Five albums into the project’s existence, and we probably know to some degree what we’re gonna get with a new Divide and Dissolve LP: vehemently anti-colonial sludge metal with zero vocal passages. While one of these things is certainly true of Insatiable, the project’s late-album track “Grief” marks band leader Takiaya Reed’s debut as a vocalist, with the woozy 86-second single wafting by as Reed’s warped voice can be heard reciting the phrase “I don't know what I’m supposed to do / I’m so lonely without you.”
Elsewhere, Insatiable feels like a slight variation on the band’s long-standing instrumental themes: eerie choral passages open the record before Reed’s familiar baritone sax signals the impending doom metal carried out by droning guitar and crashing drums as heard on the aptly titled “Monolithic.” Reed also maintains Divide and Dissolve’s long-standing focus on speaking out against colonialist genocide and other oppressive power structures that perpetrate violence against Black and Indigenous peoples across the globe, with these 10 songs maintaining a striking balance of brute-force metal and unnerving stretches of ambient calm.
With the record out today via Bella Union, we asked Reed to share a few words on the concepts each song aimed to tackle. Check out a stream of the full LP below, and read on for her thoughts.
1. “Hegemonic”
“Hegemonic” addresses the relentless nature of the colonial project and how it is designed to break down Black liberation and Indigenous sovereignty. The fatigue that is felt.
2. “Monolithic”
Even though something seems like it’s impossible to change, it can. Empires have come crashing to the ground. This song has an imagination where empires predicated upon slavery and death of Black and Indigenous people are flattened and dismantled. It imagines what is necessary in order to disrupt a monolithic entity.
3. “Withholding”
There are many different approaches in order to approach something. “Withholding” is about strategy and its contemplation—how to decolonize, how to be in integrity, how to honor my ancestors, how to continue to give.
4. “Loneliness”
Many people have been confronted with deep and profound loneliness. This track attempts to address loneliness and isolation—the complicated and intricate pain that could possibly be felt in this emotion. I have felt lonely before. This is mostly brought on by feelings of dispossession. I don’t feel lonely anymore. I long for people to not be impacted by this.
5. “Dichotomy”
Heaven and hell. Love and hate. Decolonize and genocide.
6. “Provenance”
“Provenance” is meant to explore where it all begins. In order to find the ending. This song is meant to break the cycle. It is of great hope and written with great love.
7. “Disintegrate”
Everything that involves the Black and Indigenous people disappearing…disappearing. I do not want to disappear or be disappeared. #MMIW #2S
8. “Grief”
On this track I’ve used my voice. It's another instrument that I would like to be able to access and play better. For me, it’s deeply personal and attached to grief in a way that I’m unwilling to explain here. However, the words in my song are. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do / I’m so lonely without you.” I wish grief was easier to handle, to digest. I’ve been learning a lot about it and how it can be done in integrity.
9. “Holding Pattern”
This track is a reminder of the frustration of painful patterns in society repeating and replicating themselves over and over again. It’s a song that is supposed to generate strength to break intergenerational heartbreak and curses for Black and Indigenous people.
10. “Death Cult”
We, as a people, live in a society that’s willing to hemorrhage its people in the name of nameless atrocities. Genocide and colonization are consistently needing to be fought against in many different ways. It requires strength and working on goals that we may not see the results of in our lifetime or the next generations. We must continue the fight in order for things to change.
