Over the last couple of years, we’ve had a bunch of great feminist punk bands that have gotten way more attention than most DIY acts ever get. WAR ON WOMEN, G.L.O.S.S., DREAM NAILS, PETROL GIRLS, the list goes on and on. Today, we’re welcoming another great brigade that landed on our radarearlier this year. They call themselves WAR ON MAN BABIES (W.O.M.B.), an intersectional feminist hardcore band, and they deliver a burst of immediate rage with a righteous message! We have teamed up with them to give you a closer look to their second EP “Soundtrack for a Heated Conversation” and explain their message through a brief track-by-track breakdown below.
WOMB have been active in the hardcore/punk scene (under- and above-ground) for decades as musicians, artists, writers, zine producers, and organizers:
Some of our past bands/projects include Collapse, Social Werq, Trailhead, Orange 9mm, Burn, 108, and The Free Bleeders.
We are doing this band because we like each other and it’s a fucking blast. But we also want to join our voices with other artists who see their work as part of the struggle for justice and transformation. It doesn’t take much to see that living at the expense of the earth, and living at the expense of other people, has brought us to the edge of disaster. We’d like to be part of the change we see coming.
We hope you like what you hear, please share, please start a band or take photographs or write a zine and be apart of this collective voice.
Love and Rage, w.o.m.b.(Lainie, Cale, Jhone, Mike, and Matthew)
Recorded and engineered by Matthew Cross, and spiced up by the amazing art by Angie Coe, “Soundtrack for a Heated Conversation” was released in late March. WAR ON MAN BABIES are: Lainie (vocals), Matthew (drums), Mike (bass), John (guitar), Cale (guitar). The band is currently writing new material and they hope to start working on a full-length release soon.
CHRISTINA AGUILERA WILL HAVE HER REVENGE:
This song was written in the summer of 2017 when our singer was going through a struggle with PTSD. It’s about the impact of childhood sexual abuse on a person and how deeply impacted she still feels from that experience. A theme in the lyrics is riffing on Christina Aguilera’s “fighter,” which brought some levity to the topic.
REVERSE RACISM:
This is an educational song to all the white folk that don’t understand that they cannot understand being on the receiving end of racism. As the song says, “racism requires a position of power” and white is that position in this white supremacist society. Therefore white people cannot be the recipient of racist behavior. There’s a line that we wrote after the recording, “no uncle Bob, I don’t think taking a knee is disrespectful to veterans.”
OUT THEM ALL:
Right around the beginning of the “Me Too” resurgence a local woman wrote a blog called “outing the wolves” naming a local record shop owner as a rapist. This song was inspired by this blog. We support outing all your local rapists and abusers!
NO MEANS FUCK OFF:
Written winter 2017 when a local convicted sex offender was supposed to play a grassroots run music fest. The sex offender had many supporters, and many accusers. This song is about rape and all the bullshit rationalizations offenders have for their actions. All rapists have friends and family. Just because they are your friend doesn’t mean they can’t rape, stop defending sex offenders.
FUCK THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT:
Neo Nazi Scum! This is a rallying cry for abortion rights in this fundamentalist Christian climate. This song has some soon to be classic lines such as “Bodily autonomy! Separation of church and my pussy!” Who doesn’t want the Christian Right to fuck off?
