Earlier this year, experimental doom duo Divide And Dissolve released their third album Gas Lit, an expansive piece tackling white supremacy, colonialism and the legacy of oppression. Recently, they announced a very special collaboration with none other than Chealsea Wolfe and released her remix of their song, ‘Far From Ideal’. In the run up to its release, we spoke to one of the duo, Takiaya Reed, about their music, creating space to discuss topics of decolonisation and how it was to work with Wolfe on their piece.
It’s immediately apparent that considering the challenges of the last almost eighteen months, she’s very appreciative of both the end result of their creative process and the critical reception to Gas Lit. “I’m happy that people understand the album,” she enthuses. “It feels really amazing because I think, some people had, not doubts, but questions about how an instrumental album could communicate so much emotion and feeling.” When it comes to creating their music and how they write, she explains “I believe it’s all tied together with our connection to the earth and our ancestors. We’re able to create what we create because of our relationality to the earth and our resonance, the frequencies and our indigeneity. That’s a huge part of our process. It’s helped us to have energy to continue to do what we do, and to push everything forward, which has been an amazing element to our music.”
Also part of where their music comes from is in their own lived experiences, and those of other oppressed and marginalised people; “the humanisation process of black, indigenous and people of colour in this world where the colonial project demands our death and these sacrifices that we didn’t consent to, that we paid for with our lives and our livelihoods, that are passed down from generation to generation. So the energy over music and our band is from the earth, where we’re from.”
Containing enough visceral energy to power the trio’s home of Cardiff, the bouncing new rager from the hardcore powerpunks XL Life is just pure punk vitality at it’s best. Featuring former Astroid Boys members Traxx and Lewis Newbrook, ‘Noise’ retains the urbanite stomp and UKHC tendencies of their former project but is simultaneously infused with sense of punch, groove and rhythm that’s reminiscent of the groundbreaking acts such as Gorilla Biscuits all whilst sounding dynamically fresh in manner like Higher Power. But still, it’s the track’s pure adolescent energy and delivery that makes such it an irrefutably infectious documentation of the overload of information we consume on a daily basis. “‘Noise’ is an anthem to cut through the information overload and labelling that we all endure, day in and day out”, state the band on the track. “A person’s received societal labels shape their identity and dictate their future beliefs, choices, and goals. This track was written to override the segregation that these labels bring and to remind us to listen to our inner voice of reason during times filled with so much noise.” – Dan Hillier
Described by some as ‘one of the heaviest bands on this planet’, the Copenhagen apocalyptical post-metal collective LLNN fully live up to their reputation with their condemning new single ‘Interloper’. The first track to be taken from their feverishly anticipated Unmaker – which makes impact September 24th via Pelagic Records – the track is an astonishingly fatal affair that’s all encompassing, inescapable and overwhelming in it’s terminal execution. Droning synths, callous industrialist motifs and cinematic textures of celestial demise intertwine with catalytic post-metal to form a suffocating soundtrack to the end of all things by the hands of something simply beyond human comprehension. Whilst LLNN have always harboured a penchant to preemptively musically score the inevitable annihilation of Earth, this is a startlingly vividi introduction to a record that’s set to be so dense it could trigger the end on it’s own accord. – Dan Hillier
Maximum volume, maximum density, maximum existentialism. The second single taken from Sugar Horse’s forthcoming debut LP The Live Long After, the wonderfully titled ‘Phil Spector In Hell’ see’s the Bristolian doomgazers returning to the long format whilst waxing lyrical upon the nature of the unknown void that awaits us all. In a manner that’s claustrophobically opaque, incurably caustic but yet beautifully and abstractly poetic, the group showcase their complete and utter regard for urgency and their nonconformist attitude towards mundane genre limitations. Not entirely unlike in staring into the abyss only to find it staring back at you, this a wonderful exercise in post-rock tinged shoegazing doom that’s blissful suffocating in tone but yet nightmarishly harrowing when pondered in depth upon. – Dan Hillier
Coinciding with the announcement of their brand spanking new EP Hey Tori, the latest single from the fearlessly zingy Northern Irish pop rockers Cherym is a life affirmation sweet belter dressed to the nines. Presented under a giddyishly mushy guise, the track explores how many cis people automatically presume queer lovers are merely friends out of close mindlessness and see’s Cherym channeling their established rebellious energy to conquer the modern pop sound made immortal by bands such as Stand Atlantic, Yours Truly and Meet Me At The Altar. Yet, much like the content that came before this more accomplished track, ‘We’re Just Friends’ still plays and relishes in the joyously queer alt sound of bands such as Dream Nails, Charmpit and Martha. Hey Tori releases 30th September on Alcopop! Records, and with Cherym already winning hearts en-mass so early into their career, the record is set to launch the band into the stratosphere. – Dan Hillier
Formed on the cusp of COVID and never having had the chance to play a live show, the duo – comprised of two good friends who met on a drunken night out at uni – have strengthened their bond during lockdown and turned inconvenience into advantage. The extended time at home enabled them to focus on their debut EP Heavy Infectious and develop the exact sound they wanted.
