Love Songs – A Palestinian Fundraiser Comp
Not a review here, just an opportunity to give a quick spotlight for a record—good music for a good cause. Little preamble is needed for the situation behind a record like Love Songs, a fundraiser compilation organized in the midst of the horrific escalation of violence, murder and displacement in Gaza against Palestinians.
Love Songs is broad, a compilation that walks the length of ambient, doom metal, industrial and darkwave. The compilation is put out through Mother Anxiety‘s bandcamp and 100% of the compilations proceeds goes to the fundraiser of Dr. Basil Elzeenaty and his family which you can find directly here.
The comp is introduced by Seattle-based atmo-doom project Adzes covering Low‘s “Done” from 2011’s C’mon, the context of the compilation amplifying both the track’s melancholic mood and Low’s subtle flair for residual hope even in dark places. This is followed by the subdued, affected folk instrumentation of Mother Anxiety’s “There Is Still Some Tenderness Here.”
S H R I E K I N G, the Californian black metal act responsible for Let The Galaxy Burn back in 2020, contribute the knife-edge delicate “Home Is With Them,” while the usual intensity of Everson Poe is supplanted by a track of relative restraint on the disquieting “Kintsugi.” Global Extinction Enterprises‘ “Onboarding Exercise” offers up industrial-tinged pad swells and taut beats, while Territorial Pissants‘ “Harlow” has a soundscape evoking the sound of wind ripping past your ears, alongside irregular, jagged synth stabs. Following “Harlow” are the minimal drones of Mother Anxiety’s “II,” underpinned with rapid-firing sine tones that rattle off like Morse code. This gives way to an immensely distorted low-end that sees the track out.
Adzes return with their demo track “Lictor,” a heavy-set instrumental piece with an immensely powerful bass tone. The second S H R I E K I N G contribution, “Emperor Of Nothing,” is tightly syncopated and lush in production—a multi-segmented track that crosses over from intense extreme metal to its more sombre atmospheric portion.
“End Of Days” from Your Ancestors Knew Death is a rare uptempo track for the compilation but is tonally consistent; the strong backbeat injecting its melancholy instrumentation with fervour and purpose. The compilation ends with the longest track, “Through The Tears Of Heaven” by Touching Grass, a long-form song blending elements of field recordings, ambient soundscapes and acoustic instrumentation. A track that mixes a grey, mournful tone with occasional spots of crack-seeped light in its warmer moments.
As a compilation it manages to juxtapose its harshness with its softer moments. Its album artwork of a watermelon leaving a trail of blood, done by Anton Oxenuk, evokes Palestinian iconography and explicitly associates the image with life and death in equal measure. Resistance and fear, pain and hope.
Love Songs is available through Mother Anxiety’s bandcamp from July 26th.
