You Could Use Some Whores. In Your Life

Their new song—“Flag Day”—burns bright.

“There are many places in the world where being a whore is tolerated. Parts of Nevada. Amsterdam, Holland. Congress.” —David Lee Roth

As Trump anhedonia settles into our bones, it’s getting easier to feel like shit and be sad all the time, but anger might be a more effective poison. If you’re feeling defeated and not up to raging against the orange-faced, anti-intelligent, planet-destroying machine, maybe “Flag Day,” a new single by Atlanta, Georgia’s Whores. can be the flame under your blood that sets it boiling again. Lyrically, the song begins and ends with the same chant, “This is a gutter with a flag.” The lines in between that scream of “privileged jowls” and “crooked crowns” make it hard to read this song as anything but a commentary on the dystopian hellscape that is current American politics.

Whores. has been making some of the best heavy music on the planet for the last few years. Their bell-and-whistle-free records and self-sacrificial live shows have garnered attention from every corner of the rock and heavy-metal media since their debut in 2011. “Flag Day” falls right in line with the band’s recent output with production, engineering, and mixing by Ryan Boesch, who has handled these duties for everything the band has done since their breakthrough Clean EP in 2013. The intro is manically dissonant, like In Utero-era Cobain and Grohl on Adderall, with singer/guitarist Christian Lembach screaming his fucking face off like a crazed preacher. The chorus resolves into what has become a signature for Whores. — tone-stacked guitars that make the three piece sound like four or more, and that should make guitars players everywhere rethink their rig. At the break, the drums and bass of Donnie Adkinson and Casey Maxwell, respectively, repeat the previous pounding bridge with washed-out drum sounds that isolate Boesch’s elegant production and engineering.

“Flag Day” is being released as part of the Bash ’17 compilation on the Amphetamine Reptile label (call it AmRep for MaxCred). The long history of AmRep reads like a perfect lineage for WHORES.: Melvins, Unsane, and Helmet. But Whores. venture into the much more wide-appealing territory of hooks and choruses that wouldn’t sound out of place in an arena. The band’s realism and sense of taste is what sets them apart from the more metal-leaning pack that they’re often lumped in with. Crank up “Flag Day” and get your fire stoked while you fight the power, rise above, or board your flight to France.

Catch Whores. on tour now; dates and catalog here.

John Dziuban is no longer a musician. Metal Minutiae is an occasional column on the decline of rock music.