Divorce
are a forefront band of the modern hardcore scene in Glasgow, which has been
slowly building over the last ten years or so, and has found itself embracing
many experimental and avant-garde elements, making it one of the most exciting
hubs for punk music in Britain today. Quite contained to a certain degree, it
is very communal and is far more hard hitting, boundary pushing and ‘punk’ than
most hardcore scenes around the world today. With labels like Winning Sperm
Party, Methodist Leisure Inc. and Cry Parrot keeping the scene in high quality
nights, and super cool releases, this DIY art movement has been Scotland’s best
kept musical secret in modern times - a movement far too busy creating weird,
loud, ugly and skin frying music to care if some twat from a straight edge band
in Leeds would call them pretentious. Basically, they’re getting shit done, for
the right reasons and with charm.
Divorce are one of the more high
profile exports from the sect, a mish-mash-mess of drone, riot grrl, noise,
metal, spazzcore and good ol’ fashion chug-a-chugcore. To give you a tighter
image, just imagine what it would sound like if Crass had a fucked up blood
baby with Bikini Kill and brought the beast up on Team Dresch, Black Flag,
Sonic Youth and maybe Tool. Their self-titled debut is one mosh-trip-mosh
epileptic fit after another, slathered in feedback and noise, almost drowning
you under how inaccessible it is.
It is fair to note, from that, that you
probably won't like this album on first, second, third or perhaps even forth
listen. That doesn’t mean that this album isn’t for you. It means that your
tolerance is still too high, lil’ cherub, and you have to fight through this,
like a nightmare trip of visible noise and hallucinated clatters. And don’t get
me wrong, there are many elements to chew-the-meat (if you will) and get
yourself ‘down’ in the pit to, but this pit is full of feisty little demons
that you’ll have to beat the fuck up to get past - kinda like the last Kerrang-twinged
mosh pit you graced.
However, once you get into the heart of
this album, there is a lot to be valued, because despite all the dissonance,
feedback and ear-shredding noise, you realise the true brilliance of a band
like this - this is actually a band pushing boundaries. This is violent riot
grrl queercore punk for the modern generation - none of this is at all nice or
pretty - it isn’t ‘gay’, it isn’t camp and it isn’t faggy - this is LGBTQ punk
music that demonstrates its self-activism and proves its formidablity, far more
than Lady Gaga ever thought she did. This is violent, it is loud, it is
obnoxious and it is ugly. This is exactly what the cunts that still have a
problem with queer society don’t want to take seriously, and are being fucking
made to.
8.9
