Snag – “Invasive Species (Cop City)”

Until today, we hadn’t heard from the Milwaukee screamo band Snag in almost two years, since the July 2021 release of their album Death Doula. That album was largely about climate anxiety, and environmental concerns play into the band’s new single out today. “Invasive Species (Cop City)” is a protest song about Atlanta’s proposed “Cop City,” where acres of forest land are to be cleared out and replaced with a police training facility specializing in militarized urban warfare.

Cop City has inspired persistent protests over the past two years, both on the grounds of protecting forest lands and opposing the militarization of police — and the cops have pushed back against those protests. In January, police killed a 26-year-old protester named Manuel Terán. Now Snag are contributing this song to the protest movement. In a statement to Brooklyn Vegan, they explained:

It’s about Cop City, the proposed clear-cutting of a forest near Atlanta for the purposes of erecting a police training facility that would enable cops to practice repressing urban uprisings akin to the 2020 George Floyd uprising. It’s absolutely gross and the opposite direction we need to be going as a society. And it represents so much of what’s wrong with our culture: the logic that says you can cut down a forest to build a fake American city in which to train the cops to do battle with Americans is the same logic of domination that says you can force a trans person to de-transition, force a pregnant person to give birth, or poison indigenous land for fossil fuel extraction.

Hear “Invasive Species (Cop City)” below.