The Last Internationale Demand That ‘Workers of the World Unite!’
New York’s counterculture spirit lives on in the Last Internationale, a group of impassioned folk-rockers, and the new video for their fiery protest song “Workers of the World Unite!” In it, the band plays through the stripped-down track in an isolated shack, and images of hard-working farmers filter throughout the video (which you can watch here exclusively).
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“[The song] is about poverty, oppression, injustice, the myth of the American dream and the need for workers’ revolution against capitalism,” the Last Internationale tell Rolling Stone. “We wanted to write a song with an anthemic chorus to perform at protests and for social movements in general, but we also wanted it to be very personal.” To get their pure, no-frills sound, the band recorded the track at Estudio Sa Da Bandeira in Porto, Portugal while on tour. “We performed and mixed it live to quarter-inch tape with the engineer controlling the faders behind the board,” the band says. “No overdubs, no punch-ins and no soul-sucking computers.”
The group may sound modest, but they already have a famous fan. Tom Morello considers the Last Internationale a “raw and real” combination of “East Village rock sensibilities with Battleship Potemkin firepower,” he tells Rolling Stone.
“Workers of the World Unite!” marks International Workers’ Day today. The band’s latest release, the Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Indian Blood + Crawlin’ Queen Snake and Bourgeois Blues seven-inch, is out now. They also released their new EP, New York, I Do Mind Dying, in January.