U2 released their first collection of new music since 2017 – a politically charged EP titled Days of Ash, which focuses on a series of high-profile global deaths, including the killing of Renee Goode by ICE agents.
Good, a mother of three who died Jan. 7 while protesting against ICE operations in Minneapolis, was the subject of the opening song, American Obituary.
“Renee Good, born to die free / Three in January / American mother on the seventh day / A bullet for every child, as you can see,” Bono sings on the hard rock song, straight after the peeling riff from the edge. “Renee, ‘domestic terrorist’? / What you can’t kill won’t die / America will rise against the people of lies.”
In an extensive interview in a fanzine accompanying the six-song release as a continuation of the promotional magazines the band began sending fans in the 1980s, Bono described Good as “a woman committed to non-violent civil disobedience”.
He said he was deeply disturbed by US Department of Homeland Security head Christy Noem’s description of her as a domestic terrorist. “This is an attempt to assassinate meaning, the meaning of words, the meaning of truth,” Bono said. “If you let people [get] Far from it, you can kiss your democracy goodbye. He demanded an independent inquiry into Gudla’s death.
In Song of the Future, the band focused on the Women, Life, Freedom protest movement in Iran that campaigned for women’s rights. They named Sarina Esmailzadeh, who died in September 2022 at the age of 16 after being beaten by Iranian security forces during protests, according to an Amnesty International investigation. Iranian authorities announced that she had committed suicide.
Bono sang: “Sarina, Sarina, she’s the song of the future in my mind.” In his interview, he described Iran’s ruling class as a “priestly class of men” whose subjective interpretation of scripture becomes a club to beat the heads of those who disagree.
The song, One Life at a Time, is about Palestinian activist Awada Hataleen, who was killed by an Israeli settler in the West Bank in July 2025. Hathleen worked on the Oscar-winning film No Other Land. Bono called the killing “heinous” and said he hoped the song would be “a balm”.
The name The Tears of Things comes from Richard Rohr’s book, which applies wisdom from the Jewish prophets to address violence and anger today. The text imagines a dialogue between Michelangelo’s David and its sculptor. The EP features Nigerian musician Adeola reading the poem Wildpeace by Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai with music by U2.
Bono said: “It was the moral force of Judaism that helped shape Western civilization” and hailed Jews as “mathematicians, scientists, writers, not to mention songwriters.” He said: “Like Islamophobia, anti-Semitism must be confronted every time we see it. The rape, murder and kidnapping of Israelis on October 7 is evil, but self-defense is no excuse for the sheer brutality of Netanyahu’s response.”
He also acknowledged the lives lost and displaced during the conflict in Sudan and criticized the Trump administration for cutting US foreign aid.
Ed Sheeran guests on the closing track, Yours Eternally, along with Ukrainian musician-turned-soldier Taras Topolia, who inspired the song to be a letter from a soldier on duty in the conflict with Russia. Sheeran initially brokered a meeting between Topolia, Bono and Edge, which later took place in May 2022 when the trio played a set in a Kyiv metro station that had been converted into a bomb shelter.
“Ask anyone in East Germany or Poland or Latvia if Putin thinks he’ll stop if he can get out of Ukraine?” Bono said. “He will find an excuse to invade Ireland if it suits his interests.” He praised Sheeran as “a whirlwind of talent” and Topolia as having “this dark humor and defiant spirit that we love about the best rock’n’roll music.
Yours Eternally, a short documentary directed by Ukrainian film-maker Ilya Mykhailos embedded with frontline Ukrainian soldiers, will be released on February 24, the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion.
U2 has released some new songs in recent years such as Atomic City and Your Song Saved My Life. In 2023, they released the album Songs of Surrender, which included remakes of earlier songs, and in 2024 they released unheard material from the 2004 album How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb sessions. But week The 2017 album Songs of Experience did not put out an album or an EP of new material.
In an accompanying fanzine, The Edge wrote: “We believe in a world where borders are not forcibly erased. Where culture, language and memory are not silenced by fear. Where people’s dignity is non-negotiable. This belief is not temporary. It is not a political fad. This is the ground we stand on together. And we will stand there.”
Larry Mullen Jr. added in an interview: “Going back to our early days, working with Amnesty or Greenpeace, we’ve never shied away from taking a position and sometimes it gets a little messy, always some kind of blowback, but it’s a big aspect of who we are and why we are.”
Drummer Mullen Jr. missed U2’s concert residency at the Las Vegas Sphere as he recovers from neck surgery. He said: “To be honest, I’m not sure if I’ll be back playing so it’s a big thing to come back.” He said he changed his posture at the kit to play, as well as his “approach and intention” to the music.
Elsewhere in the zine, bassist Adam Clayton shares his cultural picks (including the band Gees and author Deborah Levy) and the importance of “tolerance, freedom and choosing not to pass judgment.”
Bono also outlined his vision for a “radical center” in politics.
“The death of truth is the birth of evil,” he said. “I am confident that the righteous will rise up against this breach. I have many dear conservative friends who are as concerned on the right as my democrats are on the left. The world certainly needs a ‘radical center’ from both traditions.”
U2 also confirmed a long-rumored new album, which will arrive later in the year and will be completely separate to the EP material.
“The songs on Days of Ash are very different in mood and theme to what we’re going to put on our album later in the year,” Bono said. “These EP tracks can’t wait; these songs can’t wait to be out in the world. They’re songs of defiance and despair, lamentation… because all the horrors we normalize every day on our little screens, there’s nothing normal in these crazy and crazy times and we have to face them before we can go back and have faith in each other in the future.
He added: “The songs will follow the festivities, which we’re working on now,” adding that the new album will have a “carnival vibe … a more defiant joyous feel.”
Despite the EP’s political content and U2’s songwriting and activism over the years, he said, “We had to be separate with our expansion [of political messaging] … I suggest rationing bad news, because there is only so much a soul can take.
