“Pissing With the Flashlight On”
from
Unified Field
coming Summer 2026
via Bar/None Records
STREAM IT / DOWNLOAD IT / ETC.
// // //
it was 10:03 on a Tuesday
I was tired pulling into Kharkiv
tomorrow I’m recording with some friends in town
I got a hotel and I tried to sleep
but then I heard the Russian Federation drones above me
and I admit I felt a little naive
they hit the power distribution center
and now I’m pissing with the flashlight on
’cause I can’t see without my flashlight on
when the power’s out
I plugged in my mics to the battery recorder
played a show and got some dinner with friends
then took a train to a small town a few hours south
to track some singers Yaroslav recommends
but then I heard the Russian Federation drones above me again
in a location that was hard to defend
They hit the Zaporizhzhia generator
and now I’m pissing with the flasthlight on again
we’re pissing with the flashlight on
everybody’s pissing with the flashlight on
we’re pissing with the flashlight on
I know what they’ll say
I know what they’ll tell you
“it can’t happen here. what are the odds?”
THEY’RE NON-ZERO
A few days later I’m back in the States
just in time for Christmas Eve
and everybody’s watching the playoffs
on a Huaweii smart TV
and usually at Christmastime the skies are quiet
but everybody’s phone said “BEEEEEEEEEP!”
we heard the buzz of drones accelerating
and now we’re pissing with the flashlight on
we’re pissing with the flashlight on
everybody’s pissing with the flashlight on
we’re pissing with the flashlight on
because the Russians bombed the power grid
// // //
I wrote “Pissing with the Flashlight On” on the night of November 25th and the morning of November 26th, 2025, in a hotel and bomb shelter in Kharkiv. Several dozen Shahed drones hit the city, Ukraine’s second largest, in a ten-minute series of percussive impacts. Air defense knocked down several, but a few drones snuck through. One of them hit a nearby power station. Another hit a residential building about twenty blocks northeast. There were yellow flashes in the sky, and two deafening booms that I will never forget. Four people were killed.
I was in town to record the new Emperor X record /Unified Field/ with some friends. During the war, I do my best to stay in touch with friends in Ukrainian punk scenes. Because of increased danger at home and immigration/emigration restrictions abroad since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukrainian creative communities have been partly cut off from the rest of Europe. I and a handful of other North American and European artists I know do our best to bridge this gap, touring Ukraine regularly to perform benefit concerts that raise money for units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) and associated medical charities.
Like the rest of the country, punk scenes in Ukraine have been devastated by the war. It is not unusual for DJs, visual artists, poets, musicians, and entire bands to serve in units on the front. Many die. Many more return with wounds, physical and psychological, from which they will never fully recover. Even civilians far from the front are in danger from constant attacks like the one I experienced. Scene kids bear it with the dignity and fury that their countrymen are now famous for.
But life continues. They still have shows, they still make records, they still go to work, they still meet at cafes, they still love and have babies and gossip and experience absurd situations to which wry laughter is the only rational response. For example: imagine the power goes out, you’re in a windowless hostel fresh off of a bus, the hotel has no emergency generator, and you need to take a leak. You get your smartphone out, you turn on the flashlight, you aim as best you can, and hope the lights come back on before morning so you can clean up the splatter before the custodian finds it.
That’s the situation I and a half dozen other hostel guests were in that night in Kharkiv. I laughed, went to bed, and got up the next day with the melody and chorus lyrics fully formed in my head. The power was still out, so I walked two blocks to the closest bomb shelter in the main train station to charge my gear on the emergency power and grab some free tea. I plugged in to one of the rows of sockets beneath the benches I shared with stranded commuters, and set to work writing the verses. I memorized it, then started some other recording prep tasks.
A few weeks later in Los Angeles, over less than 120 minutes, I recorded all parts for the song in a small handful of takes with my producer friend Adam Lasus. The results are this recording, and the absolute blast we had tracking it seems in retrospect like a tactical diversion. Arts communities across Western Europe and North America are mounting an inadequate response to the Russo-Ukrainian War. My short song might put a smile on a few weary faces like that soldier’s, but more than that I want it to remind us in Berlin and Bristol and Boston that we might be next in line to face the darkness and chaos that our Ukrainian scene siblings have been fighting back for years. These dangers can come both from external militant mafia states like the Russian Federation and from domestic nativist political forces (Reform UK, Germany’s AfD, and the Trumpist wing of the US GOP, etc.) who share with Putin the desire to replace democratic discourse with transactional might-makes-right neo-feudalism. This danger is not on the way; it is here. The main difference between our art scenes and the scenes in Ukraine is that they know they’re at war. We’re still pretending it’s 2006.
Walking to the train station on my way out of Kharkiv, I was singing the song to myself under my breath, assuming no one would hear me. An AFU soldier headed to work heard me as we passed on the sidewalk. He shook his head with a mixture of amusement and contempt, a gaze I will remember every time I sing this song. Whatever he had to do that day, my foreign language song about power outage piss wasn’t going to get it done. I’m glad I gave him something to laugh at, and I wish him victory, wherever he is. But that moment haunts me; singing songs is simply not enough. Neither is donating, but if you’re anything like me you’re not joining the army tomorrow. The minimally-decent thing people like us can do for people like that soldier is to donate what we can, and not a cent less. Here are some options (ALWAYS VET ANY ORGANIZATION OR INDIVIDUAL YOU DONATE TO!):
– superhumans.com/en/
– savelife.in.ua/en/
– u24.gov.ua
– unitewithukraine.com/defenders-marketplace
– www.hospitallers.life
C. R. Matheny
2 February, 2026