Hear Arson Choir's Furious New Song About Police Violence, Systematic Oppression

"I wrote 'Revenge, My Love' in 2018, and as a black man who has had run-ins with the police, it was bound to come out one way or the other," says the Arson Choir vocalist Phil Penegar. His band have teamed up with Revolver today (June 12th) to premiere the aforementioned single and its accompanying music video today. Watch and listen above.

Musically, the aggressive, poignant lead-off track from the Southern California-based mathcore group's upcoming EP, Invisible Monsters, takes cues from the frenetic sounds of the Dillinger Escape Plan and Every Time I Die. As for the song's lyrics (which you can read below), these offer eerily prescient commentary on what is happening all over the world in terms of police brutality, riots and the Black Lives Matter movement — even though "Revenge, My Love" was recorded last year. The song's video, too, was filmed in 2019, though it has been updated slightly since.

"That feeling of frustration of looking out into the country you call home and seeing injustice running rampant and unchecked — I think that is what we see spilling out into the streets of America today," Penegar says. "Frustrated people who thought that living in the U.S.A. meant equal protection under the law, and that social contract being broken. As a people, we are all in this together, but in that same regard, if we all are not free then none of us are. The Igbo landing slaves that drowned themselves rather than be subject to the horrors of slavery. 'Bury me in the ocean like my ancestors past.' They said, 'No more' and today's generation is saying 'no more' to police violence and systematic oppression.

"The Arson Choir is an aggressive band. Hardcore has its roots in punk rock and we shouldn't be scared of speaking out and creating spaces for the kids that felt like they didn't fit in with the normies. If we all have to scream together and create unrest and make people uncomfortable, so be it."

"Revenge, My Love" lyrics:
Lead in the water
No help in sight
3 years and counting 
Left here to die
Poison the people
Hide all the proof
Bury the story
Censor the news
How can you sit here calm and quiet
While freedom chokes and dies
I am revenge come to tear down the throne
Every mistake
Come back tenfold
Bury me in the ocean like my ancestors past
They knew the oceans embrace
Was better than a life in chains
I am revenge come to tear down the throne
Every mistake
Dropped at your door

Bury me in the ocean like my ancestors past
They knew the oceans embrace
Was better than a life in chains
Gun him down
Take her life cause she's brown
Citizens, unarmed, choked out
You say that this is justice?
Call this the land of the free
It just seems these laws and protections
Don't apply to people like me
No justice
No peace
I wanna live in a world 
Where black boys and girls 
Don't have to live in fear of a pig in their rear view
And every day
the laws don't change we're all to blame
No Justice No Peace