TRANS DAY OF REVENGE thoughts

(By Melody Werner)

TRANS DAY OF REVENGE is a 2016 hardcore punk record by Olympian act, G.L.O.S.S. (an acronym which stands for "Girls Living Outside Society's Shit"). Standing at a lean 7 minutes in length, with 5 tracks in total, it's by no means a full-length LP--most EP's these days are longer. And yet, it made a big splash online and brought the Washington queercore band a fair amount of Internet fame--which grew after the transphobic blight on shoegaze that is Whirr got blasted for mocking G.L.O.S.S. for being a group with trans members, revolutionary lyrics, and probably just for G.L.O.S.S. being better than Whirr musically (which is not an objective fact, but it may as well be; who is still touting fucking WHIRR in 2021?). G.L.O.S.S. wound up breaking up afterwards, citing stress touring and with their newfound popularity, with TRANS DAY OF REVENGE only remaining on Bandcamp on a pay-what-you-want basis, with all money going towards a homeless shelter from now on. All told, it's an entirely understandable reason to split and the decision to rewire all revenue towards the homeless is indisputably a good thing; though I still wish to discuss this record, as I love the damn thing. This is not what I will call a review, however, as this is a freeform "I really enjoy this, so if you check this out and dig it too, consider throwing some cash at this if you can, cuz it's going to a helpful place" recommendation, seeing the circumstances.

Punk as a genre is one where raw performances trump technical proficiency, and hardcore punk tends to offer more bite in that regard. Julaya Antolin (bass, and also the talented album artist), Corey Evans (drums), and not to mention both guitarists Tannrr Hainsworth and Jake Bison bring tons of precisely that: bite, and performances as raw as if the world was ending (which, uhhhh, it kinda is? but too slowly to be movie material) and this was one last fuck-you to the powers that be. All of this power sonically goes excellently with every other aspect of this short molotov cocktail.

Sadie Switchblade is a ferocious, badass vocalist, whose front-to-back shouts will never cease to be abrasive in all the right ways. She's a killer shouter and she does this band's righteously incendiary lyrics justice. Speaking of, this record just doesn't fuck around lyrically. Every word of every bar is potent, whether they're talking about police brutality (glad that's not a problem anymore, and won't continue to be for the next four years too!), or violent revolution, or the unspeakable homelessness epidemic in the richest country in the history of the world, or the titular Trans Day of Revenge in the name of all of the trans folks who've been murdered for daring to live as themselves. I can get fully behind everything here, and I'm seriously fucking hope they didn't have to deal with the neoliberal intelligentsia's tone police so much for their points here. Everything here is 10,000% right. o7

Go listen to this thing, if it sounds interesting, and seriously--please consider donating to a local homeless shelter even if you aren't, if you have the means to. It can help so much, even if NOBODY should ever be homeless again to begin with when there are more abandoned houses than homeless people and it'd be cheaper to house everyone than pay the piper whenever a homeless person goes to the hospital with goddamned pneumonia. The fact that we as a society are not talking about this every single hour of every single fucking day is absurd and a genuine outrage to me. There is no reasonable argument against universal housing--shelter is a human right. Thank fuck for G.L.O.S.S. raising their voices on this important issue--and many more--in such a short amount of time, in a medium that almost completely ignores homelessness except to make some smug, well-to-do musician feel better about their millions. I hope they're all doing well and thank them for making my 2020 make a lil more sense.

P.S.: If you're looking for other trans and nonbinary musicians to support, check out Backxwash, SOPHIE, Body Void, Black Dresses, Yves Tumor, Uboa, Feminazgûl, and Sonja. They deserve some love, and they make really excellent music as well.