After their Portland show on August 25th, I talked to AJ and Ben from Oregon-based “Working Class Death Metal” band Misery Whip about their newest LP “The Right to Live in Peace,” their politics, and the intersection between hardcore and politics.

Listen to their newest release on all streaming services or (preferably) purchase it at bleakhouse.store/pages/misery-whip. This feature isn’t quite an album review but it is endorsed by Dissonant Times as the best death metal album of the year.

“We’ve had enough of that music that doesn’t speak to us, that entertains us only for a moment but leaves us empty…We began to create a new kind of song. It was music that was born out of total necessity.”– Victor Jara

DT: How was it putting out your first LP? How long were y'all working on the material for?

AJ: We wrote the songs in about a year, and we've kind of been sitting on them for quite awhile. When we went to the studio, total instruments we recorded was about a month, four weeks total [was what] we had time spaced out for--

Ben: Vocals took way longer than instruments, it took me like five months.

AJ: Yeah, we had to keep going back. Shoutout Shane, we love hanging out with Shane.

Ben: It was basically just hanging out with Shane.

AJ: We basically just got one line done and then we hung out for a few hours.

Ben: Friendship is intertwined in the whole record...50 jokes, [for every] one line.

DT: I want a blooper reel extended cut of the record.

Ben: No, no! We put our phones in a faraday cage when we go to Shane's.

DT: That's good security culture.

Ben: It's called opsec, if you've ever heard of it.

DT: The reason I wanted to feature this release in DT is because of how explicit it is about your bands' political values. I noticed your merch that has Victor Jara on it, and then I realized your title track The Right to Live in Peace was probably a reference to his song of the same name. Are there other influences (musical or otherwise) from revolutionary figures or movements that are featured within your newest release?

Ben: Every single quote that's in the beginning of Democracy Prevails. We've got Thomas Sankara...

AJ: Maurice Bishop.

Ben: Michael Parenti.

AJ: There's a couple Parenti clips in there. A lot of great communist speakers that really influenced the album honestly, a lot of books that influenced the album. This album is years and years of us reading and years and years of us being Marxist Leninists and trying to put it into songs, is what we went for.

Ben: This record really is a complete transfusion of everything that happened while being Misery Whip. Not only did the ranch burn down, and then I went to the hospital, but October 7th happened and stuff. Also just our natural journey is growing as Marxists together. All these things happened and manifested themselves within it. There's a lot of little one lines throughout, you know? Somehow we could fit dialectical sublation in a little song. So it's equally as personal as it is talking about applying Marxism to our lives, and the optimism throughout.

DT: Yeah, the personal is political. I imagine y'all are on tour and hosting reading groups n shit.

AJ: Yeah well kind of, we love to read--

Ben: It's more like an arguing-screaming fest.

AJ: Which is fine, it's good for everyone.

DT: It builds character, it's uh self criticism or whatever...

DT: On the title track, how did your collaboration with Jesse Barnett from Stick to Your Guns come about? I probably wouldn't be an anarchist if I hadn't grown up listening to stuff like STYG.

AJ: He likes our band, we met him based on basically just politics and what we preach. He and his girlfriend Savannah follow us and that's basically how we were tapped in. We're big fans of All Power books, I'd go there a few times in LA so just kind through politics honestly. We're Stick to Your Guns fans, but it was mostly through the politics that we figured we'd ask because he'd be the best person to do a guest spot, especially on that song.

Ben: Talk about a full circle moment because in the same way, my first experience of seeing politics in music at all was Roseburg Grange, Stick to Your Guns. In what 2000- something?

AJ: 2002.

Ben: Nahh, like 2009 or 10.

How did you get into the music and politics in southern Oregon? Walk me through when you discovered hardcore and leftist politics and what was it like coming into these identities in a place not often associated with those countercultures?

