Divided: Baby Steps Toward World Domination
The making and run up to the release of the debut album from DIVIDED, Light Will Shine, was full of nervous anticipation, but the West Flanders based post-metal outfit delivered a visceral and cathartic record that certainly achieved one thing: relief. Down to the screams, a combination of clattering drums that rub up against groaning riffs, the record results in something akin to a sonic sigh of relief.
“The first thing I felt was relief, because we were all kind of stressed out, I think that people weren’t really going to get the approach that we took,” says frontman Pepijn Vandaele, even in saying that it seems soothing that the work that had been put in to the record had been well received — it could be the hangover though, still Vandaele says he feels great despite a sore head.
Light Will Shine is tumultuous from start to finish in its subject, concerning itself mostly with Vandaele’s experiences with anxiety over the past few years, it can be heard on record, the conflict of anxiety, the sonics often feeling like they’re pulling someone in two opposite directions, with the indecision ready to pull the arms out of their sockets at any moment, only for the head to pop off moments after. “I think the biggest barrier was writing the lyrics. Everything that came after that was just a release for me.” he admits. There’s a couple of relationships at play with such personal music, one between writer and lyrics, listener and lyric, but also how a writer will feel they are perceived due to their lyrics, it’s nerve wracking, it almost makes your palms sweat just talking about it.
“There has been a point in my life as a kid where I couldn’t talk about my feelings, where I hid them from everyone because I didn’t have good friends or there were always my parents to go to. But at some point, when you’re an adolescent, you suddenly don’t want to talk to your parents anymore. There’s almost a barricade of shame to talk seriously about your problems with your parents.” Not only did he come to find that he could talk to his friends about his feelings, but eventually reconciled with the idea of speaking to his parents about it. He broke down the barricade of shame by weaving how he felt into the fabric of the record, admitting “I’m glad that I’m not ashamed of the lyrics, I’m glad that I can be proud of them.”
Despite being consistently strong from start to finish Light Will Shine bottlenecks at its closure with Sleepers, the pressure cooker finally blows “We knew from the moment we wrote Sleepers that it was emotionally heavy. This is the final song of the album and the ending, the outbursts, the light that comes shining through wasn’t even written when we were headed into the studio.” By no means was the standout moment of the record improvised, but an impromptu moment of grandeur, it certainly is. We aren’t therapists, but sometimes when it comes to anxiety, you need a little bit of that, something to underscore everything that’s stewing inside of you and let it free all at once, that’s what Sleepers did for Pepijn.
The barriers that DIVIDED face aren’t just intrinsic to them, there’s a lot of outwards obstacles facing them, like a stupid vote that British people made eight years ago that – would you believe – is still affecting touring musicians today. They feel ready to take the step of touring here in the UK, but finding the funds seems difficult.
For the glimpse that the quartet have shown themselves for, it’s uncertain what they will do next, after all Light Will Shine draws on a very specific experience. However, they do have the talent and support to take things in a wild direction. Pepijn credits their producer for just how far they managed to take the record. “He really put us to work. He didn’t take any prisoners. If he needed another day, you played another day. For the better or for worse, he got the best out of me and of us as musicians. We made a lot of amazing changes to the album, really small details that he said ‘No, we’re gonna add this.’ We were all tired. We were thinking ‘do we really have time to be thinking about songwriting instead of recording right now we’re in the studio?. We’re paying for this.’ But it’s amazing that the things he heard in the music that weren’t in there when we wrote it, I mean, it’s a really small part but it adds colour to the record.” Without being overly cliché it takes a village to put something like this out into the world, and similarly it takes a village to get through rough patches like what Pepijn has experienced during, and before, the process of creating this album.
He closes with one final, but sweeping thought “It’s still weird to think that I’m doing an interview right now with somebody that’s not from my hometown. I mean what I say, we are taking these baby steps toward world domination.”
Light Will Shine is out now via Dunk!Records.
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