Harbinger

posted by Mailiti, originally posted on Thrash Back

There are many things i’m currently in love with right now.

Some of those things being lemon flavored vegan soft serve, iced yerba matte, and my dog, Shae.

Another one of those things is Kingdom’s new 7″, Threads. We’re talking Kingdom, the vegan, straight-edge band from Philly/Richmond. If you google “Kingdom,” you’ll prolly get some band from the UK that i don’t care about.

There is so much to say about this female fronted hardcore band that i love oh so very much. And their new album kicks ass BIG TIME. I’m not super in to a lot of the straight-edge hardcore music going on nowadays. Mostly because i’m an 80s style hardcore kid at heart but also because the scene can be extremely alienating to a genderqueer person of color.

BUT Kingdom’s politics are pretty on point along with their sound. Their lyrics span the spectrum of subjects from police brutality to sexual violence.

Harbinger, for example, is a song about a rape victim taking revenge on her rapist. In the song, the woman talks about how her old self slips away after she experiences that violence. However, she then talks about how she turns into a warrior that can’t be broken…and thus the chorus cry of “You can’t break me” begins and ends the song.

This song sticks out to me for multiple reasons right now.

First, strong feminist lyrics are not unusual in hardcore music. There are many songs about the rights that female bodied people should have over themselves. For example, the Behind Enemy Lines song, Her Body, Her Decision.

And the Chokehold song, Not a Solution.

But, in my mind, there is something very different between those songs and a song about a woman physically harming her rapist. (And it is being thrown down by a badass, female vocalist.) There is something incredibly empowering about the lyrics in this song. It is not a song about how women are victimized, but instead how women are militant warriors.

I’m a living message
A promise of vengeance
Oh how surprised he’ll be to find he’s made a warrior of me!

(Although, i wouldn’t say the man made a warrior of her SHE WAS ALREADY A WARRIOR!… that’s besides the point though…)

I like this song because it is not about women making an idealistic change in the minds of others. It is a about a struggle. Violence is a very real element on any struggle, both against the oppressed and the oppressor. This song neglects neither of those groups and the violence they may come to head with.

Secondly, there seems to be a reflection of this message of women taking revenge against their sexual assaulters in mainstream music, also. Rihanna’s recent Man Down song and music video show a woman shooting her rapist in center of a busy town.

Perhaps these two instances can’t be labeled as an “upsurge” or “pattern” of music/media sending a message to women that they should begin to take control of the consequences their assaulters face, though i wish it was. To me, it is still interesting that these two songs arose around the same times and i wonder what this means for the climate we are living in now?

Will we, female-bodied people, soon be in a gang that rides around on bicycles with whistles surrounding sexual assault perpetrators????

One can only hope. (Skip to 0:33 if you don’t know what i’m talking about.)