The Michigan band satirically adopts Muslim stereotypes in their songs, pushing back against post-9/11 hate. As their incendiary debut is reissued, they explain their ‘evil’ music.
“‘I’m the motherfucker who took down the towers,’” screams Prostitute’s Moe Kazra on “All Hail,” which opens their nightmarish, theatrical debut album, *Attempted Martyr*. Blending crushing fusions of industrial punk with elements of Middle Eastern, African, and East Asian music, the band explores the vilification of Arabs in a post-9/11 US. They achieve this by embodying and amplifying the vicious characterizations often leveled at their Arab-majority community in Dearborn, Michigan. “A lot of Arabs in the area are coming to us and being like ‘that was very potent’, or ‘that was beautiful’. I didn’t really expect that,” says Kazra, who is Lebanese American. He asserts, “The music is evil.”
The album’s lyric sheet, penned by Kazra and drummer Andrew Kaster, is a torrent of violent fantasies, paranoid ramblings, and rich literary references—ranging from *The Arabian Nights* to Cormac McCarthy’s *Blood Meridian*. Formed in 2020, the album was initially self-released and quickly became a sleeper hit among punk fans. Now signed to Mute, which is reissuing the record this week, Prostitute is recognized as one of the most exciting and unorthodox breakthroughs in recent American rock.