“Death for Sale” by Elected Officials

Punk rock has, unsurprisingly, been enjoying quite the resurgence on the American side of the Atlantic in the last few years, and in their new music video for the song “Death for Sale,” The Elected Officials attempt to assert themselves as one of their generation’s premier acts in the genre – to immense success, in my opinion.

Official Website: https://www.theelectedofficials.org/

“Death for Sale” plays off of a fluid concept of riffs, lyrics, beats and that’s it, and while this black and white framework wouldn’t work as well for other artists in their peer group, they wear the minimalist identity remarkably well here. The Elected Officials flirt with elements of east coast and British punk rock equally in this single, but despite the amalgamation of conflicting influences, their effort sounds consistently more focused and efficient than much of the content I’ve heard from their competitors lately has.

I first became familiar with the music of The Elected Officials last year, when they released a split EP with the seminal hardcore band MDC (better known to some of us as Millions of Dead Cops), and when I initially sat down with that record, this was the song that instantly caught my attention as being the leanest and meanest in the tracklist.

There’s still a lot of potential for growth, but for this being their style of attack right out of the box, I think there are plenty of reasons to believe that alternative music has found another hero in this band, starting with the fact that, unlike many of their rivals, they’re following their own path to stardom (and 100% rejecting the admittance of external fluff to their sound).

Mindy McCall