Mainstream examples of the benefit subgenre usually avoid controversy. Because raising money is the priority, they try to be easy on the ears and the mind.
But the bands that contributed to this British compilation were not willing to compromise in order to broaden support for their project.
That’s why the album’s full title is Palestine: A land of heroic people, killed by a people who stole land. A Benefit Album.
It’s not enough to feel bad about the suffering experienced by the inhabitants of Gaza.
Liberals who want to have it both ways, supposedly helping Palestinians without undermining Israel’s right to “self-defence”, are not likely to donate.
And that’s fine with the bands that provided tracks for the compilation. The album’s curator, London band Active Slaughter, makes this clear in the liner notes:
“The purpose of this download album is to raise money to help families (some of whom we know personally) escape from Gaza.”
The notes go on to explain how expensive it is for people in Gaza to make it to Egypt, roughly $20,000 for a family of four, a sum that would be hard for people living in the comparative safety of the UK to raise, much less the homeless and impoverished victims of Israel’s scorched-earth campaign.
But Active Slaughter doesn’t stop there.
“One of the people we know and are trying to help is a woman named Salma,” their liner notes continue, “who did the spoken word intro in Arabic at the start of our song ‘It’s Not Antisemitic To Hate Fascists,’ which is the band’s contribution to this album.
As the band notes, this song, “was recorded 5 or 6 years ago, which means nothing other than the fact people recognised then, as they do now, the inequalities and persecution Palestinians have been enduring for the past (now) 76 years”.
This perspective explains why the benefit album is named after Palestine rather than Gaza.
“This didn’t all start on the 7th October, Salma said. . . ‘In the 70 years since the creation of Israel, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and illegal settlers. This is ethnic cleansing. This is genocide.’”
All too often, war is treated as a natural disaster, and the people caught up in the crossfire are like the victims of a flood or earthquake. Not here.
To be fair, most of the songs collected on Palestine were not written specifically about the Gaza War or the longer-term suffering of the Palestinian people.
Tracks like “Cull the Tories”, “Mind the Gap”, and “We’re in 1984” clearly express a left-wing punk attitude towards conditions in the UK.
Nevertheless, the fact that so many bands were willing to repurpose their music for this cause is telling.
The first generation of hardcore punk was decidedly international, with bands in many different countries taking the same musical and lyrical approach. At the same time, they tended to make abstract points about the problems of modern life, applicable almost anywhere, or focused on domestic political concerns.
Because of the time Joe Strummer had spent abroad growing up, The Clash were more engaged with concrete manifestations of imperialism than most of the artists who followed in their wake. But even they avoided direct references to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, despite the fact that it had been a huge geopolitical concern since Black September’s abduction and killing of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics.
That’s why it’s refreshing to see British hardcore bands of today refusing to stay in their lane.
Already experiencing a major revival, initially led by groups like Arms Race and Chubby and the Gang, and, more recently, the female-fronted Pest Control and Impunity, the subgenre is poised to transcend the limitations of these bands’ forebears.
UK hardcore repoliticised during the pandemic and is now building momentum as a response to the deeply disappointing Labour government of Keir Starmer.
There are huge echoes of the mid-1970s in this regard, since the first wave of punk also swelled under dysfunctional Labour rule. The sound, of course, is very different.
But whereas the artists of that period mostly invoked Britain’s “glorious” imperial past to underscore the nation’s decline, the contributors to Palestine are demonstrating a willingness to touch on the sorest point of its post-colonial conscience.
Even when the content of a song has nothing to do with the Middle East, the fact that it’s incorporated into the framework established by Active Slaughter gives it new meaning.
If you’re a fan of hardcore, all the tracks on Palestine should please you.
For my part, some of the standouts are Amass’s “Academia (PSN)”, Rant’s “Generations”, and Slow Faction’s “Empire”.
Bludgeon Club Sound’s “Gaza” actually takes on the conflict directly, with the deadpan vocals of a Mark E. Smith sound-alike reciting words like “incarceration” giving way to a pulsing rhythmic collage and then to an eerie silence, which, even if unintentional, still communicates a powerful sense of loss.
But it feels wrong to subject this compilation to a conventional music review.
The point of Palestine is to raise money and raise awareness.
Photograph courtesy of Alisdare Hickson. Published under a Creative Commons license.
