The last time we checked in Snag, the long-running “climate-anxious heavy-emo” Milwaukee group was celebrating the release of a full-length split with Indiana punk band Coma Regalia. That was 2023; now, three years later, Snag is prepping a full-length record all its own.
The 11-track All The Cages Holding Us Will One Day Turn To Dust will be released July 10 via Deathwish Inc. You can pre-order the album HERE. Oh, and in the meantime, you can watch the Snag- and Samer Ghani-directed video for one of the record’s songs, “Unarrest Me,” now. It’s great. Harrowing, pissed-off, and great. And also kind of hopeful?
“The concept for the video is ‘collective liberation through mutual aid.’ The symbols of zip ties and blindfolds against flashlights and sprints put a finer point on the idea that every free person can help free another person,” says bassist/vocalist Peter Murphy in a press release. Adds guitarist/vocalist Samm Szymborski: “[The video is] a POV of a wrongful arrest. The confusion, the panic and the sheer inhuman reaction from the arrester. This song musically tells an eerie story within itself. It sets off on a journey and ends abruptly at its peak.”
Following through on the themes of the song and the record as a whole, vinyl copies of All The Cages will come complete with “individually labeled envelopes to inmates as an invitation for listeners to have a prison pen pal.” The pack-ins are the work of Florida-based organization Wire Of Hope. Past Snag LPs have contained envelopes of seeds and books of matches.
“The logic that says a corporation can destroy the planet to extract profit from it systematically is the same basic logic that says humans can be systematically caged for profit,” Murphy says. “It’s probably safe to say every person who hears this album is a lot closer to being incarcerated than to being one of the billionaires that seek ever more control. [Editor’s note: FUCK YEAH.] We thought we could make that connection much more explicit with a homework assignment in the record insert. And hopefully foster friendship and connection as well.”
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