My gothic breakcore band Nomadic War Machine has got a song on the new compilation put out by The Art of Dismantling.

My new favorite band ever.
Neo-folk is an offshoot of goth and industrial that is “folk” in the context of european military folk traditions. It’s usually dark and militant and creepy and beautiful… and fascist. Or “I won’t say I’m not a fascist…” And honestly, is it so much to ask that someone is willing to disambiguate themselves from genocidal racist authoritarians?

So earlier today I was bemoaning how a band I had just started liking was a bunch of fucking nazis, when my friend Unwoman turned me on to Rome.

YOU ADMIRE THE LIONS
YOU DESPISE ALL SHEEP
BUT FOLLOWING LIONS
MAKES NOTHING BUT SHEEP
YOU ARE ALL BENDING IN THE WIND

And also this one, that sounds like Leonard Cohen but even spookier:

In January, I sat down with an old friend and his friend to record more accordion music. I haven’t been performing or recording accordion songs in a few years, because I was frustrated with my voice and hadn’t yet figured out what I’d rather be doing with it. But after a long evening of recording, the pair managed to coax something new out of me, and I’m very happy with it. It’s likely that I’ll be returning to acoustic songwriting in the near future.

Embedded above is a cover of “Sam Hall,” more famously sung by Johnny Cash.

It’s part of Prison is an Angry Father (also available via bandcamp), a benefit album to support prison abolition. Which is something I can certainly get behind. The album itself isn’t what I run across often in the anarchist scene: it’s weird, jazzy, poetic. A lot of the tracks are poetry, in fact. Imagine an earnest (and reasonably unpretentious) modern incarnation of the beats, perhaps. Please listen to the album and consider buying it to support the project they’re working on.

Photo of my first show with Nomadic War Machine, taken by the estimable Dr. Popular.

Okay, so I feel like I made my point over the past month, that goth has always had rather radical elements in it, including many of the most prominent bands. So I’ll stop posting that series to birdsbeforethestorm. But I’ll keep exploring the intersection over at nurrgoth.tumblr.com, with perhaps a slightly broader focus, and not just music videos. And that site is rather easy to contribute to, in case you run across stuff that belongs there!

And Graceless: A Journal of the Radical Gothic is well underway and will be totally awesome.