PREMIERE: Hear Ekko Astral’s New Song “Holocaust Remembrance Day”

Fresh off their urgent and fearless debut LP pink balloons, and in the midst of a summer tour supporting IDLES, D.C. punks Ekko Astral are releasing the Bandcamp-exclusive standalone single “Holocaust Remembrance Day” to raise money for Palestinian evacuation funds. For this track, the group have slowed down their signature, bellowing thrash into a searing country ballad that’s built around three moments of personal and political reckoning as an American Jew, experienced and reflected upon by frontwoman Jael Holzman:

“The first verse is about a time I was asked by a police officer in the U.S. Capitol building if I was a Muslim because of my tichel. The third verse is about when Liam and I produced a podcast for our university’s Hillel about how Jewish students felt about Israel but were censored and disallowed from having any critical voices. And the cover is the site of a 1994 massacre of Palestinians during Ramadan at a holy site to both Jews and Muslims, the Cave of the Patriarchs. I visited this site during a month-long trip to Israel in high school with a Jewish youth group. That trip also included military humvees, attempts at recruiting me and my fellow high school-aged Jews to the IDF, and lectures about how the Dome of the Rock was a reason to hold hate in our hearts for Arab Muslim people.”

The scorchingly personal verses act as scaffolding for a chorus that calls for solidarity beyond borders, and expresses Holzman’s longing for a sense of Jewish community that doesn’t use the very real threat of antisemitism as fodder for fear-mongering, bigotry and genocidal violence. She contends with her own Jewish upbringing, the lessons she’s chosen to take from it—namely, the importance of critical thinking and questioning the status quo—and what to leave behind.