dim from Georgia, USA, knows how to hit where it hurts. Their take on post hardcore is a gut-punch mix of skramz, post-rock, and emo hardcore that digs deep into the soul. With slow, heart-wrenching tempos and raw, emotional intensity, dim creates a sound that’s very close and dear to our hearts here on IDIOTEQ.
Brian (baritone guitar and vocals) and Colin (drums) are the duo behind dim. Brian hangs out near Atlanta, Georgia, while Colin’s based in Washington D.C.
Like a solid portion of your corporate day jobs today, their creative process is purely remote. Brian kicks things off with some scratch tracks, Colin adds his electric drum magic, and then they go back and forth, reworking until everything feels just right.
“Sometimes the song comes together really quickly. Sometimes it’s an iterative process of reworking and restructuring a song until we’re happy with it. After our tour in May 2023, we knew we wanted to take advantage of the momentum we had and decided to write a full length album.” – says the band.
“Neither of us had written and recorded a proper full length so we wanted to be really intentional with this record. We wanted to take advantage of the longer release and write some songs that might not have made sense on an EP. We tried to find a balance between making the songs varied enough to not get stale and making sure everything was cohesive and flowed together.
At the time I was listening to bands like Still Life and Turning Point and wanted to introduce a little bit more of an early emo/hardcore feel. There are more chuggy riffs and yelly singing parts compared to our previous releases.”
This album is a rollercoaster ride through personal and collective struggles, touching on themes like mental illness, resilience, and social justice. It’s about navigating the ups and downs of depression, finding support in loved ones, and grappling with the weight of world events.
The lyrics dive deep into personal experiences, dealing with the heartache of losing loved ones to suicide, and finding moments of peace amidst the pain.
Indonesian artist Asep Yasin Abdullahya, who nailed the cover art for dim’s previous EP “To Realize Its Own, the Earth,” is back at it again.
The band sent him their songs and lyrics and gave him free rein. Asep took a liking to the lyrics of “bloom,” and the resulting cover art blew dim away. With just a few tweaks, the cover was ready, and fans are loving it.
For the vinyl packaging, dim also teamed up with their friend Moss, who created a beautiful mixed media piece. This art features on the single, vinyl labels, and an insert, plus a shirt design with lyrics from “bloom.”
2024 has been a killer year for screamo
With tons of standout releases catching dim’s eye. “This year has been ridiculous for screamo releases it’s hard to even pick,” they admit.
They shout out the MASSA NERA/QUIET FEAR split as one of their all-time favorite screamo splits. Their friends in .22LR and SOLVALOU dropped some underrated EPs, and the MALEVICH EP is nothing short of amazing.
dim also digs the unique vibe of the HEAVENLY BLUE release and praises the BASQUE record for its fresh take on the screamo scene.
dim’s latest album isn’t just a collection of tracks; it’s a heartfelt and political statement, a testament to a genre that keeps pushing boundaries and inspiring its listeners.
Each track on the album tells its own story, weaving together personal narratives and emotional explorations. dim’s track-by-track commentary dives into the inspiration and meaning behind each song, offering a peek into their creative minds. Dive into the detailed commentary below.
reflection
Other than the two songs on our split with Catalyst, “reflection” was one of the first songs we wrote for the record. Colin and I both knew pretty early on that this was going to be the opener to the album.
The lyrics are about my ups and downs with mental illness. Sometimes I feel like I have overcome depression but there are other days that I’m reminded that it can still be a struggle. The vocal sample was taken from the Pamela Anderson Netflix documentary.
constante
I think “constante” was the last song we wrote for the record. I had shown my wife and my brother demos for the previous 9 songs and separately they both said that the record needed a fast song.
The lyrics are about how I can always count on my wife to be there for me and how supportive she is of all my endeavours.
bloom
“bloom”, along with “pueblo”, was originally on our split with Catalyst, but we felt like these songs were our strongest material and deserved to be on a longer release. When I first wrote “bloom” on guitar, I knew that it was going to end up as one of my favorite songs. At the end of 2022, my wife had a close friend who died by suicide.
About 10 years ago, I also had an uncle who died by suicide. Seeing her go through these emotions brought me right back to what I was feeling when I heard the news about my uncle. My wife’s friend had worked at a community garden in Columbus, GA before she died. As such, her family and friends held a memorial service for her there where we got to plant flowers for her. I was trying to capture a sense of peace with the line “now you’ll become the flowers you once picked.”
