This for once is a little review which I actually expected to drop much later. Because even though the new album of Divide and Dissolve - who at this point are pretty much Takiaya Reed with alternating drummers - is already out there since April, my plan was to buy it directly from the merch table in October.
Unfortunately their Hamburg date clashes with another tour, which I heavy-heartedly had to proritize over this body-shaking Sludge guitar devastation/meditation, so I ordered "Insatiable" earlier - and here we are!
Unfortunately their Hamburg date clashes with another tour, which I heavy-heartedly had to proritize over this body-shaking Sludge guitar devastation/meditation, so I ordered "Insatiable" earlier - and here we are!
DIVIDE & DISSOLVE - Insatiable (green vinyl LP) (2025)
To noone's surprise the album of course confirms that the choice not to experience this sound live onboard the MS Stubnitz again (like two years ago) wasn't an easy one.
It's safe to say that Takiaya Reed, the black half African-, half Native American woman, who lives in Australia, plays Jazz saxophone as well as ridiculously crushing Doom Metal guitar and has also just written her first symphony for BBC, has been defying more expectations by breakfast than most people do in weeks.
However Divide and Dissolve is not a completely unpredictable project, but one which combines a pretty specific concept, which always leaves enough room for little surprises by default. In that spirit "Insatiable" once again fulfills the promise coming with the band's name while still sounding fresh.
There are basically two kinds of Divide and Dissolve tracks:
One often starts "with atmospheric textures, made out of looped soprano saxophone and/or keyboards. Those then suddenly get crushed by droning Doom or dirty Noise Rocks riffs, while the loop still is around somewhere far in the background. The guitar tone is devastatingly crunchy, the interaction with the drums enormously heavy, but also quite loose in a chaotic, very primal way, which in its core is much more emotionally expressive than it even is Metal. And at some point, without a really concluding resolution... it just ends somehow. Sometimes that happens with, sometimes without the resurfacing of the initial loop." And I just stole this whole paragraph from my own review of the last album "Systemic".
The other compositions, which make up almost half of the album's tracklist are interludes, which focus on the keys or saxophone - or even bring in experimentations with Reed's voice, which normally is only active at shows during her long-ass announcements; she's probably one of the most talkative instrumental musicians I've ever seen.
The common factor, the golden thread running through all ten tracks, is that nothing is done in a way, which even when viewed through a niche Doom/Noise or Avantgarde lens, feels like a well-trodden conventional path. No, a Divide and Dissolve album doesn't sound like a Metal band compiling their latest bangers, but much more like a (mostly) instrumental story, a soundtrack, which seemingly rather driven by intuition and the invisible story's momentarily demands than songwriting, flows from scene to scene without even caring for its music-theoretical categorization.
So what's the takeway? Basically everything remains the same, but different - as always. And as long as there's no herd of copycats to be seen approaching from anywhere, that is definitely a good thing.
Atmospheric, eery, immersive, agitative and heavy as a bite of dark matter hidden in your cereals - Divide and Dissolve remain unsatiable.
One often starts "with atmospheric textures, made out of looped soprano saxophone and/or keyboards. Those then suddenly get crushed by droning Doom or dirty Noise Rocks riffs, while the loop still is around somewhere far in the background. The guitar tone is devastatingly crunchy, the interaction with the drums enormously heavy, but also quite loose in a chaotic, very primal way, which in its core is much more emotionally expressive than it even is Metal. And at some point, without a really concluding resolution... it just ends somehow. Sometimes that happens with, sometimes without the resurfacing of the initial loop." And I just stole this whole paragraph from my own review of the last album "Systemic".
The other compositions, which make up almost half of the album's tracklist are interludes, which focus on the keys or saxophone - or even bring in experimentations with Reed's voice, which normally is only active at shows during her long-ass announcements; she's probably one of the most talkative instrumental musicians I've ever seen.
The common factor, the golden thread running through all ten tracks, is that nothing is done in a way, which even when viewed through a niche Doom/Noise or Avantgarde lens, feels like a well-trodden conventional path. No, a Divide and Dissolve album doesn't sound like a Metal band compiling their latest bangers, but much more like a (mostly) instrumental story, a soundtrack, which seemingly rather driven by intuition and the invisible story's momentarily demands than songwriting, flows from scene to scene without even caring for its music-theoretical categorization.
So what's the takeway? Basically everything remains the same, but different - as always. And as long as there's no herd of copycats to be seen approaching from anywhere, that is definitely a good thing.
Atmospheric, eery, immersive, agitative and heavy as a bite of dark matter hidden in your cereals - Divide and Dissolve remain unsatiable.
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