Band: Racetraitor
Song: “Cataclysm”
Director: James Wightman
Album: 2042
Release Date: October 12th, 2018
Label: Good Fight Music
Frontman Mani Mostofi comments:
“We wanted to play off of the classic hardcore metal video of a band in the basement and use it to tell a pressing story. No one in Racetraitor is in the video. Instead, it is an underground band representing our community which for us is inclusive of women, immigrants, Latinos, Muslims, Asians, queer people, and white men who reject what the far right has to offer them.
We were thinking about child separations at the border, ICE deportations and even all these sexual assaulters occupying the most powerful positions in this land. The powers that be are trying to disappear our community and its diversity.
Sometimes in punk, hardcore and metal scenes we think these threats are about other people but they are about us. It is personal. If this Muslim ban were in place when my parents were trying to immigrate to the US I never would have been here and never done this band. Think about it — from Los Crudos to Baroness to Sick Of It All — many bands we love have been populated by immigrants and children of immigrants from countries that today some people want to close the borders to.”
Bassist R. Brent Decker adds:
“Making the video was amazing. We put the call out to friends in Chicago and the Midwest with only a week’s notice and they really came through. We had people from La Armada, Decline, Through N Through, Turnspit, Malinche. Folks from Redbait and Lifes drove in from St. Louis and Wisconsin. They all just wanted to help push the message. Reminds us that we are not in this alone and that there is a community of like-minded bands and people trying to fight racism, sexism, queerphobia, classism, and fascism. It was an inspiring experience making the video for us and a lot of the people in it.
This has been Racetraitor’s experience since we got back together. People are backing us because they want to react to all the crazy shit happening in this country and elsewhere the last few years. Like with Good Fight. We are not a band that is going to make them any kind of money but they have been leaning into our record and supporting us fully. To us, they clearly just want to support music with a message that speaks to the world today.”
Pre-order:
[via No Echo]