“We could express what we wanted to creatively without any restrictions or limitations on what we wanted to put out,” reflects bass player Otto Balfour on the lockdown. “We’ve had this luxury of time to really hone in on what it is we like doing together,” agrees lead vocalist and guitarist Charlie Hinton.
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While a lot of bands put out multiple early EPs still struggling to figure out their set ‘sound’, CRASHFACE now have that advantage of knowing exactly what they want quite early on in their career, and it might not be what people expect. “We consciously decided to put out two singles which were very different from one another,” explains Otto. “Cause we didn’t want to be pigeonholed straight away.” On the surface, CRASHFACE have a pretty traditional ‘classic Brit punk’ aesthetic but musically, they give off a whole other vibe. If you’re expecting a raw, stripped back guitar led EP to match what you think they’re going to sound like, think again. There’s samples, synths, extra little electronic elements and pretty intense production values. “Obviously we’ve been sat inside for the best part of two years or whatever and computers are the best thing ever,” says Charlie. “That and the face we have an excellent production team which we work with…the sky’s the limit.”
Fusing the groove and stomp of New Wave of American Heavy Metal with the chaos of metalcore and hardcore, Portland bruisers Dying Wish just announced their forthcoming record and released its lead single and title track, ‘Fragments Of A Bitter Memory’. It’s a deeply personal song, discussing frank topics from alcoholism to violence, abuse and living in fear. Vocalist Emma Boster says of the lyrics, “season of life forever change healing the fragments you still control” that they refer to her constant struggling to heal from this trauma, along with the line “I would bury you if I could” because even after therapy and a decade of healing, violent revenge seems the easiest and most satisfying way to cope with this. The band’s sound is, unsurprisingly raw and uncompromising, rooted in a scene for which fighting for justice and equality is a cornerstone of its ethos. – Will Marshall
Deafheaven caused a bit of a stir indeed upon the release of the first single from their forthcoming LP Infinite Granite. Whereas the band first earned their globally renowned status for kickstarting the ongoing current wave of blackgaze, June’s ‘Great Mass Of Color’ saw the band once again defying genre expectations by completely cutting the extremity from their work and bringing to light the total change in direction that Infinite Granite is set to host. ‘The Gnashing’ – the second single from the impending Sargent House released record – continues to offer a tantalising glimpse into new the era of Deafheaven. A shimmering and damn near enchanted radiance of dreamy alt-rock that’s led by kaleidoscopic tones that lean into the band’s shoegaze tendencies, ‘The Gnashing’ may not reassure those desperately hoping for a return to the band’s black metal roots, but for the rest of us, it’s a hypnotic glimmer into what is set to be the band’s most riveting work to date. – Dan Hillier
Aussie pop punk outfit Yours Truly put out one of last year’s most anticipated and best debuts with Self Care, a story of mental health, coming to terms with yourself and life itself. It was a warm hug from a best friend that took an unflinching look at life’s twists and turns. The band teased a new era for them, with new single ‘Walk Over My Grave’ seeing them enter that new era for the first time. The song explores the idea of someone haunting you, and wondering if you haunt them in return; whether anything you ever said stuck with them as what they’ve said or did stuck with you. It’s based on vocalist Mikaela’s own experience with someone abruptly leaving her life, saying that she ended up pulling over while driving to write lyrics for it. Stylistically there’s the pop-punk people have come to know and love but they also flirt with melodic post-hardcore, even toying with a breakdown towards the end. It’s a maturing of their sound that’s sure to win over new and old fans alike. – Will Marshall
A rugged, Goliath-sized manifestation of inescapable prog, psych, doom and post metal, Mountain Caller are a wholly unparalleled entity even within the decorated halls of instrumental metal. Forgoing the standard and cliched approach to the genre, the London three piece instead use the titanous and vivid power of the post-metal genre to narrate a story that’s rooted within both fantasy and real world struggle.
