Gang Of Youths at Splendour In The Grass 2016 / Photo: Maria Boyadgis

Hear Gang Of Youths’ Political New Single ‘Atlas Drowned’

After teasing fans with the potential of new music last week, local rockers Gang Of Youths have finally revealed a typically epic new single called ‘Atlas Drowned’, which is something of a study into the world’s current sociopolitical standing.

Sharing ‘Atlas Drowned’ with fans, Gang Of Youths have also published a lengthy statement explaining the song, and it covers topics like Ayn Rand, Nietzsche, Homer Simpson, the proletariat, objectivity and rationality. Read the band’s full statement alongside a stream of ‘Atlas Drowned’, below.

‘Atlas Drowned’ is the second song to be lifted from Gang Of Youths’ upcoming new album Go Farther In Lightness, which is set for release on 18th August. The first song to be shared from the record was ‘What Can I Do If The Fire Goes Out?’.

UPDATE: Gang Of Youths have now announced a 2017 national tour.

Gang Of Youths’ Statement – ‘Atlas Drowned’

the central tenets of “objectivism”, as espoused in the loathsome, inept, lumbering, clunky, boring monstrosity that is Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (1957) are contingent on a system she determines to be a form of objective “rational self-interest”. this has, for some reason set the ideological tone for so many wanton, neo-con, boot-licker crybabies for so long, the book itself has become victim of its own reflexive, parodic intellectual posturing. objective? refutable. rational? i don’t for a moment believe that self interest is in any way, rational. it is (to paraphrase david hume), contingent on the passions. it is counter-humanity, truly and deeply antithetical to becoming über. it’s a shame so many of the adherents to this pathetic system seem to conflate nietzsche’s doctrine of the übermensch (every individual can and should become über) with the idiocy of rand’s (some people are just better than others).

humanity’s progress and advancement cannot be attributed to the pissing, moaning and wrenching of a handful of privileged industrialists alone. our great societies were built on the backs of the worker, the “prole”, the individuals that make up collective often labouring under the obscene, unrestrained tyranny of the few. this is not some radical new idea acting as a harbinger of some doomed anarchic futurescape — i believe that this has underlined the history of every great civilisation.

we are now converging upon a moment in history seen before countless times, wherein this philosophy of rational self-interest is conflated with nationalism, badly taped together like homer simpson’s football tax return.

reluctantly, i’ll admit that at the very ideological heart of conservatism there is a noble tradition.

what we are seeing now globally, en masse is a desecration of this nobility.

enough of this shit.

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