Massive Attack have released their first single in six years and it is an unusual collaboration with Tom Waits. ‘Boots on the Ground’ is a critique of warmongering and inspired by the protests against ICE raids in the United States.
The song comes a few days after Robert del Naja, one of the members of the duo, along with Grantley Evan Marshall, was arrested in London during a pro-Palestinian demonstration.
Rhetorical questions like “what is a marine for?” They give way in ‘Boots on the Ground’ to others that more explicitly reflect the song’s denunciation, such as “This is a fucking ass machine gun war”, although Waits’ lyrics still admit a certain touch of humor in passages such as “brown, mean, and young, dumb and full of cum” or that rhyme that alludes to “big tits”. Without a doubt, Waits helps tone down the serious tone of the song, whose production is equally heavy and somber.
The repetition of the phrase “Boots on the ground” structures the theme, while verses with war allusions such as “We trim your hedges, we fight your wars” and “Born shiny bullets in an army of ants” set the tone of the piece, which closes with a recurring image in the theme: “All that they found was his boots on the ground.”
‘Boots on the Ground’ is accompanied by a film created in collaboration with the American photographer thefinaleye, an audiovisual montage that aims to reflect a historical moment in the United States “still unnamed”, but marked by the “largest public protests in the history of the country” related to opposition to ICE raids and the rise of authoritarianism.
