Ireland artist Garrett Anthony Rice’s “The Coastal Walls (the shame of everyone)” delivers a deeply confrontational single that dives headfirst into the brutal legacy of the transatlantic slave trade, racial violence, and generational trauma with zero interest in softening the blow. It’s a heavy listen, no two ways about it. It’s a historical reckoning wrapped in blues-soaked instrumentation.
Recorded across the UK and Ireland, the track deliberately borrows from the language of the American Deep South, using blues-inspired arrangements to reflect the pain embedded in the history it confronts. Rice channels the outspoken fearlessness of figures like Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King Jr., Sidney Poitier, and Marlon Brando through the song’s unapologetic urgency.
And then there’s the music itself, which pulls listeners into a sense of calm before tightening the screws. The track opens with glistening guitars and the distant sound of seagulls, creating an almost peaceful coastal atmosphere. Rice’s husky voice enters slowly and deeply over thumping drums, carrying a heavy emotional weight that grows darker with each verse. Shimmering strings drift through the background, adding an eerie beauty to lyrics that recount unimaginable horrors.
He sings about “six hundred dead souls” and bodies washing up “along the coastal walls,” the scope of which the song broadens, by connecting historical brutality to present-day systemic racism. Rice’s writing sprawls with rawness, adding to the song’s urgency.
And when the nightmare-like outro arrives, it lands like a punch to the chest. It’s messy, provocative and impossible to ignore, which, frankly, feels exactly like the point.
Check out this historical masterpiece on Spotify.
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Review by: Naomi Joan