Panopticon, Thou, Ripped To Shreds, Woe, Krallice, Falls of Rauros & more on anti-racism benefit comp

Tons of cool metal and punk bands have come together to release a benefit compilation called Overgrow to Overthrow on Bindrune Recordings’ Bandcamp this Friday (7/3), the day of the next Bandcamp fundraiser, and all proceeds will be donated to organizations that fight against racism: Black Lives Matter, Life After Hate, and Stand Up To Racism.

The list of bands involved is Aerial Ruin, Agathocles, Alda, Chaos Moon, Chat Pile, Cloud Rat, Dawn Ray’d, Detractors, Deviated Instinct, Doom, Falls of Rauros, Hag Graef, Hornet Murmuration, Human Failure, Inexorum, Krallice, Krieg, Mania, Nori, Obsequiae, Outlaw Order, Panopticon, Ripped to Shreds, Thou, Throne of Blood, Tired of Everything, Tvær, Uprising, Vukari, and Woe.

The contributions from Aerial Ruin, Chaos Moon, Detractors, Hag Graef, Human Failure (members of Akasha), Inexorum, Krieg, Nori (members of Axis of Light), Obsequiae, Throne of Blood, Tvær, Uprising, Vukari, and Woe will be entirely new songs.

Covers are coming from Hornet Murmuration (members of Kostnatění covering Dead Kennedys’ “Drug Me”) and Ripped To Shreds (Unholy Grave’s “No Racial Superiority!”).

The Agathocles, Alda, Chat Pile, Cloud Rat, Dawn Ray’d, Deviated Instinct, Doom, Falls of Rauros, Krallice, Outlaw Order, Panopticon, Thou, and Tired of Everything contributions will be remixes, live cuts, and/or re-recorded tracks.

Update (7/3): Out now!

Here’s more info, via Falls of Rauros’ announcement:

OVERGROW TO OVERTHROW

Mark Duggan (2011), Michael Brown (2014), Eric Garner (2014), Tamir Rice (2014), Sheku Bayoh (2015), Walter Scott (2015), Dalian Atkinson (2016), Philando Castile (2016), Alton Sterling (2016), Rashan Charles (2017), Stephon Clark (2018), Stewart Kevin Andrews (2020), Ahmaud Arbery (2020), George Floyd (2020), Chantel Moore (2020), Sean Monterrosa (2020), Regis Korchinski-Paquet (2020), Erik Salgado (2020), Breonna Taylor (2020).

Too many of us have sat back and watched, or looked away, as faces in our communities were wiped from history; disproportionately affected by police violence and systemic racism. Too often we have seen our Black, Brown, Native American and First Nations brothers and sisters killed through unnecessary police violence. While this has become an international issue in the last few months, racism has been a fact of daily life for millions around the world.

Voices from across the Metal and Punk spectrum have united to not only speak out against racism and in support of those who are in the streets actively demonstrating, but work to actively support a fight all of us must take on.

We feel that the time has come for members of the Metal and Punk scenes to offer material support to the struggle against racism and for equality, engaging with our brothers and sisters in the streets who are out in front of the conversation against pervasive prejudice and systemic racism. While many of us are in the streets supporting these causes it became apparent that we could amplify the voice of those who are most at risk by using our platform as musicians.

To that end, thirty bands from across the extreme music world have come together via OVERGROW TO OVERTHROW, a digital compilation to be released on July 3, 2020.

The following was provided by one of the artists featured on Overgrow to Overthrow, and clearly outlines why we are doing this:

“I am a person of color who lives in Minneapolis and a featured musician on this compilation.

I love this city and its culture, but it would be dishonest not to acknowledge the segregation that still permeates this city. I see it in a geopolitical sense, but also in the hearts and minds of people I speak to here. The death of George Floyd has filled us all with grief; everyone other than those with the most extreme racist beliefs can watch the video and immediately recognize it as a comprehensive moral failing.

With that in mind, I want to emphasize that George Floyd’s death is not an anomaly, and that the problem exists on a larger scale than whether four particular Minneapolis police officers are convicted. This same incident plays out at least once a week somewhere in the United States, and it is usually not brought to national attention like this. The outrage is usually less vocal because there is some plausible deniability: the video shakes or wavers for a second and we can’t quite see what happened, or the victim yelled something threatening, or the police told the bystanders to stop filming, or sometimes the body cameras are turned off, or sometimes there simply isn’t footage at all. But it is happening in our world all the same, and what we all saw transpire on May 25, 2020 is an uncensored vision of the culture we have created.

If I could ask one thing to everyone who would listen, I would say: the next time this happens (and it will happen again), will we allow our friends and colleagues to follow the beaten path of preying on the deniability, steering the conversation toward the deceased’s criminal history and asking whether they were on drugs or trespassing or didn’t put their hands up fast enough? Will we play that role of devil’s advocate ourselves, even while knowing that we are defending an institution of immense power, whose labor union will all but guarantee its officers stay out of jail, keep their jobs and receive back pay regardless of whether they have committed a wrong? Or will we dare to question the status quo, even when the cameras aren’t rolling, and lend a voice to our fallen fellow man who no longer has a voice to tell his story?

How we answer this question will shape our communities for generations. If we don’t answer correctly, I believe the worst may be yet to come.”

Here’s their full post with even more info: