Traitors, rivals, and nemesis
All of them shall perish into ashes
Kiss my hand and do as what I say
And you will have a position in my empire
He’s the archetype of Europe’s empire-builders—the powdered court monarch and the self-crowned emperor, the kind of man who insists God signed his title and the world exists to be taken. Blinded by his own reflection, he mistakes his own echo for a divine voice. Authority becomes a mirror, reflecting only himself, and he worships what it returns. He hands out status like rationed bread, just enough to keep people hungry and compliant. He calls submission “love” and slaughter “order,” folding heaven neatly into the machinery of empire. Faith, once a refuge for the broken, is refashioned into a weapon and aimed at the human spirit. Mercy—slow, conditional, uncertain—is dismissed as weakness. What remains is noise: chants, banners, ceremony—pageantry engineered to drown out the quiet, dangerous voice that still remembers tenderness and knows that survival without dignity is another form of death.
Let Them Eat War puts that figure on the throne: an authoritarian who speaks in crowns and commandments, a ruler inflated with conquest and conviction. Here, Ony Godfrey, the persona of the Chinese-Indonesian musician Wiony “Ony” Sunarjo (formerly of Camlann), depicts this tyrant with stark clarity, allowing power to reveal itself openly. The track has a strong, deliberate rhythm—ceremonial yet unpredictable—carried by a voice that derides mercy and mistakes obedience for salvation.
Godfrey’s decision to perform through a male alter ego sharpens the satire by giving Empire a body. This isn’t just a “villain” voice—it’s power as a role: gendered, ritualized, and dressed to look inevitable. The track unfolds as an imperial address from above, where land becomes entitlement, and people become obstacles. Religion is welded to command, faith reduced to permission, until even the language of devotion starts to sound like compliance.
Musically, Godfrey channels her background in dark electronic forms toward something leaner and more confrontational, marking a departure from her earlier work with Camlann. The production is grittier and more severe, matching the song’s political intent. Mechanical rhythms lock step with choral accents and baroque flourishes—cathedral grandeur repurposed as a war room. The discipline of Depeche Mode and Kraftwerk surfaces in the track’s structure, while Visual Kei excess supplies pageantry and poise. Everything feels deliberate, pushed forward by urgency rather than atmosphere.
“I wanted the music to feel as heavy as the history it speaks to,” Godfrey explains. That weight registers in restraint: the arrangement holds its own power in check, letting each phrase land with the chill of policy—measured, formal, and merciless.
The accompanying video makes the performance literal. Godfrey appears in the 18th-century Western monarch persona, powdered and poised, turning colonial elegance into a threatening display. The imagery draws on Indonesia’s past under European rule, transforming inherited trauma into indictment. Here, beauty isn’t relief—it’s camouflage, the velvet glove over the imperial appetite.
Watch the video for “Let Them Eat War” below:
Let Them Eat War’s strength lies in its exactness. Godfrey lets imperialism reveal itself, highlighting its hollowness. This is intentional, unwavering, and daring music, unflinching in facing the brutality of control. Following the dissolution of Camlann and the departure of longtime collaborator Fauzan Pratama, Godfrey takes on a more pointed, provocative approach—firmly grounded in political dissent and historical insight.
Listen to Let Them Eat War below and order the single here.
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