Opiate for the Masses

"Religious suffering,” Karl Marx wrote in an 1843 commentary, "is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” Phoenix, Arizona’s light-industrial Opiate For The Masses corrupts their name from that oft-misquoted analysis of organised religion, but nothing in their digitally distorted, synth-inflected, modern rock radio-ready choruses is suited for the ideological or aesthetic vanguard. "Step Up,” a kind of poor man’s "Once in a Lifetime” is as close as OFTM come to a coherent thought: "I finally got a realisation of where all of my money goes/To my cars, my house, and to bars.” But nothing here rings the least bit true. Unlike the religious sentiment they implicitly deride with their mistaken moniker, there is neither real suffering here nor a protest against real suffering, for all the smug bluster.