Whole Wheat Bread refers to their music as “Dirty South punk rock” and sells band merch emblazoned “I LOVE BLACK PEOPLE.” They clearly have a sense of humor about themselves and their unique circumstances.

There are lots of individual black musicians in punk and metal. And lots have come before them. But as one of very, very few entirely African-American punk bands since Bad Brains and Fishbone, Whole Wheat Bread holds a special place for their own modern-day crossover, and maintaining that place for around 18 years now.

Hip-hop and punk have long owned titles as the music of their respective subcultural masses. For underprivileged, marginalized rebels against authority both carve out a safe space where your very existence isn’t a threat, where the scene is regulated by the participants not the police, and where vocally – and sometimes violently – criticizing the system is fundamental, not an arrestable offense.

And that last bit is precisely what Whole Wheat Bread’s “Bombs Away” does in song and visuals. In their protest against the U.S. military’s treatment of traumatized veterans returning home from occupations deemed “necessary,” you’re never sure whether you’re seeing a flashback, a hallucination, or what’s “real” here. And though he doesn’t appear in the video, the song gets a major co-sign in the form of vocals from Mike McColgan, former lead of punk’s legendary Dropkick Murphys, too.

In 2020, punk’s not dead, it’s just gotten blacker.

𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗘𝗦 𝗧𝗢 𝗟𝗢𝗩𝗘:
“No candles lit
Darkness is all around
Put up your fist
Show them you’ll stick around”

𝗛𝗘𝗔𝗥 𝗦𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗 𝗜𝗡 𝗖𝗢𝗟𝗢𝗥 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟬 | 𝗪𝗔𝗧𝗖𝗛 𝗦𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗 𝗜𝗡 𝗖𝗢𝗟𝗢𝗥 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟬