There’s no cure for madness.
Three years since the dawn of the Covid 19 pandemic, we find ourselves marinating in the bleak chronicles of a society riddled with institutional atrocities. The drumbeat of police aggression, the grinding teeth of civil unrest, the mournful howls of destitution, the asphyxiating grip of the opioid epidemic, and the searing heat of an accelerating climate crisis are incessantly narrated against the cacophony of capitalism, xenophobia, and racism. These are the disquieting serenades of Western ‘progress,’ the gloom-infused dirge of our legacy.
The backdrop of our dystopia is painted with stark hues of the unfolding American coup, a testament to the general apathy that has metastasized like a cancer in our collective spirit. No longer merely an indictment of American complacency, it has become a disturbing portrait of our current global narrative. Despite the onslaught of information at our fingertips, the bewildering fog of division and confusion shrouds the path towards any semblance of human advancement.
As we spiral into the future, our alienation seems to deepen. The once-promising dawn of the 21st century now appears to be a grotesque carnival of growing solitude, ironically burgeoning alongside the tech market’s prodigious ascent. The rising tide of apathy or sheer egocentrism is now the carton of eggshells upon which we trod.
In this disquieting ballet of societal decay, where the grim reaper collects his toll unimpeded, how much more must we lose before we acknowledge the gravity of our predicament? Yet, we swathe ourselves in comfort, dressing our imaginations in blindfolds, with a growing arsenal of distractions. The tragic irony? In the age of instant access to knowledge, ignorance is less an outcome of uninformed minds than it is a deliberate choice—a perverse luxury indulged even by those who ostentatiously parade their ‘awareness.’
“This LIE is the main ingredient of so-called progress, says Carson Cox of Death Index. “If you remove it, people will realize they’re animals fighting for scraps in the mud. Remove the LIE, and you have a meaningless country, society, war, existence, etc…People are starting to recognize the patterns, but they still feel hopeless. Through the smoke, the barricades go up, and new wars and old wars collide. Those who refuse to conform are the only ones who truly live.”
Death Index’s powerful new anthem, “No Cure For Madness, is a fiercely political critique about these modern failures of society. Channeling Killing Joke, Midnight Oil, The Clash, The Damned, and The Sisters of Mercy, this raucous three-minute tirade yanks us through the details of a harsh reality check. The song comes from the upcoming album Civilized By A Lie, the formidable new full-length album, due July 7th, 2023 on 2 Mondi Collective.
The video comes with a manic descent into a poisoned psyche, as we watch people (and a spinning skeleton) feast upon bowls of screws and military figurines, drinking from a mug emblazoned with the words “INFORMATION SYSTEMS.” While comical in delivery, the message is very clear: the industrial military complex is screwing us all.
“Shot at the peak of 2020 pandemic delirium with my pandemic bubble amigo Szantos, it pretty accurately displays what I did most of that year,” says Cox. “The lyrics for the entire record were written under the Trump years so they are all pretty negative (like I ever wrote happy music?). I love these lyrics, l love singing what I feel no matter how morbid. I’d rather be morbid than living a lie.”
Watch the video for “No Cure For Madness” below:
Death Index, the joint venture of Carson Cox (Merchandise, Neon Bluid, Romeo Blu alumnus) and Marco Rapisarda (prolific contributor to Psico Galera, La Piovra, Smart Cops) draw from a melting pot of influences, their sound oscillating between industrial, pop, the anarchy of Crass Records, and the high-energy echoes of Wax Trax! On the horizon, their next creation, Civilized By A Lie, readies itself to turn the rock’n’roll scene on its head, promising an artistic interpretation of life, the world, scientific revelations, and the creeping inevitability of societal decay.
Following their inaugural album’s release on Deathwish Inc. in 2016, the dynamic duo of Death Index, along with producer Maurizio Baggio (Boy Harsher, The Soft Moon, Merchandise), dove headfirst into the creative abyss of Civilized by A Lie. The labor of love spanned six years, introducing elements rarely encountered in the musical landscape, from metallic textures to gritty iron sheets salvaged from a construction site.
The socio-political quagmire of the current era heavily imprints itself upon the album’s narratives. The resurgent tide of mainstream fascism in the US, societal tremors, the chilling isolation ushered in by the tech revolution, and the relentless drive of the western progress mythos all serve as grim muses. Civilized By A Lie explores these layers through intricate lyrics and sounds, casting a disconcerting gaze over our reality, spotlighting the phantasmal chasms that cleave us apart.
“The truth of the LIE is not simply to judge or waste time preaching what’s wrong because everyone already knows what’s wrong,” Cox asserts. “The album isn’t a pamphlet or declaration of evil on the part of western superpowers. It’s a bird’s eye view of what we look like on Earth, destroying each other over imaginary differences – be it language, ideology or personal preference. Everyone is in the same sinking boat. Indicting anyone other than ourselves, the collective us, is foolish. But something must be done with the anxiety beyond marching against the tide of evil and fascism, beyond organizing. This album is a way to bundle that anxiety and shoot it at the sun, so to speak.”
Civilized By A Lie is due out July 7th, 2023.
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