From the artist’s Bandcamp.
Divide and Dissolve is an Australian-based instrumental doom metal duo featuring saxophonist and guitarist Takiaya Reed and percussionist Sylvie Nehill. For the female duo, the act of simply inhabiting a prominently white male genre space is political.
Reed is descended from “indigenous people of the so-called United States”. The duo also collectively stated: “Our music is helping carve out space where it isn’t supposed to be. Heavy music is apparently supposed to look, sound, and feel a certain way. Divide and Dissolve is and will continue to be a point of difference.”
Nehill also plainly states: “The abhorrent history of colonial violence, genocide, slavery, rape, and murder is still continuing today. It is this past, and the lasting and active power structures present in our world today that has driven me to prioritize decolonization.”
Their intent is explicit with song titles such as “Reparations”, “Resistance”, ”Indigenous Sovereignty”, “Assimilation” and “Cultural Extermination”.
They recently released “Indignation” a track off their upcoming fourth album Systemic due June 30th. The tune “is a prayer that land be given back to Indigenous people,” Reed explains. “A hope that future generations no longer experience the atrocities and fervent violence that colonization continues to bring forth.”
They also released an accompanying video directed by Sepi Mashiahof. Concerning the visuals, Mashiahof says, “In reflecting on the powerful and vital messaging found in Divide and Dissolve’s music: decolonization, the destruction of white supremacy, and liberation from oppressive structures—this video is about the collective grief we experience about the lives we all could have were it not for the cruel and arbitrary systems of power that impede each and every one of our potentials. The potential to truly love ourselves and each other is distorted by the agendas of vicious capitalist vultures who seek to emaciate our joys, bonds, and communities for their own gain. This video depicts an abstracted portrait of what suffering under these accelerating conditions feels like. Technology, dysphoria, dream-form sentience, transaction, and depersonalization constitute the thematic palette, laid upon the hope of shedding our current forms and transcending into boundless, beautiful ether.”
Divide and Dissolve is proof that music doesn’t need lyrics to deliver a potent social message. As Reed explains: “I believe in the power of non-verbal communication. A huge percent of communication is non-verbal. We learn so much without using words.”