Southern California punks TOTAL MASSACRE, a self-described band of “anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-capitalists,” have just dropped a raging and politically charged new track titled, “Get Rich or Try Dying.”
Of the track, singer Cap’n No-Fun says, “Get Rich or Try Dying started like most of our songs do, with a suggestion for a funny song title (this time from our drummer Tommy) combined with the unshakeable sense that literally everything has been fundamentally stacked against us. So not exactly new territory for us as far as songwriting goes but I feel like this one does a good job honing in on one of the really important points that I think is pretty important, and all too easily overlooked: That our lives are the commodity that is being bought and sold.”
“Total Massacre have a directness and simplicity that is kind of a lost art these days; it was a hallmark of the punk scene back in the 1980’s and is what gave the music of that era the immediacy that inspired young people to engage in acts of resistance to fascism. We need more of that.” – Chris Hannah, Propagandhi
For the music video, the band enlisted the creative mind of Dylan Howard, the drummer from LA punk band The Lungs, who directed the clip.
Stream the track on digital platforms here.
The punk ethos is present in everything Total Massacre does, and has earned them an international following in an extremely short amount of time. Committed to bashing authority and calling out the dog whistle of fascism whatever the source, Total Massacre plays every song with a sense of urgency and dread as if at any second some lunatic in the White House might unleash nuclear annihilation upon us all.
The LA-based 4-piece channels the breakneck pace and buzzsaw guitars of 80’s hardcore with lyrics drenched in the sweat, tears, and disaffected rage of life today. Explicitly political and anti-fascist vocals bark an outraged retort to both the ineffectual, self-defeating cynicism of neoliberal centrists and the greedy, craven nihilism of modern-day conservatives.
The self-titled Total Massacre (2018) and the blistering follow-up The System Works… (2019) laid the foundation for what this band stands for. Their live show came a long way, garnering a performance at 2019’s Punk Rock Bowling and Music Festival, and gigs opening for acts like Pennywise, The Bronx, MDC, Total Chaos, Naked Aggression, CJ Ramone, Flipper, Mondo Generator, Verbal Abuse, Angry Samoans, Mean Jeans, Pulley, DFL and more. The band was primed and ready to share the stage with Pears when Covid 19 shut everything down.
Total Massacre spent the downtime writing songs remotely, rehearsing only once or twice before convening to record “the songs of 2020”, all to be released as a series of singles through the first half of 2021.
The bands’ home base studio Beer City nearly burned down in 2020, but should be up and running in time for the band to record another flurry of singles. As glad as they are that Trump will be out of office, they aren’t holding their breath for the democratic establishment to fix our dumpster of a country, so you can count on plenty more pissed off hardcore from Total Massacre soon.