As detailed within their monumental 2020 LP debut Chronicle I: The Truthseeker, the band use their thunderous and dynamic art to narrate a story of a nameless woman on a sprawling journey to recollect her history and voice. It’s a vivid story, one reminiscent of the fantasy epics that hallmark the fantasy genre as a whole, but one that’s a poignant and metaphorical depiction of the unceasing struggles and perils woman face in modern society as a whole. It’s a totally unique and riveting exploration of feminism and how woman within our culture must fight for their voice and place.
Following on from the release of their debut, Mountain Caller are gearing up for the release of their new forthcoming EP. Titled Chronicle: Prologue, the record isn’t just a collection of some of the band’s earliest work, it’s also the origins of the story the band serve to tell. True in its namesake, the EP sees the band tracing their roots back to their origins in order to place emphasis on what’s next.
With the Chronicle: Prologue released July 9th via New Heavy Sounds, we got in touch with El Reeve (Bass) and Max Maxwell (Drums) to discover more about the EP, their approach to unifying narration with post-metal, their signature artwork and lots more.
El: “That’s a great question, and potentially quite complicated. I can tell you that this is the earliest we have written of her, I don’t know whether sometime in the future we might jump back with what we’re doing but we haven’t talked about that yet.”
Max: “It’s the Mountain Caller origin story, yeah.”
El: “Yeah, when we branch out into graphic novels! So, the protagonist is sort of conceived of the everywoman really. She’s intended to be someone that anyone could imprint themselves onto and it was important to all three of us that she was a woman. We really liked the idea of getting to go on a journey with someone who would be your conduit into these weird, wonderful worlds that we’re travelling through, someone to give it a sense of purpose and to connect emotionally with. But we haven’t really sat down and thought about yet, y’know what’s her personality like, what kind of things is she into? She is just very much a person whose been thrust into this situation and she’s on a mission. She’s on one, she’s out there, she’s got things to do.”
Max: “We’ve kinda kept her quite deliberately anonymous so that anyone can easily relate to her, we don’t want her restricted to age or race of any of those things, hence you don’t see her face on any of the artwork or merch or anything.”
El: “Y’know it actually happened very naturally. I would love to be able to claim that we sat down and thought; well this will be fantastic let’s definitely do this! But we were in the practice room, and very early on, maybe session one or two, when we were jamming stuff together we just started talking about it. I’ve got a very visual brain, and when I listen to music anyway I tend to picture things in my minds eye, and I was describing, or one of us was describing how something would look if it were made manifest. Like, this is what it would like if you’re in a submarine, this is how the reverb should be, that kind of thing. We started talking in those terms for the rest of that session and then just had this idea that, well why don’t we base this whole thing about this woman who has just woken up under a ruined city and has no memory and take it from there and see what happens? We just kept going with it and ended up writing the main sort of beats of the overarching story and fleshing it out as we went and discovering that oh, this riff is very evocative of that kind of feeling or that kind of dramatic moment, or oh we need to write something that’s a bit softer to convey this sort of thing. It’s worked in a lot of different ways when it comes to writing it.”