Ben: So I grew up in Azalea, Oregon on Upper Cow Creek road on a ranch. We moved there when I was 9. We lived in Coolin, Idaho on a farm before that. So farm to a ranch, I was very isolated [and] far away from everything. My dad gave me AC/DC high voltage when I was 9 or something, and I was like oh yeah rock n roll y'know. And listening to Alice Cooper-- he had a station that he would do. So I would do homework after moving handlines and stuff, and then get to listen to Alice Cooper tell me about cool music while I did homework. And then I discovered Slayer, and that changed my life with music forever. I was like, wow it's so heavy. So like, yeah -punk- I missed punk completely. It was Slayer right into [going to] the shows that would happen.

Roseburg is like about an hour away from where I lived. Once I got gas money together from working on the ranch and stuff, I'd message my friends on instant messenger and make our whole hour drive out to Roseburg to go to a show. And you'd just get whatever show it was. At that point it was just a guy who would get any show that he could get. And I think they had like a church backing, this is the Christiancore era y'know, so they would do like a sermon beforehand and I could tell my mom not to worry, that they were Christian. And it was just the weirdest mixed bills that were very 2006 style. Then that STYG show, I was like woah this album's really talking about different stuff, this album is not just about surgery or whatever dumb shit they were pumping into our brains with Whitechapel and stuff.

So then, as I became an adult all I knew was working hard and work ethic and that's all I thought that life was. And then I met a friend in college, shoutout Blake Norton, who was like "oh I'm a communist," and I was like I heard that was bad. And we would just talk in the library, and argue in the library, until I was like wait a second...I've been poor my whole life, I've seen my entire town get completely stripped when large lumber companies come in and clear cut everything and then spray cancer and then all our neighbors die. And then all the guys who worked all of that had no insurance anyway and broke themselves through setting chains, and then the money dries up and they're all left doing nothing except doing meth and beating their wives in their trailer park, y'know, because all the money dried up. Make all of that make sense. So then I went down the path of like, there's gotta be other political bands, and then they all suck. Nahh, just kidding shoutout Clique.

DT: I like Pantera, personally.

Ben: I love that band...see this tan line, are you kidding me???

DT: Off the record! AJ do you wanna answer to anything in that question?

AJ: Yeah so I grew up in Southern California. Shoutout Antelope Valley hardcore. It was kind of politics right from the beginning, we had STYG out there. we had Rotting Out, it was Terror, we always kinda had left politics honestly. So it was kinda embedded in that really, [and] my mom's side is Chilean. Those politics have always been there. My mom lived through Allende, my mom lived through Pinochet. They were there for that. Those politics have been embedded in my family. They've always kind of traveled with me, I wasn't like full on Marxist-Leninist til like, I don't know, 2019-2020.

DT: [To Ben] was your family accepting of your political journey?

Ben: Fuck no. That's why I can argue so good. My dad is amazing and taught me how to work and taught me how to yell. The thing is, there's something to be said --I've worked construction for ten years now, I've worked in the oil field, I've done iron work-- there's something to be said about the raw building block logic of the American working class that is almost, just without the label, almost more Marxist than any latte liberal ever could be. Because they see, oh man, I work so hard and I don't have any money, and Amazon has it all. This sucks. Then they dive into the nihilism, this all sucks, we need to burn the system down, all I do is drink now, or whatever. You can get so close to that raw logic, y'know, what if we got to decide? What if we voted on it? What if we controlled this? What if any of the share of money was controlled by us? That kind of raw logic, [is what] I've been able to connect with my dad about, plus with my dad being so isolated and far away from everything, [he's] pretty based about Palestine. Super anti-cop because he's been a criminal his whole life, so [also] pretty based on 2020. So a lot of the ways where people are just like anyone with a big truck is a bad guy don't understand. And that doesn't help anything...

I appreciate how you use your platform as musicians to advocate for various causes, how do you engage with these issues when you're not performing or writing music?

AJ: We stay engaged, with communist parties, [and] almost every show we do is a benefit show. It's like a joke now. We're always raising money for something. That's why we have no money.

Ben: Yeah every show we play, it feels like a benefit show. I'm a member of the Multinationalist Communist Party--sign up, do real stuff. If there's little lines in the party you disagree with, so what? You can sit all day just like any Christian and look at all the little denominations wondering which one is the right one. Who cares? If you're a Marxist it's about the material reality and you can change the material reality by joining a party and actually getting organized and actually doing something.