We got our friend Oliver to scream “you’ll bloom once more” and our friend Ron to do clean vocals over the chorus at the end.
semilla
This was one of our favorite songs on the record but I struggled finding lyrics to fit with the music for a while. I knew I wanted a vocal sample in Spanish at the end of the song to transition into “memoria”.
One day, I relistened to Salvador Allende’s last speech and heard the line where he says “Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seeds which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever.”
Those words referenced a lot of the imagery throughout the record and I ended up using part of it in the lyrics. I also got my friend Rot to add noise at the end of the song behind the vocal sample.
There was a moment in the ongoing war in Gaza where I felt very helpless. I was waking up to gruesome images of dead Palestinian children and then had to go to work and pretend like nothing was out of the ordinary. I felt selfish for losing hope when Palestinians refused to give up no matter how difficult their situation was. I am reminded during times like these that optimism is a discipline.
memoria
We wrote “memoria” wanting the beginning to start slow to give the record a different dynamic. I got my brother Gavin to do some guttural vocals at the end of the song. These were some of the first lyrics I finished on the album. They’re about the activist Tortuguita who was murdered by Georgia police for resisting the construction of Cop City.
Atlanta is known as “the city in the forest” due to its large tree canopy but this name feels contradictory now that the City is tearing down a forest to build a mock city for cops to practice violently suppressing popular movements.
soil
Other than “bloom”, the lyrics to “soil” are probably my favorite on the record. One day I saw a clip of a Palestinian girl saying ” I will remain steadfast on my land until the last blood drop in my soul. Then I will be buried in my land. I want to be planted in my land.” I thought this was a beautiful perspective and the imagery worked really well with the lyrics I had already written for “bloom”, “pueblo”, and “memoria”.
Colin and I played around with some iterations for the album title but finally agreed on “planted in the soil”. I felt like this idea tied a lot of the central themes of the record together. We got our friend Will from Solvalou to do some melodic hardcore style vocals during one of the parts. At the end there are vocals from him as well as Robert from Solvalou where the three of us say “even if everything has turned to rubble, I will still be there.”
pueblo
“pueblo” was originally two different songs but neither felt quite right. We were able to take the best parts from each song and combined them into a much better finished product.
We got Rafael from We Were Skeletons to double the vocals at the end of the song. The lyrics are a play on the Spanish word “pueblo” that can mean “town” as well as “people” or “nation” (for example “el pueblo unido jamás será vencido”).
Last year, my wife and I moved in together for the first time to a small town about an hour north of Atlanta. This song is about creating a new life together in a new place as well as us fighting alongside each other trying to make the world a better place.
self
This structure of “self” had to be reworked a lot, but now it’s one of my favorite songs on the record. I was initially worried that it was too dark compared to our other songs but I think it’s actually a good change of pace. I accidentally ripped the intro off from the end of the novely song “whisper for help”.
We got our friend Connor from Catalyst to do the call and response type vocals with me in the chorus.
The lyrics are about alienation both from self and from others. Something I realized later on in life is that depression increases memory loss. I’ve tried to distance myself from some past memories but that has led to dissociation.
Capitalism also promotes alienation to others and that feels especially true moving to a rural area.
everything
When we first wrote “everything” it was straight up a pop punk song. We almost scrapped it but we both thought it had potential. I reworked the chord order in the beginning and Colin changed up the drums in a couple parts to make it work.
We got Sasha from Malevich to do some vocals at a couple spots and he had the idea to carry the vocals into the last part which I thought really completed the song.
A few weeks before my wife and I moved in together, I was driving through a torrential downpour and was scared of getting in an accident. I remember thinking that I was looking forward to the future and I hadn’t had that thought in a long time.
heridas
We were about to send the songs to get mastered when Ivan from Vientre got us his vocal contribution for “heridas”. J. Robbins was probably annoyed at us for the last minute change but Colin and I thought his vocals sounded great. I knew what I wanted to do vocally for a while with this song but I struggled to find the right lyrics.
One day I was listening to the first Thursday record and there is a line where he says “when people die, they take a piece of us with them.” When I was younger I didn’t fully understand these words but they resonated with me much later. I translated this line into Spanish but also wanted to add a line where I flipped the words to something more positive: “when people die they leave a piece of them with us.”
During this time, my uncle in Chile who is disabled fell and hit his head. He had a lot of brain bleeding and we didn’t know if he was going to make it.
My cousin, his daughter, shared an image of a cartoon figure with plants growing out of its wounds. There was text on the image that translates to “day after day, planting from wounds”.
This line, along with the other two, I felt like really summarized what the entire record was about.