Max: “It doesn’t feel like we thought about it that hard. We haven’t written songs on the basis of oh this is what happens next in the story, it all just kind of happens simultaneously really. I can’t really describe how that’s happened but it just kind of happened in that way, we all really tried to trust our instincts on it and just let both the music and the story come to us.”
El: “It’s been strangely effortless, and I just wonder if it’s because we all gel together so well as people and as musicians. I mean it’s pretty rare that an idea will be thrown out or a riff will come up and one of us won’t like it or won’t get it or something. Everything is very complimentary and I think that just makes the overall writing process quite easy.”
Max: “The music normally comes first for me I think.”
El: “Not for me.”
Max: “No? Fair enough, so yeah there’s no real set pattern to it but I’m definitely much more of a music person. I feel like I come up with a lot less of the visual stuff, music is much more my strong point, so that’s definitely where it starts for me and almost by chance it seems to fit in quite well with where the story is going. So that’s I guess what I mean by the sort of serendipity of it.”
El: “I think you’re really great at the story stuff!”
Max: “Thank you! I just feel like you guys come in with more visual ideas, and then I guess as a person I’m quite responsive, responding to what other people do musically and thematically with the story. I guess I contribute different ideas about the kind of, core of where it’s going, and like El said we’re all very complimentary.”
El: “It’s nice because when you bring something into the practice room, like Clair or I might sweep in and go oh I’ve had an idea! This is the next scene! But the rest of the guys will go oh yeah great, but what if also if it’s this, and this and this? And we just kind of get going like a bit of a runaway train.”
Max: “It’s always a million times better as well, like when I bring an idea to the rehearsal and they go oh yeah but what if we do it this way? And we’re all like oh yeah, that’s brilliant of course it should be like that! It’s such a nice feeling just sort of riffing off each other, I guess that’s both conceptually and literally!”
An esoteric proposition, the latest single from Sweden’s Blodet see’s the ineffable collective further pushing their sound into more velutinous and arcane territories. The first single to be released from the band’s forthcoming EP Vision – which releases September 24th via Church Road – ‘The River is an enigmatic sonic tapestry that subtly explores the futility of man in a fashion that’s mesmeric, yet undoubtedly disheartening. Blodlet’s first release since the inclusion of vocalist Hilda Heller in 2019, the track is an atmospherically monochrome vortex of post-rock ambience, psychedelic folk and tentative doom that lies within the work of artists such as A.A Williams, Amenra and Big Brave. With Visions set to see the band incorporating further elements of European post-hardcore and brutalist doom into the mix, 2021 is the year where Blodlet carve their own oeuvre in scene pocketed by caverns of dark dynamism. – Dan Hillier
The fourth and final single from their upcoming record Transmute, ‘A Test Of Our Resolve’ see’s Press To MECO treading familiar ground. Plucky bass, riffs and the steady beat of the drums are all sounds staple in the ‘MECO arsenal, but hey, don’t fix what ain’t broke – this is the formula that makes the band sound so damn good in the first place. One of the most magical things about Press To MECO is their ability to share the spotlight, with each track every member of the band shines in unison, with harmonies and gang vocals aplenty without sacrificing the slap of the bass and the bite of the riff, and this track is no different. Every element comes together to create something unmistakable, this is the Press To MECO sound in encapsulation and is another absolute banger in their repertoire. – Elliot Grimmie
You wanna get freaky? You wanna get weird and funky? Frauds have got your back with their new track ‘Ships’. It’s equal parts sinister in tone, it’s riffy and ready to boogie down to – and better yet – it’s just one of many tracks yet to come, as the band have been hard at work crafting a new album releasing later this year via Alcopop Records. It’s impressive that such a fleshed out noise can come from just a two piece, but Frauds pull it off with uniquely twisted finesse every time. One moment you’ll be nodding your head along, the next you’ll catch yourself thinking; wait, what the heck is this song about? It just so happens that this one is about a fictional fishing ship called The Wishing Well, and all the fishes they catch. Who on earth would write a song about that? Well, Frauds, that’s who. – Elliot Grimmie
