"August 6th" by mewithoutYou, Friday, August 6, 2021

Another Tooth & Nail alumni, mewithoutYou is one of the most eccentric bands on the label except maybe the Danielson Famile. Formed by brothers Aaron and Michael Weiss, the boys were raised with a varied religious background. Their Jewish father married an Episcopalian mother and converted to Islamic mysticism, Sufism. Releasing two heavy post-hardcore albums, the band sounded a bit like Tool but began to mellow their sound as their career continued. Vocalist Aaron sings, screams, and speaks his lyrics which often take sources from holy books, history, and literature. There are numerous stories about the band's hippy environmentalism from driving a bio-diesel bus to living the freegan lifestyle at music festivals, and dumpster diving for their next meal. They decided to call it quits in 2019, though they will continue to play one-off shows. Their final album [Untitled] was preceded by an EP of the same name with seven original songs, different from the twelve tracks on their full length.

CHILDREN WATCHED AS THE SOLDIERS MARCHED BY. "August 6th," the sixth track on their [Untitled] EP,  is a stream of conscious tracks full of vivid images both beautiful and disturbing. The song is particularly ambiguous because of the mixing of forms. At first, it's a quote, carved on an old desk. Then it's a screenplay. Then it's the speaker's thoughts. The images of the song seem to take us between the U.S. and Europe. The first verse is eerily quiet. We have soldiers marching through hyacinth fields, birds falling from the sky, a wedding, and German songs on the prairie in Sioux Falls, and New Mexico. Then the song turns to the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. And then we see the description of the devastation: "Skyline shifting like clouds" and "Human foreheads all smashed / Foreign cars upside down." Then Weiss starts talking about a mechanized insect. According to Genius, "August 6th" seems to be about the bombing of Hiroshima, killing 70,000 people, and along with the bombing of Nagasaki three days later, is the textbook ending of the war with Japan and the end of World War II. MewithoutYou's hellish depiction of war, shows the human cost, the lives that will never be the same. The speaker is looking at the devastation and wondering and he wonders if "a thought metastasized" will bring a new hell 80, 100, or 1000 years later?

THE BREATH FEELS LIKE FLIES IN MY LUNGS. In the band's song "Timothy Hay," Aaron references getting arrested "on the Pentagon lawn" back in 2007. Catholic Nun, Sister Margaret McKenna led a protest about civilian killings in the Iraq War, in which Aaron Weiss participated. The group had a bigger aim than one specific war. The protest was aimed at all displacement of people due to government action. The leaflet at the protest compared the flight of Jesus under Herod's rule to the displacement of the Native Americans in the Trail of Tears. Specifically citing the chief protest, the pamphlet read: "Today 4.2 million Iraqis have been forced to flee home and/or country." The protest was called a "die-in" in which the participants lay on the ground. This is just one example of Aaron Weiss's activism--protesting the empire of the status quo. In a time when so many of the bands that he shared the stage with Christian music festivals would call Iraq a just war, Weiss was tuned into the hellish nature of war. He believed that the people of Iraq deserved better than the bombings. The Native Americans deserved better than being marched to Oklahoma. The citizens of the Basque city of Guernica deserved better. The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki deserved better. Nations will wage wars whether considered just or unjust. What, then is the role of the citizens? What then is the role of the poets? What is the role of the prophets? The priests? The religious? The Christians? When you look into a holy book and then look into the dying eyes of the afflicted, which parts of the holy book do you read? The parts that tell you to befriend the stranger or to protect your house?