U2's first batch of new songs in seven years doesn't tiptoe in—it charges straight at ICE, Iran's rulers, Benjamin Netanyahu, Vladimir Putin, and more. The six-track EP, Days of Ash, opens with "American Obituary," about Renee Good, a Minneapolis mother of three killed by ICE agents while protesting, the Guardian reports. In an interview with a fanzine accompanying the release, Bono slams Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem's labeling of Good as a "domestic terrorist" as an assault on truth and calls for an independent probe into her death. Other tracks spotlight Iran's Women, Life, Freedom movement, the killing of Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen, and the human toll of conflicts from Sudan to Ukraine.
In the interview with the Propaganda fanzine, Bono criticizes Iran's "priestly class of men," calls Hathaleen's death "heinous," and says Hamas' Oct. 7 attack was "evil" while condemning the "sweeping brutality" of Netanyahu's response. He warns that Putin won't stop at Ukraine and if left unchecked would even "find an excuse to invade Ireland if it suited his purposes." Ed Sheeran and Ukrainian soldier-musician Taras Topolia guest on closer "Yours Eternally." A documentary to accompany the song will be released next week to mark the fourth anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
In a statement, Bono said the songs on Days of Ash are "very different in mood and theme" to the ones that will be on an album coming out later this year, Rolling Stone reports. "These EP tracks couldn't wait; these songs were impatient to be out in the world," he said. "They are songs of defiance and dismay, of lamentation. Songs of celebration will follow, we're working on those now … because for all the awfulness we see normalized daily on our small screens, there's nothing normal about these mad and maddening times and we need to stand up to them before we can go back to having faith in the future."
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