Canadian screamo band Obroa-Skai will follow their 2019 S/T EP and a couple splits (including their great 2020 split with Sonagi, Coma Regalia, and Indisposed) with their first full-length album, Science Progresses One Funeral at a Time, next week (11/17) via Zegema Beach Records. We’re now premiering two tracks from the album, “It Must Have Been Beautiful” and “1928-1972,” which are both harsh, furious songs with impactful messages.
About “It Must Have Been Beautiful,” bassist/vocalist Amy says, “I wrote this song when we as a band were driving back from ZBR Fest 2019. We were traveling through Jasper National Park, and I noticed many pine trees were this rusted orange colour. As if the whole landscape was either dead and dying. We were talking about writing a full length so I figured the first song should be about witnessing the slow decay of the boreal forest caused by climate change.”
“‘1928-1972,'” Amy adds, “I wrote while taking the bus to work. There’s a park in Edmonton called Emily Murphy Park. She was one of the main players in the women’s suffrage movement. But many people don’t want to remember that she also was a key player in the eugenics movement in Canada as well. Her work lead to the Sexual Sterilization Act in Alberta which was active from 1928-1972 where many folks were forcibly sterilized. I found it really disturbing that many first nations folks were victims of this policy and yet she gets a park on stolen land named after her. So I wrote a song that’s a call to action that we should not honor folks like this.”
Listen to both:
