The Smallest Room
  • Menu

    Music
    Arts
    About
    Travel
    Teach

  • MUSIC
    • record reviews
    • LIVE REVIEWS
    • features
  • ARTS
  • About
  • Travel
  • Teach
0

Divide and Dissolve – Abomination

A review from my quarterly Guardian column 'Music You Missed', April 2018


On St Patrick’s Day in Austin, in a courtyard sloshing with pints and good moods, Divide and Dissolve struck their first bottom-heavy chord and shamrocks quivered. Some revellers downed beers and bailed, but those who stayed heard guitarist and saxophonist Takiaya Reed declare: “The colonisation of First Nations people has not ended. We will not ignore the genocide of indigenous people around the world and will continue the conversation with our music.”

Divide and Dissolve don’t make doom metal to be liked, but to eradicate white supremacy. Their stealth attack on St Patty’s Day to the unconverted was bang on strategy. Abomination is Reed and drummer Sylvie Nehill’s second raised-fist record and a subversion, too, of doom metal’s style-over-substance tropes of space, wizards, birds of prey and bongs. The album’s instrumental songs do not grant metal’s gratification or countenance its catharsis. Rather, they decelerate, upping the downer vibe and revving like tanks bogged in the sludge of a war with no exit plan.

Glowering in the gloom, midway through, is Minori Sanchiz-Fung’s spoken-word story of the “unctuous dark wealth” of the English language: “Like a redirected ray, the immigrant mind turns inward as if an enormous mirror comes down the moment you arrive. It drops like a giant rodent trap and forever divides time.”


Share Tweet

Kate

You Might Also Like

  • LIVE REVIEWS

    Floors of Heaven underwater concert (Woolloomooloo Bay)

  • features

    The ‘Yolŋu surf rock’ of Yothu Yindi’s next generation

  • LIVE REVIEWS

    William Crighton (The Great Club)

Search

Twitter

Tweets by @smallestroom

Recent articles

  • Floors of Heaven underwater concert (Woolloomooloo Bay) February 19, 2022
  • The ‘Yolŋu surf rock’ of Yothu Yindi’s next generation February 17, 2022
  • A gentle hidden gem: a visitor’s guide to the NSW far south coast January 8, 2022
  • ‘An inscrutable and open-ended riddle’: the life and art of Jeffrey Smart December 11, 2021
  • Trekking the Great Ocean Walk: ‘Stand with no land mass between your sweaty skin and Antarctica’ December 7, 2021
  • MUSIC
    • record reviews
    • LIVE REVIEWS
    • features
  • ARTS
  • About
  • Travel
  • Teach

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.

Latest posts

  • Floors of Heaven underwater concert (Woolloomooloo Bay)

    February 19, 2022
  • The ‘Yolŋu surf rock’ of Yothu Yindi’s next generation

    February 17, 2022
  • A gentle hidden gem: a visitor’s guide to the NSW far south coast

    January 8, 2022
  • ‘An inscrutable and open-ended riddle’: the life and art of Jeffrey Smart

    December 11, 2021
  • Trekking the Great Ocean Walk: ‘Stand with no land mass between your sweaty skin and Antarctica’

    December 7, 2021

Twitter

Tweets by @smallestroom

Search