For SPLIT vocalist Marvin Borges-Soares, a change was exactly what he needed to get his creative juices flowing again. "I left my previous band, with whom we toured a lot, because I was no longer in agreement with what I played and doing," he wrote us from his home in Normandy, France.
"I had written songs in parallel (while playing in former band), so I decided to create SPLIT, which is accompanied by friends to record these songs and to start from scratch with the simple ambition of playing, finding pleasure, and saying what is in my heart." The group's lineup is completed by bassist Lucas Ramos, drummer Jeremy Cortes, and guitarists Romain Sensey and Raphaël Motte.
SPLIT's musical approach isn't that easy to peg with one genre tag, but Marvin offered his perspective. "Our sound is a balance between dirty and heavy. We attach importance to the bass being present and not just supporting the guitars.
"People tell us that our style is a mix of chain punk, crust, and hardcore punk, which I pretty much agree with, but there are songs that are more oriented towards a sludge sound— sometimes darker and almost blackened. The bands that inspire me are quite different from each other but if I had to name a few I would say: Nails, Scalp, Sex Prisoner, Gulch, Total Abuse, Hoax, and Thou."
Next up, the SPLIT frontman shared some thoughts on "Stained Soul," the penultimate single before the release of their debut album, Violence Breeds Violence. Seen above, the track is accompanied by a music video directed by Rémy Barbe, an award-winning director at the Gérardmer Festival.
"In this song, I implicitly evoke the struggle against addiction, its demons, and the gradual destruction of the body and soul that it brings. The grip, the mental prison, and the substratum, represented in the video by an organic abstraction: a dark matter that gradually takes hold of me, consuming the meager portion of light and humanity that resists despite everything. Even if the soul is certainly stained here, perhaps it has a tiny chance."
With the album release slated for this fall, and a tour of France being booked to support it, SPLIT will be busy in the coming months. Speaking of France, Marvin gave us some of picks from his country's current underground music scene. "In Normandy, where I live, there are quite a few good punk and hardcore bands. In France in general, it's quite different styles. There's Pilori that I really like, a grindcore band from Rouen. Cavalerie (from Paris) are a perfect mix of hardcore punk and death metal.
"Sorcerer (also from Paris) are more into hardcore metal as well as Insurgent from the North of France, where I'm from (born and raised). There's also Rixe, more oriented Oi! I could name more, I'll make you a French playlist."
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