Pressure Drop: Dancing Through Erosion with Energy Whores

Early in Arsenal of Democracy, it feels like the ground is shifting - not so much an extreme feeling like if you’ve had one too many drinks, but that feeling of slow realization, the air is damp and the floor feels like it’s covered in static, and the concrete makes for awful footing. This is all Energy Whores are asking of us, no metaphors. There is nothing nostalgic to rely on; only pressure.

Energy Whores are a D.I.Y. band from a basement in New York City created by Carrie Schoenfeld with guitarist Attilio Valenti. They are a band working within a relentless cycle of crisis; not for glory, but for awareness of our consumption, and on songs such as “Hey Hey Hate” and “Pretty Sparkly Things,” you get carried on the beat, but when you hear the lyrics they are like an ashtray under your fingernails, they show how consumption and fear are disguised as comfort, so you dance.

“Mach9ne” and “Bunker Man” employ dark humor and all things that are flashing in front of our elite, isolated society, while on “Two Minutes to Midnight” there are no slogans and no spectacle, just the cold math that is required to survive. There is no air left; there is no beer left.

By use of strong imagery and sound, Arsenal Of Democracy conveys to us what living within a world being deconstructed feels like. Energy Whores do not present solutions; instead they provide testimony. That is a very radical position at this time.