This is actually two songs strewn together because we felt they melded together well. New Product was actually an old Task Force song as well, and I've been playing Shoe factory Worker in various bands since I was 19 (so about 6 years). New Product is about the comodification of, well, everything. Even a lot punk and DIY culture has perameters and norms within it's own microcosm that are based solely on outward appearence. Everybody judges people based on cosmetic superficiality whether we want to or not, I'm guilty. It's unfortunate, sure, but once we are cognizant of it we can work to change it by discussing the conditions that create that comodified look, and why that is of interest to corporations. I can deduce that it interests them because they need secular pockets of interest, vast and small, to keep an economic choke-hold on every single resource and idea available to them. The concept of the song is pretty vague but it's about this new product that molds to your every desire for social acceptance, thereby negating any need for your own input, you just run on proxy.
Shoe Factory Worker is somewhat apocalyptic. It's about how we look around and feel so ineffectual to create a drastic and positive change towards a sustainable world because of all the daunting infrastructure in place that we sometimes feel hopeless. But in some ways the song provides hope in that even if we, as humans, fail maybe nature will prevail. I suppose that can be somewhat depressing too though if you consider that nature, not only doesn't need humans to thrive but in fact would probably be better without us. We of course are part of nature though, we forget that and try to apply abstract numbers to resources without considering the impact of taking those things from earth without putting something back. Doing this for centuries will eventually exhaust the planet of anything usable at all, it's suicide for our species and yet it carries on. We have to consider nature itself as the utmost exploited worker in all of capitalism, and that if pushed to far it may resist and we all have to deal with those ramifications.