Prostitute
INSTANT KARMA
Prostitute
Defiantly multicultural noise-punk about “growing up Arab” in the USA
Prostitute: conceptually bold and lyrically fierce
STEVE GULLICK; MARIANO REGIDOR/REDFERNS
WE’RE NEW HERE
“I’M the motherfucker who took down the towers”, screams singer Moe Kazra in “All Hail”, the opening track on Prostitute’s debut album. “Call me boxcutter, kafir, heir to a whore”. The Dearborn, Michigan quintet may not be the only band who’ve grappled with how to convey anything of sociopolitical substance in our post-truth age, but it’s fair to say their solution is uniquely high-impact. Against a furious, almost suffocatingly intense backdrop of post-hardcore, noise-rock and metal, strafed by non-western samples and thick with disturbing imagery, the songs on Attempted Martyr channel Kazra’s experience of “growing up Arab” in the city with America’s largest Muslim population. But rather than deliver a straightforward counter to racist stereotypes, Prostitute turned them into the compellingly grotesque caricature of a religious fanatic, and forged their identity in the process.