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Dispossessed – Insurgency

A listing from my quarterly Guardian column 'Music You Missed', July 2016


“I was sick of time and again seeing four white people on stage singing about fuck all,” said guitarist Birrugan Dunn-Velasco (of Gumbayngirr and Mapuche descent) to Noisey last month. He and vocalist Harry Bonifacio (Filipino) met at a rally in Sydney, then formed metal band Dispossessed as a conduit for the “violent themes … of white supremacy, capitalism and colonialism”.

Black Panther starts with a sample of a 1968 Black Panther chant, “no more pigs in our community”, before dropping into a curdled mess of stoner doom. By the song’s end, the instruments lurch from bar to bar, barely in time, but with everything on the line.

Made in a basement over five sessions during which four members quit, Dispossessed’s line-up has settled on Dunn-Velasco, guitarist Serwah Attafuah (Ghanaian) and drummer Jarrod Smith (Wiradjuri). The record’s production is bottom-heavy, lumpy and rough-as-guts, its tempo speeding up from sludge-slow only in reluctant bursts, yet it still packs the punch of a swift fist to the throat. It’s both cathartic and bottled-up, though it’s bottled something potent: an eternally raw document of time, place and unapologetic fury.

 

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My name is Kate Hennessy. I am a freelance arts and travel writer and music critic. I contribute to Guardian Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald/The Age, The Saturday Paper, The Australian, The Australian Financial Review, The Wire (UK), NME and more.

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