Ben said on stage at NWHC that hardcore is more than a community, it's a flag we fly- what does this community/ identity mean to you? I'd love to hear your thoughts on how community spaces like the ones hardcore shows create can be in service to political movements.

Ben: Third spaces don't exist, this whole city-- Portland-- everyone is transient, lives here for a few years and then leaves, maybe goes to bars, but that's it. Hardcore is one of the only spots where it waxes and wanes, we've seen it badass, we've seen it shitty-- it's awesome right now; and it's a spot where people hangout outside in the bike lane, but there's still a lot more to that. It's where ideas get exchanged and organization can really happen. When you go to benefits, when you go to protests, you go to book clubs, you see all the same people. Make that venn diagram one singular circle. We're not a hardcore band, y'know? We're a fake death metal band. But hardcore is an ethos. It's a spirit, like I said, it's a flag you wave. Getting to wave that flag [a communist flag at Northwest Hardcore Fest] and have that many people cheer was awesome. The comments are going to be nuclear, I'm so excited. But it's so important, it impacted me-- I'm 100% a hardcore lifer, its given so much to me and continues to. The aid I got in my time of need, in my dad's house burning down and losing literally everything and having no connection to the outside world and being threatened, literally with death as winter neared-- literally hardcore saved that. When I was in the hospital, facing death myself only mere months later, same thing-- hardcore had my back. I'm not homeless-- incredible. And that's just my own personal anecdotes. Us [Ben and AJ] meeting cuz of hardcore.

How many awesome stories do I have to exchange about positive impacts? Not only just in positive friendships that really uplift me, and build you up. Individualism can't exist it doesn't exist. Every single good memory you have is with someone else, truly. And all of that is fostered here. And if we can come in and show you that politics are not separate, and can never be separated, and you can see and identify that every piece of your life is political, and you can begin to see the historical context of the answers to the problems you have now, then that's where the unity can come in. And that's where I think hardcore is a good path to that and a powerful mode for that. Also, moshing is just funny.

AJ: Hardcore has always been a community to me. Growing up, especially in Southern California, we had such a good hardcore scene down there. My parents took me to my first show, and the impact it had on my life, the politics that I have, the way I was raised, the things I was taught...my first hardcore show was Terror, Murder Death Kill, Betrayal, shoutout my mom for taking me to that. She's badass, shoutout Laura LaFrance, she's sick. Even moving to Portland, this scene is crazy, it's growing. And the kids too, these newer kids, they're smart. They have things to say too, and even though that didn't really exist that much, that community that's been built, even from 2020 is insane. People pack out for the benefit shows! It's like more people go to the benefit show because it seems like the hardcore kids, care. They help, they donate. We have real, material change that we see every month almost. So it's like hardcore seems like a way bigger deal I'd say in Portland and the whole Northwest too, Tacoma, Seattle, it's crazy the connections we have with everyone and the community we have now with all these bands...it's stronger than it's ever been now. It's a great thing. And seeing the direction and the politics that it's going in, even in like the kid bands, seeing them stray a little bit from "I don't know much about politics" to "Oh well like, we're generally leftists now," it's such a good push in the right direction. It's incredible to see how these little kid bands plan Palestine benefit shows in outdoor venues...that's what we love to see. It's taking the hardcore community and actually doing good things. Rather than just being on the mic and being like, oh this world is shitty, it's dumb, mosh you cowards, whatever the fuck they wanna say, these bands are actually organizing and realizing they can raise money for things that are much bigger than our scene.

Ben: That's the spine of it, there's this spiritual throughline of it. There's shit that matters and that has real weight to it. Like you said, when people pack out for a benefit of all locals, that says a lot. And like you said too, we're on the right path-- because right now, when things are so polarizing, the things you can get away with saying, some of the stuff you see on comment sections are so infernal. To see a complete other side of the pendulum swing here, I'm not going to expect everyone to be day one well read ML, but to not have everyone in the men club on the top of incel squad is awesome.