ANOHNI released a new protest song called “R.N.C. 2020” that she wrote during the Republican National Convention last week. She doesn’t hold back her feelings as she passionately roasts Donald Trump, Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell.
The song features a looped sample of a concert she did in a New York City club in her 20’s. Her loop of screamed “yeah’s,” post-punk guitar and drums is occasionally buried by bursts of noise. She admitted the sound is “pretty rough,” and commented, “That’s me screaming in the past… for the present. On top of the loop is an improvised vocal take more spoken than sung.
“You really said it now” she opens her lyrics with, “Trump is on the rise/He’s gonna execute the dream.” Continuing on the theme of execution, she accuses him of being responsible for a friend’s death and rants about him always lying. “Trump’s a killer/Mitch McConnell’s a killer/He’s a killer/He’s gonna take your life/And gut you like a fish.”
ANOHNI released a statement along with the video, starting with some strong opinions, “It’s becoming harder to put into the words the dread that many of us feel. What’s really happening? Toxic levels of corruption and collusion are devouring the US. Christian extremists want to turn the country into a religious state straight out of The Handmaid’s Tale.”
She goes on to blame the Trump Administration’s no-mask guidance for a lot of COVID-19 deaths including three New Yorkers she knew personally. On Trump’s handling of the Black Lives Matter protests, she said “Scaring voters with fake tales of impending anarchy and ‘dark shadows’, Trump then promises that if re-elected he will crush BLM protesters and ‘restore law and order.’ Is he getting this stuff from Steve Bannon or Mein Kampf? Probably both.”
There’s a lot more to the statement, posted as the caption for her YouTube upload of the video. She goes into the details of a handful more accusations against him, closing with “What waits for us on the other side of this is a world undone by endless cataclysm and aching with senseless loss.”