Lebanese band Mashrou' Leila debuted its first track Friday in anticipation of the release of the new album "Ibn el Leil" (meaning Son of the Night) on VICE's Noisey .
[include id="12" title="FacebookEmbed"]
The boys from Mashrou Leila are out with ‘#Maghawir’, their first single from the new album (and my second favorite song on the album). It tells the story of a club shooting in Beirut, inspired by two different shootings that took place within the same week, both of which resulted in the deaths of extremely young victims, each of whom was celebrating their birthday.The lyrics are layered onto a badass dance beat and the song serves as a great jam to get down and dirty to but also as a powerful commentary of the tragic normalization of this kind of behavior and Lebanon's dirty politics -- a sobering criticism of how violence in the country is just one more thing to dance to, and one more manifestation of the country's ruling elite's tendency to protect criminals because of vested political interests which distracts from any accountability as well as social and political reform.
Posted by Ahmed Shihab-Eldin on Friday, October 23, 2015
The track, titled "Maghawir," tackles Lebanese gun laws in the wake of two Beirut incidents. This single is part of a newer and more mature direction the seasoned Lebanese indie band is taking in terms of sound. The group has made sure to stick to the same risqué themes it had tackled before like LGBTQ rights, race, religion, and modern Arabic identity.
The new track is framed to be a narration of "a possible version of a club shooting in Beirut," which draws from actual incidents, but also makes "to situate the events within a broader discourse on gender and the recruitment of Lebanese men into locallyrevered militarized masculinities, here said violence often becomes not only common, but rather part of a list of gendered provisions for the preservation of men’s honor."
Only a day since its release, Mashrou' Leila fans have already taken to Twitter to praise the band's new single:
Mashrou' Leila is set to release their new album on Nov. 28 at the Barbican Center, London.