Howdy, friends, fans, enemies, and all other readers!
Rowan here, back with another guest blog post for Stir the Pot Fashion. For this entry, I would like to talk more in-depth about my band and the meaning behind our songs. We had already released two singles back in February / March, but we also just released our first EP last week!
On October 8, 2026, Will Work for Food, God Bless was thrust into the world, and the reception thus far has been incredible. Due to the topical nature of every single song on the album and the amount of eyes and ears that have been drawn to it already, I would like to give some extra insight to our listeners. I feel that it is a necessity to clearly and transparently state important positions and beliefs that you hold so that no ambiguity remains, especially when they pertain to human rights and our survival as a species.
With that in mind, let’s get started!
1. Kill Your Leaders Faster
This was the very first track that Rob & I wrote together, and I’m glad to see that it’s getting more love now that the EP is out. The single was a bit... unpolished, to say the least, so having an outside mix engineer work on it really elevated the whole thing.
So, the track is essentially a dialogue between a Leader and a Subject wherein the Leader attempts to sell the Subject on Capitalism and Colonialism. As the song progresses, you can see how Subject begins to learn that Leader’s promises are not worth the paper they’re printed on. It builds to a head leading up to the breakdown where the scene is set for a great battle between Subjects and Leaders. One of the most important lines is the callout at the end of this section:
When they have us surrounded (we’re three million to one)
The numbers mentioned here represent the ratio of how many non-billionaires there are in the world to how many billionaires there are. This line pretty clearly states who the enemy is and sets the tone for the rest of the record.
2. Glitchgrind
Track number 2 pops off immediately with some gloriously self-indulgent blast beats, calling out the people that purport to control our entertainment and use it to fund death. While this is overall a song that is anti-AI, it is also more specifically addressing the former CEO / current “Executive Chairman” of Spotify, Daniel Ek,
who used money generated through artist revenue to fund an investment into AI weaponry. Despite the fact that there are innumerable human rights issues with every platform you can think of in some fashion, we thought that not having our revenue directly fund death by keeping our music off of Spotify was a stance that we were meant to take.
Besides the Spotify situation, we also just generally hate Generative AI and all that it stands for. Stolen works of souls that pepper the entire tapestry of human history with wonder, joy, heartache, love, hatred, and the rest of human feeling are fed into a machine with no regard or respect for the material itself. Anthropic has destroyed uncountable amounts of rare books, for instance, and every single model was trained on stolen material scraped from the internet. The hyperscale data centers that have been popping up all over the USA are also going through our drinking water at unprecedented rates, creating “heat islands” for miles around the complex, and burning through fossil fuels when renewable energy would be far more efficient in most instances. Regardless of efficiency, the existential threat of climate change is already observable in the Super El Nino that we are experiencing currently, as well as the glacier melting in Nepal and killing / injuring thousands. Throw in the concerns that have been raised lately regarding the association between these data centers and mass-surveillance, and being anti-GenAI/LLM is the only rational position to take.
3. (Interlude) Za’atar Manakeesh Amongst the Olive Groves
The track itself doesn’t state this directly, but there are plenty of references that you can draw this conclusion pretty easily:
This song is saying Free Palestine; Free Congo; Free Sudan; Free every single people that has been hunted down, tortured, and persecuted by billionaire pedophiles while they sat prettily above the rest of us. The liberation of one is the liberation of all; there cannot be lasting change without addressing the issue holistically.
4. Will Work for Food, God Bless
Here we are now at the title track of the EP, where we have pleading, soaring clean vocals and crushing, searing breakdowns dancing hand-in-hand. Besides this song easily being the one with the best hook and earworm potential, it also pretty succinctly describes the crushing weight of a system that has discarded you.
Beginning with the monologue of a class-traitor attempting to defend the system that exploits them and shifting into the lived reality of the bottom half, the song explores what happens when a system that is set up to extract wealth from lower
classes finally reaches its breaking point. Whether you’re homeless because rent is ridiculously overinflated and you missed a paycheck or because of addiction, the reality is that life’s cards are all held by a select few under Capitalism. When the supports and community that you need to function are sold to you as luxuries rather than rights, it is far easier to blame an individual for systemic failure. We aim to rectify that propaganda you’ve been fed.
5. Amalia
Capping off the album with my personal favorite, the final track is Amalia.
This song was inspired by the story I read of an infant that was 18 months old at the time this event occurred. While in ICE custody, the child, named Amalia, had pneumonia and nearly died due to medical neglect. She thankfully did not die, and the family was able to get released, but this is not the case for a crushing number of detainees. Many have been served rotten food and dirty water; they have been forced to share cells in horrendous conditions that are infested with bugs; some have completely disappeared from public databases; and, most infuriating to me, there have been several cases of young girls being raped and becoming pregnant. Those girls then get transferred to facilities in localities that do not allow abortion for any reason, such as Dilley Detention Center.
These children are being raped and forced to carry pregnancy and give birth. This should have been the incendiary moment that pushed us to break our chains, but propaganda and social media algorithms are powerful. They keep real information about what is happening suppressed underneath low-effort and purposely distracting or false content. The song is somewhat of a piece of fictional wish-fulfillment; the end builds to a scene where the prisoners revolt and burn Dilley to the ground. The rage I feel at being unable to do anything substantial to help these people is palpable in my vocal delivery, and I needed to get it out into the world.
In that spirit, we have made a point to donate at least 50% of merch profits on certain items to Immigration Justice Campaign, and we have taken on other charity contributions as well. Food & Water Watch, for instance, fights against the encroachment of hyperscale data centers. We want to put our money where our mouths are as much as possible within a failing system, and this was the way to do it.
Abolish ICE.