4am, phone in hand, watching protest livestreams from Wright Park in Tacoma. George Floyd had just been killed by Minneapolis police, the pandemic was still hollowing out everyday life, and Chris LaPointe — Wake of Humanity‘s vocalist — was sitting in bed, sleepless, unable to stop scrolling. He missed a work meeting. He lost track of the day entirely.
Out of that particular paralysis came “Distress Signal,” the EP the Tacoma band are now releasing on New Age Records, and “Mastering the Fine Art of Self Annihilation” is the first track to surface from it.
The song moves the way that night probably felt — careful at first, almost processional, then somewhere around the one-minute mark it opens up into something harder and more urgent. Tight, dense, and loaded. The kind of track you’d want in your ears while fighting for something.
LaPointe recalls the experience in detail: “I lost a sense of meaning. I lost a sense of being. I was overwhelmed by sadness, grief, sorrow and empathy for those who lost lives to both police violence and Covid 19. I didn’t know what to do.”
When he finally got some rest, he wrote the song. “It was quite cathartic and every time it’s practiced, sung or listened to, it transports me back to my bed where I lay in a total panic. I don’t know if that’s a good thing but that’s my experience with it.”
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The broader EP carries the same current. “The social upheaval we experienced in 2020 has not changed. Worsened, in fact,” LaPointe says, pointing to ICE violence, ongoing police killings, and what he calls “the fascist Trump regime.” “We felt this EP is quite fitting for these times of uncertainty.”
Wake of Humanity have been at this for over a decade — three releases, multiple US and European runs — and “Distress Signal” picks up from their 2018 LP “FIGHT/RESIST” with a revamped lineup now featuring Jeremy Gruenewald and Rusty Baumeier on guitars, Daniela Hansen Choza on bass, and Thomas Vanderpol on drums alongside LaPointe.
The band are currently booking PNW, West Coast, European, and East Coast tours, and are already writing a new full-length.
“Mastering the Fine Art of Self Annihilation” drops to streaming on March 27. Premiere stream below.
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