Inverted Hedgehog

It’s October 30, 2015, and Goodbye to Gravity is owning the stage. They are promoting their new album Mantras of War which is destined to push them towards the metalcore pantheon. It’s as good as it gets, and they know it.

A Romanian club Colectiv is full of people and positive energy. Reflectors are exploding with sudden and sharp bursts of photons, sparks are flying from stage trusses and fog is filling the room as they play their certified banger The Day We Die.

It’s a metaphorical song, about freedom and power of people under a corrupt regime. It’s a call to action, stating that the day we die is when we succumb to the system.

It’s also hard not to see it as a painfully ironic experience.

By the end of that day, fire will consume Colectiv, killing 64 people and injuring 146. Only one band member survived. The dream was dead; all that effort, determination and ambition ruined by a stupid pyrotechnic mishap.

This story could end here; showing us that all our efforts won’t necessarily bring results. This can be seen as fatalistic and nihilistic. Why even try…?

But no. This isn’t the case here at all. These people were not killed by the fire – they were killed by capitalism.

Everything about Colectiv was low effort and cheap, designed to generate quick buck. Club safety was done to a bare minimum, maybe even below it. There was no sprinklers, they had only one fire extinguisher and in combination with the extremely flammable foam in front of the sprinkles, and a wooden ceiling, fire hazard was enormous. They also allowed 5x the limit of attendees; people who couldn’t get out when the fire spread in just a few seconds, creating a stampede.

All of this could’ve been prevented. It was all about the cost, and profit.

This homicidal level of greed can be seen with how Goodbye to Gravity was treated. Rental agreement was such that the band had to pay 500€ if they don’t gather a crowd of at least 400 people – in a club that was allowed to hold 80. Your life is worth around 1.25€.

But of course, it doesn’t end here.

27 people never exited Colectiv, the rest died in Romanian understaffed, inadequate hospitals that government doesn’t care enough about.

What’s maybe the most horrifying, is that a big chunk of injured died due to infections bacteria usually found in war zones. Hospital’s disinfectants were so diluted they weren’t capable of sterilizing equipment used on people. Concentrations were brought down to 1% against a 12% recommendation. This was done by a pharmaceutical firm called Hexi Pharma – to save money of course.

Once hospital’s bought this diluted garbage, they diluted it more – so they can too save money.

They might as well spit on scalpels before stabbing you with them.

How many people died due to this before Colectiv? How many more would’ve died if such a big, sudden number of deaths didn’t expose the controversy?

Every single death, labeled as “complications”, is murder. We are all getting butchered and processed in the eternally rotating grinder of capitalism.

If all of this angers you – it should.

Goodbye to Gravity has exposed and destroyed their government. People’s protest and investigations led to Victor Ponta resigning. This should be an automatic result for any death caused by structural choices of the government. People shouldn’t even need to demand it.

In 2017. Ponta was given Serbian citizenship by Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić, another corrupt politician who refuses to resign after his inept government allowed people to die. They are all monsters that lost their humanity a long time ago, now defending each other because it’s the only way they can ensure the grinder continues.

And it’s up to us to at least try to stop it. One day, we might all need hospitals to save our lives. Don’t let them murder you instead.

How else to end this, but with Goodbye to Gravity. You are not forgotten.

“We’re not numbers we’re free, we’re so alive
‘Cause the day we give in is the day we die “