Nine years after their last unreleased album, U2 return with a surprising project: the EP Days of Ash. Not the new album coming, but an urgent and committed work, composed of five songs and a recited poem, designed to react to the violence of ICE, Trumpism, the war in Ukraine and the tragedy in Gaza. Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. thus respond to a world in turmoil, confirming that the band has never stopped uniting rock and politics.
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A band always engaged from a social point of view
These are songs that, according to Bono, could not wait: they are songs of challenge and dismay, of lament. Days of Ash it is different in musical mood and narrative compared to the album in progress, already ready with 25 songs. Their social commitment should not be surprising. Just look at their beginnings, when they collaborated with Amnesty or Greenpeace: never during their career did they hesitate to take a stand, believing in a world in which “borders are not erased by forcewhere culture, language and memory are not silenced by fear, where the dignity of people is non-negotiable”.
The traces and memories of those who were brutally killed
The EP opens with American Obituarydedicated to Renée Nicole Macklin Good, a mother of three killed by ICE in Minneapolis. Bono paints a mother transformed into a symbol. The Tears of Things addresses fascism and religious fundamentalism through an imaginary conversation between Michelangelo and his David, with historical and current references that reflect global conflicts.
Song of the Future remembers Sarina Esmailzadeh, an Iranian teenager killed during the 2022 protests. Wildpeacea poem by Yehuda Amichai, recited by the Nigerian Adeola Fayehun, sends a universal pacifist message. In One Life at a Time our thoughts go to Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian activist who was killed while Yours Eternally combines the voice of Ed Sheeran and the musician-soldier Taras Topolia, creating a bridge between music and direct testimony.
With Days of AshU2 demonstrate that rock can still make you think, react and be indignant. We can still oppose the horror we are experiencing. The EP is a raw photograph of the days we live in, but above all a call to peace, justice and universal dignity.
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