Mining influence from such bands as Ruiner and Another Breath, the Selfist story starts back in 2011. The melodically-minded hardcore outfit launched out of the Vancouver punk scene, releasing their debut EP, Life Is Too Long for Optimism, a year later.
Lyrically speaking, Selfist's songs lashed out at the "whitewashing of Canada's genocidal colonial history and at the philisophies that justify the destruction of the Earth's biosphere." Their sophomore EP, Dystopia Now, arrived in 2015, and the group kept a busy show schedule, sharing bills with the likes of Strung Out, One Step Closer, and Expire, to name a few bands.
This summer, Selfist will be releasing their debut album, A Better World Rejected, and No Echo is pleased to help present a track from the collection called "Blowback Effect" today for our readers:
Selfist vocalist Stepan Soroka shared the following about the track:
"The song was written in 2020, during the time that Black Lives Matter protests were reaching a fever pitch across the US following the murder of George Floyd. That same summer, California was experiencing its worst-ever year of wildfires, creating a surreal convergence of extreme social unrest and ecological devastation. Witnessing these events from a distance, in the relative calm of our home in British Columbia, it really felt like our neighbours to the south were on fire, figuratively and literally.
"Concurrently, a disturbing trend was emerging among the alt-right, painting the racial justice protests as orchestrated and funded by liberal elites, effectively dismissing the validity of the rage felt by Black America at that moment.
"It’s inherently challenging to speak about the experience of Black America as a white person living in Canada, but one thing is clear; when you oppress and brutalize a segment of the population for hundreds of years, that shit is going to boil over and burn you eventually. As white North Americans, we have to ask ourselves, What the fuck did we expect?"
Soroka also wanted to include the following:
"Selfist has always been and always will be an anti-racist band. We stand with all marginalized communities struggling to better their lives and the lives of future generations, whether that be folks of colour, the LGBTQ+ community, indigenous peoples all over the world, or anyone else. '
"'Blowback Effect' is written from an outsider’s perspective, with the aim to recognize our own privilege and affirm that all struggles for justice are valid."
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A Better World Rejected will be out on June 9th.
Selfist on social media: Facebook | Instagram
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