Antifascist Black Metal Network today presents the Antifascist Solidarity Compilation, composed of Brazilian antifascist bands and put together by the collective Metal Sem Facho. It aims to raise money for MLB and CSP-Conlutas, organisations involved in the relief effort during the disastrous floods in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, in 2024. Releasing officially on the December 6th.
When some artists, activists and fans of various political tendencies started to organized the Metal Sem Facho ("Metal Without Fash") collective, we were profoundly bothered with the presence of fascists, misogynists, LGBTQIA+phobes, Zionists and other far-right scum inside heavy music, and the desire to do something to remove this presence and promote a more inclusive and left-oriented underground. Our first effort was organizing groups to debate politics and music, and we talked about and with countless bands, traded information about whom to avoid and who to publish, helped in virtual campaigns such as that against the presence of the accessories of genocide Armored Dawn in Tarja's tour of the USA, and a series of other things.
However, we also want to fight the far-right in a more material and less musical dimension, bridging the heavy metal community and the struggles that happen in reality. We have many and deep differences between us, but we have some important common principles, among which are there is class solidarity: that is, the support, polical and material (as much as possible), to workers who are victims of polical brutality, mass layoffs, environmental catastrophes, etc. This compilation, which we hope will be the first of many, is on one hand an opportunity to bring attention to some bands that share these values with us, but it also intends to gather funds to help the organized social movements who are on the frontlines against of the biggest disasters in Brazil's history: the huge floods in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, which happened between late April and early May 2024.
The very same climate collapse we see expressed in the forest fires of Canada and Valparaiso of Chile, on the bizarre drought of the Amazon River and on the murderous heat across the world brought a absurd of rain, which led to floods that kept Rio Grande do Sul quite literally underwater for the better part of a month. The losses for the poor are incalculable: hundreds of people dead, hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed, millions of animals dead... and on the part of those responsible for all of this, the big businessmen, big farmers, the governments, the efforts to reparate the victims was insufficient in the best of cases. The floods in Rio Grande do Sul show, once again, that the exploited and the oppressed of this world have only theimselves as friends.
The groups we want to support, CSP-Conlutas and the MLB, are old friends of the Brazilian social movement. CSP-Conlutas is a antibureaucratic federation joining hundreds of trade unions, student and popular organizations who are independent from all governments and play an outstanding role in the organization and unification of struggles and strikes around the country. The Movimento de Lutas nos Bairros, Vilas e Favelas ("Movement of Struggles on Neighbourhoods, Villages and Slums") fights for urban reform and for the right to live with dignity. Both organizations are present around the country and have been exemplary in the fight against the first consquences of the catastrophe, be it organizing shelters, community kitchens and distributing free food and donations, be it organizing demonstrations, occupations and other forms of demanding the rights due to the homeless and affected. Both need help to keep the actions of solidarity and struggle, which have not ended and will probably become even more necessary considering the continuity of the climate collapse.
This compilation is a small sample of bands that are somehow involved with Metal Sem Facho, be it in the organization, in the rank-and-file groups, or just are solidary to our ideas. We have legends of the Brazilian underground, bands that play tours around the world, and newer groups/ we have black metal, death metal, grindcore, thrash, and other stuff, we have bands from the South, Southeast and Northeast regions, and from 10 different states of the country; we have bands with LGBTQIA+, black and female members. None of this is by coincidence, since fighting to open space for diversity is one of our principles - in fact, we think we are lagging behind in that sense, since we lack two regions of the country and the oppressed sectors are the minority in this compilation. We believe that heavy metal's place is on the side of the oppressed and exploited and without any type of "proletarian" reductionism like those operated by transphobes and "anti-identitarians" that sell themselves as leftists just to spread the very same disgusting conservatism of the far-right.
The arts of the cover and of the logo, made by our dear colleague Clark, give us a clue of what we want with this compilation: not only to bring antifascist solidarity to our comrades of Rio Grande do Sul, but also to raise high the black and red banners above the reactionary mud that tries to drown heavy metal... and metaphorically (or not), to drown in fascist blood our blades. Fear then, minions, ancaps and others of the same ilk, for this declaration is just the beginning of our war!
