Gumm – “Free”

William Johnson

Gumm – “Free”

William Johnson

Last month, the Chattanooga band Gumm announced their full-length debut, Slogan Machine — its title track landed on our best songs of the week list and was highlighted in our hardcore column. Slogan Machine arrives next week, and before that the band is sharing another song from it, the snarling and defiant “Free.”

“This song is more or less about recognizing the parts of my upbringing that were harmful,” vocalist Drew Waldon said in a statement, continuing:

I’ve had to unlearn a lot of the things that I was indoctrinated with early in life, to the bewilderment of friends and family who still feel content living within the limits of those specific moral, artistic, spiritual boundaries. I broke free, and am still breaking free, from the ideas and beliefs that were thrust upon me at a young age and were used to keep me subservient for many years. I’m breaking free from certainty – the ‘only one truth’ mentality; I’m breaking free from systems and schools of thought that prey on people’s fears in order to keep them ignorant and controlled; I’m breaking free from any voice that tries to limit or belittle my creativity and personal growth. For years I was on track to live a very muted, “safe” version of the life I truly wanted for myself, because of the circles I was in. I’m breaking free from those and I think everyone should.

Listen below.

Slogan Machine is out 5/19 via Convulse Records.

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