ALBUM REVIEW: Light Will Shine – Divided

You can name lots of things that Belgium is iconic for: great food, architecture, the saxophone and Audrey Hepburn originate from there, and more. But you might not list really great post-rock. DIVIDED could change that; the quartet from West Flanders create visceral and emotionally nuanced post-rock, speckled with some hardcore, on their debut album Light Will Shine – a title that seemingly emits an essence of hope at first glance, though at times the album can do all but that. 

This debut can be something of an emotional rollercoaster at times, mimicking the ebb and flow of what it feels like to combat anxiety and turbulent mental health, where notes of light manage to creep in, they can at times only emphasise that horror that lurks in their shadow. Cinder opens the record with vocalist Pepjin Vandaele’s glass shattering yells, that suck you in and latch on with their manic barbs. When they do loud, they do it well, swelling in just the right spots like the self-destructive Remaining In Limbo verses where Vandaele wails alongside motor-like riffs before sinking backwards into a revelatory chorus. 

That might just be DIVIDED’s biggest strength: knowing exactly where the contours lay, and embracing that without mercy for the listener. Tracks’ long runtimes give them the space to do that; even though The Viscous Loop calls for a ten-minute attention span, it has you in a post-rock headlock that you will not get yourself free from. You’ll even find a trembling emo intermission on Kattestraat, a tempering preparation of a track that’s there to ensure the listener is ready for the impending heaviness, before dunking them back into the incendiary blend of metal and post-rock. 

It’s volatile inside the walls of Light Will Shine and the change in tempos can be winding,; it’s a perfect imitation of Vandaele’s anxiety that’s weaved throughout, hints of it here and there where you don’t expect it. The temperature rises before suddenly falling. Upon hearing Sleepers, the closing track, you can’t help but feel everything before is there to serve it. Eight minutes inside a pressure cooker, one that utilises the tension that has risen over the course of the album. Drawing a line under everything prior to it, Sleepers is slow for the majority until the fuzziest of grunge riffs stay steady for some time.

Imagine you wake up holding a bomb with no timer, no idea of how it got there and you don’t know what could happen if you move, that’s what the apex of Light Will Shine is. The most glorious bridge of clattering instruments that waits for the perfect moment to go off, you’re free of your troubles in that moment where anxiety fades, an all encompassing high that you know will inevitably fade, but God does it feel good in that sweet moment. The subtle chord changes, the climbing pressure of sticks hitting drum skins, distant raspy vocals. If you could bottle the relief, or the momentum of saying today will be better, it would have a Light Will Shine sticker on the front.

Rating: 9/10

Light Will Shine is set for release on March 29th via Dunk!Records.

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