Emmure aren't a band known for subtlety. Recently, they pushed out pre-orders for their upcoming record, Look at Yourself, featuring a series of different merch designs. In the midst of your run-of-the-mill Thrasher logo rips, autopsy collages (done with greater effect by Reek of Putrefaction) and inverted crosses, they dropped a pretty disgusting shirt featuring a portrait of a battered woman, with bruises and blood revealing themselves in sunlight. It's not the first garbage thing Emmure have put on a shirt — a few years ago, the group issued a parody shirt with the words "Keep Calm and Ask Your Girl What My Dick Tastes Like" — but this seems leagues ahead in terms of misogyny. Yes, it seems like an actual stamp of approval on domestic violence.

We reached out to the band and their PR team, who had no comment as of press time.

Clearly, this is intended to get a rise out of people. So, while we would rather let these trolls sail into the annals of mediocre drop-C deathcore history — along with their middling jockcore homophobic contemporaries — in the ultra-male-dominated genre that Emmure play in, this needs to be called out. This a band with young, mostly male fans, and one that has played to audiences at the Warped Tour and other major tours. It's not funny, it's not cool and maybe they should focus on songwriting instead.

UPDATE: Vocalist Frankie Palmeri has issued a comment:
Look at yourself is about all the mistakes in my life, or things that i’ve had to figure out the hard way.  its about self examination and really just taking a good, long, hard look at myself and exposing those parts of me, and also exposing other parts of other people.

the shirt design is in no way endorsing nor portraying domestic violence. the art was not meant to depict a beaten women, but a person with drug related issues. it was meant to portray a person who ignores all of their problems in life, someone who can look in the mirror and not see the issues they truly have. that was the whole basis of the product title “reflection”

this was a design that was presented to me by my management team, that i personally was not a big fan of the way it was illustrated. but in all honesty i didn’t even think about it from that perspective. the whole idea had always been about self reflection and a piece of artwork that we tried to associate with the emotions of the record.

we even intended to release another version similar to this for our upcoming tour; but instead of a girls face it would be my own face with the ink changing to depict a disgusting person.

the world is a beautiful place filled with disgust, it’s time to take a step back and look at yourself if you want to move forward.

More From CLRVYNT