continue on “i don’t think much at all,” merging emoviolence intensity like Blind Girls with more artful flourishes reminiscent of Cloud Rat. ‘We’re free market cyber sluts in line for diagnosis/they seem desperate to call my comrades and I cheap counter service whores,’ vocalist Victoria proclaims, ‘in decline a whole generation raised on snuff films/thinking not much of a mind at all that doesn’t go a hundred miles a minute,’ encapsulating Gen Z’s dread and nihilism as a byproduct of constant media noise, consumerism, and being blamed for trying to survive by any means necessary off the scraps of capital in minimum wage and gig-economy jobs.
As an elder millennial, this kind of disgusted, constant burnout is recognizable. Both of our generations have inherited an utter lack of fulfillment from previous generations’ promises. Poor, living paycheck to paycheck, forced to grind, born to love, surrounded by endless convenience yet materially struggling for every piece of comfort and relief we can squeeze out of the hoarded wealth from above endears a mixture of compassion and agitation in our weary souls. As if recognizing this need for change, all you are is we throws an electronic breakbeat interlude at us with “diss track,” serving as a break to the intensity and a subtle homage to Refused‘s house and techno interludes on the classic The Shape Of Punk To Come, followed by “this is your brain on minimum wage,” whose shifting riffs and slow distortion outro carry on the Swedish hardcore band’s anti-capitalist message through the lyrics.
“it rubs the boycott ketchup on its brand new slacks” adds even more experimentation and texture to the band’s sound, slowing things down and expanding their sonic palette into a nearly five-minute song that fuses math-rock elements with the slow intensity of post-hardcore. We then traverse into spoken word territory with a pair of tracks that call to mind Against Me!‘s “Turn Those Clapping Hands Into Angry Balled Fists,” listing idyllic comforts juxtaposed to the rage that proletariat alienation produces, manifesting itself in more pronounced hardcore vitriol. More straightforward skramz, another electronic track, and the perfectly named track “bellinis at the blockade” that closes the album gives all you are is we a feeling of progression that is rarely seen under the umbrella of hardcore punk.
EMMA GOLDMAN push through the standard skramz and hardcore tropes by adding experimental touches and having the raw talent to back it all up. I would listen to their EDM album, their folk punk album, their beatdown hardcore album, or whatever else they throw at me. The more I listen to all you are is we, the more little details I find and enjoy. I don’t take it lightly to compare EMMA GOLDMAN to Refused, The Blood Brothers, or Against Me! who have all been among my favorite bands, but they have pulled it off and deserve the comparisons. Sometimes building a better world means breaking shit, smashing through the barriers of convention and the systems that maintain the status quo, and you are not going to get there without making people pay attention, disrupting expectations through genre-defying boldness and sheer spite for every system, political, economic, or musical that divides community. We are each other, for better or worse, and sometime praxis is aggressively reminding us that all you are is we.
