The Soft Pink Truth - “Multinationella Mördare (Totalitär cover)”

Listen to The Soft Pink Truth's full album of crust-punk covers, Am I Free To Go? on Bandcamp: https://thesoftpinktruth.bandcamp.com/

Am I Free To Go? is available now as a pay-what-you-want download, with all profits going to International Anti-Fascist Legal Defence Fund.

Original song by Totalitär
Lead vocals by Karl Ekdahl
Video by Kevin Blackistone

Drew Daniel (The Soft Pink Truth) on making Am I Free To Go?:

I have made this covers album of crust punk classics as an expression of rage and despair at the ongoing political misery of our present capitalist life-world. Whether they are from Sweden or Japan or the UK or the USA, I find these songs and the artists that sang them inspiring: they are direct, angry and demanding. I don’t cover them out of mockery or satire. I love these songs and I wanted to play them and play with them. It’s as simple as that.

I have made it a “name your price” album and all profits after paying out any due/requested royalties from the original artists will go to the International Anti-Fascist Legal Defence Fund which assists people all around the world with the legal repercussions of protesting fascism. It’s not meant to be a cash-grab or exploitive of the original artists. If you’re going to sing the words “your profit hysteria makes me vomit” then you shouldn’t be profiting off that action.

I have made three covers albums now: “Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Soft Pink Truth?”, “Why Do the Heathen Rage?” and now “Am I Free To Go?” They are intended to be a trio of queer takeovers of music that I love from often all-too “macho” subcultures, a cocktail of musical affection and social alienation.

Thanks to the assistance and talent of Owen Gardner who transcribed the riffs, I have generally respected the musical structure of the original tunes and in all cases I have retained the original lyrics. At the same time, I have tried to shift them sonically to the present circumstances: our world of Trump and Amazon.com and murderous racist policing and imminent climate apocalypse. I am very grateful to my guest vocalists for helping me to realize this record: Hiko, NTsKi, Karl Ekdahl, Griffin Pyn, In the Sun, M.C. Schmidt and Angel Deradoorian. I am also grateful to the people whose protests and public political actions I have sampled on this record.

This record was originally going to be called “Do You Really Want Your Freedom?” in honor of Amebix, and while working on this album, I recorded a cover of “No Gods No Masters” with a vocal by Vicki Bennett. When it came to light that Rob “The Baron” Miller has become an Anti-Semite and holocaust denier, the title changed and the cover was replaced by track 9, whose title in full is “Space Formerly Occupied By An Amebix Cover But Fuck That Guy For Being A Holocaust Denier.”

I created this album about a year ago. It was made at the same time as “Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase?” and in my own mind I think of this record as the “prequel” to that one. That is why this record ends with Angel Deradoorian’s voice stacked into a choral arrangement. The end of “Protest and Survive” is designed to be the onramp to the other album which is its complement and opposite. Other worlds are possible, but we have to start by taking the measure of the world we are in.

-Drew Daniel