Pitchfork London 2025: Divide and Dissolve & deathcrash

Another unseasonably warm November, another batch of Pitchfork-curated shows across the capital. While tonight’s gig has been downgraded to Corsica Studios after would-be-headliners Unwound sadly had to postpone their European tour, we’re still left with a very tasty double-header.

deathcrash’s first song is kind of a litmus test for their whole deal. Patience is definitely required - the drums don’t come in for ages, and you’re left to lock in to what you can of the minimal arrangement. But the band is emanating this bulletproof confidence that makes sure you stick with them every step of the way.

The sound is pristine but still confrontational, with dry, scraping guitar underpinned by gut-rocking bass. Even the ‘quiet’ bits sound heavy as shit, and some of the piercing treble is genuinely painful. When drummer Noah Bennett finally gets started? Game over.

The band makes it seem easy, but don’t get it twisted - it’s really hard to play this slow. Speed erodes mistakes, but slowness amplifies them. The payoff is that the pace really makes you feel the weight of every decision in the arrangement and the performance, and it’s this intentionality that gives them so much power. Everything is so deliberate. You feel that every second of silence and every bass drum thwack has been sweated over in rehearsal.

You wouldn’t exactly call them a ‘sly’ band - their stony-faced compositions feel entirely impervious to irony - but the emotional component has a way of sneaking up on you while you’re distracted. The prime example is set closer ‘American Metal’ which builds via gradual agglomeration, and achieves a turbo-charged catharsis during its final section, slicing open the heavens and letting the angels’ tears rain down. Like all sophisticated post-rockers, they’re not telling you what to feel. But they sure as hell are making you feel something.

There’s a certain energy hanging in the air while waiting for Divide & Dissolve to come on. Will they really be as heavy as reports suggest? One glance at the stage suggests ear protection would be advised, with an intimidating lineup of amps looming over a dizzying pedalboard setup. I escape to what feels like a slightly safer distance.

Takiaya Reed starts proceedings by looping wisps of soprano sax into an intricate mesh, slowly building before strapping on her guitar and erupting in a sudden whirlwind of sound. The riffs, such as they are, are punishingly slow. They spend most of their long lives as unrelenting drones, occasionally shattering into more recognisable shards of doom metal or Texan sludge.

While there are some segments where my attention wanders - maybe too much tension and not enough release? - there’s undoubtedly a kind of pleasure in simply giving yourself over to the music as it crashes against you, and letting your ears attune to the nuances. It’s almost like one of those endless jokes that loses its humour but regains it by the absurdity of the repetition. That’s probably the wrong analogy - this is serious business, after all - but Reed’s giggly sunshine presence between songs is a powerful counterpoint to the music. She expresses her heartfelt appreciation for the sound engineer, and her tour manager, and her incredible drummer Scarlett. She also makes clear that the project is explicitly grounded in the devastation wrought by colonialism and white supremacy, and heard through this prism, the music feels impossibly rich in possibilities.

I’m too washed to reliably make it to a proper Corsica club night before its closing in March, so the fact that this might be my personal farewell (or au revoir?) to one of London’s best venues is playing on my mind the whole time. It’s always been a treat watching bands in a room that’s more usually associated with colliding bodies and strobes and clouds of dry ice, but it’s felt ever more incongruous of late, nestled inside the wipe-clean shimmer of the aggressively gentrifying Elephant & Castle landscape. The way it’s been run all these years has been a gift to the city’s music scene, and I hope everyone making it down here in the next few months has as good a time as I did tonight.