Album Review: EMA Writes From The “Exile In The Outer Ring”
EMA’s Exile In The Outer Ring is unique in its mingling of gender politics with American working-class anxiety. Each verse and chords is dedicated to exuding the frustration of being at the bottom of what feels like a sinking ship. If humanity feels like a downhill species then “women” or “woman-kind” feel like the first to be sacrificed with the struggles to maintain the rights we have, while trying to get equal ones to men. Thus, Exile In The Outer Ring is a giant rock opus to every woman/ feminist that has awakened to her spiritual highness only to be tethered to social lowliness.
Exile In The Outer Ring might as well be a sack of fists tosses in the form of sonic punches. From physical to verbal abuse from men, Ema is confronting the depression and human degradation of being a strong woman at the whims of weaker men. “Always Bleeds”, “Where the Darkness Began”, and Breathalyzer are like lyrical screams into the ashes and smoke of how many women have been burnt by society’s gender-caste system. As a lady and feminist, EMA’s delves into the raw flesh of pain is both admirable and eye-opening. She is not trying “fluff” and “cushion” the hurt of oppression as seen in songs “Aryan Nation” and “I Wanna Destroy”, which are stringed middle fingers to every person that aimed to destroy another. Vocally, EMA stomps and slides her voice as if her vocals were boots. She is trudging up the steeply, clipped chords of her guitar and the muddy, heavy rolls of her bass and drums, to fight pack against all those that see her as less because “to be a woman is less”. As she interrogates the hurt, anger, and even revenge she desires for all those that discounted her femininity, and thus her humanity, she emotionally holds her vocals like glass; she may be shattered but she will cut you. The dynamic plays into EMA’s notion that rebels rise in response to their imposed chains not in some “invented” slight. To EMA, a rebel only counters a culture or established society that never included her in the the first place. Thus, with riotous arrangements, EMA’s Exile In The Outer Ring is her way of leaving an angry letter to the many that have crashed unto her road, but never stopped it from leading into success. For More Information On EMA And To Buy Exile In The Outer Ring On August 25 Click Here.
