DWAR: Space Monkey Mafia - Death of the Party

DOG WALK ALBUM REVIEWS: where I walk the dog and listen to an entire album. my mind is free to wander, and I like reviewing shit. don’t expect these reviews to be “good,” or even to totally make sense. sometimes I take notes while I walk, sometimes I don’t.

album: Space Monkey Mafia – Death of the Party (2025)

the first track on this album is called “Cult of Idiocracy” and is as accurate a summation of our current moment as anything I’ve heard. here are the opening lines:

The rich get richer

The dumb get dumber

Sure as the winter

Turns into summer

You voted for a change of pace

Now the leopards come to eat your face

They don't care about you

the song goes on to tackle phony piousness, income inequality, fascism, and ultimately the death of American democracy. it’s difficult to express how deeply fucking frustrating it is that some of the most clear-eyed cultural and political commentary currently available comes from a band called Space Monkey Mafia.

I’ve watched members of the president’s own party fail to hold his contemptible actions to account or just outright cheer him along as he stomps on American institutions one after another. I’ve watched the courts betray us and grant the president basically unlimited authority to do whatever he wants. I’ve gagged again and again as Democrats, by and large with a small handful of notable exceptions, live down to their well-earned reputation as feckless dipshit losers. and I’ve watched people I know and respect react to the demise of American exceptionalism with little more than a shrug simply because they have such uncut hatred for liberals, and all of this tyranny has the fortunate (for them) byproduct of causing immense suffering to liberal ideas, liberal institutions, and liberal people. the amount of psychotic vitriol at the heart of modern conservatism is truly chilling.

I keep thinking about the movie SLC Punk! which takes place in 1985, but was released in 1998. because it takes place in Utah, there’s a scene where three of the characters road trip an hour and a half to Wyoming to buy booze. you, of course, know why. while in the liquor store, they encounter two local hicks who discuss how there are more of Satan’s followers on earth than ever before. when Bob asks them about the Nazis in the 1940s, one of them says, “Nah. I don’t see Nazis as devil worshippers. I see ‘em more like a gathering of people.”

I always found this view fucking insane and figured the filmmakers were exaggerating the views of rural cousinfuckers for comedic effect which is paid off when Matthew Lillard’s character pulls out his ass and reveals a 666 tattoo. god, I wish that’s what the filmmakers were doing, but I live in America in 2025 and now know better.

Death of the Party is filled with lots and lots of trenchant commentary about how fucked up things are, and while thinking about the cultural context that molded this art into what it is, I get extremely bummed out. but the act of listening to Death of the Party makes me feel exactly the opposite. this album is goddamn incredible.

every song has verve. each song is distinct from one another, but the entire experience feels cohesive. and unlike the nihilism that seems to be the prevailing modus operandi of the asswipes currently running this country, Space Monkey Mafia closes the album on notes of hope. here’s the chorus of the song “Salvage:”

Love is abundant

No matter what they've told you

So let it spill over the sides of your heart

Cause none of us is better

Than all of us together

“Linear Time” is a beautiful elegy to (what I’m guessing) is a departed friend and the frustrated desire to transcend the corporeal plane and reconnect on a higher plane of existence.

right about the time this song ended, I walked by my kids’ school, which ended its run as an elementary school in June. on the wall that separates the school grounds from the streets on the east and south sides are murals that past students have made. both of my daughters have their own little squares, and as I passed by them I teared up thinking about how we bonded together as a community of parents and educators and fought against the school’s closure.

I hate authority and always have. I generally don’t trust leaders because I find more often than not, people ascend to leadership positions in order to inflict their will on others, whether or not anyone actually wants that. I think seeking power is a sociopathic impulse, even if the stated goals of that power-seeking are couched as altruistic.

but listening to Space Monkey Mafia, and after seeing them perform a raucous and highly entertaining set last Friday, I choose to believe we will be okay. you can’t put your boot on the throat of 340 million people for very long until we fight back. and make no mistake, even if you’re cheering on the villains in charge for whatever reason you have, they’re coming for you too. they don’t like you. they almost certainly hate you. they appreciate you acting as a useful idiot because useful idiots are the pawns that allow them to get away with their fuckery for longer.

there are more of us than there are them. and as they fuck over more and more of us, a growing number of their supporters become former supporters. it’s then that we’ll need each other most because power doesn’t abate easily. and it’s then that we’ll Salvage what’s left and build anew.

five stars.