Spike Polite & SewAge Sound the Alarm on an “A.I. Apocalypse”

New York City punk has always been at its best when it has something to be pissed off about, and Spike Polite & SewAge have found plenty of ammunition on “A.I. Apocalypse.”

Rooted in the raw street punk and hardcore spirit that has defined the band for decades, the track turns growing anxiety around artificial intelligence, automation, corporate power, and disappearing jobs into a furious warning about where unchecked technological progress could be taking us.

Coming from a band shaped by the Lower East Side’s underground punk and squat culture, the message feels right at home. “A.I. Apocalypse” imagines a future where human workers become increasingly expendable as corporations prioritize automation, efficiency, and profit, connecting everything from robotic assembly lines and unemployment to facial recognition, speech recognition, data collection, and the steady surrender of personal information.

Musically, that urgency is matched by a confrontational punk attack that refuses to make the subject feel distant or theoretical. There is a deliberately dystopian edge to the track, but Spike Polite & SewAge are less interested in science fiction than the very real systems already taking shape around us. The Terminator-esque imagery simply pushes today’s concerns to their ugliest possible conclusion, asking listeners to consider what happens when technology advances faster than society decides how it should be used.

Beneath all the noise, “A.I. Apocalypse” lands on an old-school punk question with increasingly modern consequences: when efficiency and profit become more valuable than people, exactly who is technological progress supposed to serve? Spike Polite & SewAge might not have the answer, but they’re making damn sure we’re asking the question.