Few recent records have embodied the cathartic and political function of hardcore as forcefully as Diaspora Problems. Soul Glo, the Philadelphia band led by singer Pierce Jordan, deploy here a music that refuses all distance: hardcore punk is no exercise in style but an outlet, a weapon, a cry hurled against racism, precarity and the violence borne by Black bodies in America.
The critics (an 87 average across twelve reviews) hailed an album of rare intelligence and intensity. What strikes first is Jordan’s voice: a raw scream, at breaking point, carrying lyrics of cutting lucidity on the African-American condition. Rarely will anger have been placed at the service of so articulate a discourse.
Musically, Soul Glo blow the frames apart. The hardcore base is crossed by hip-hop incursions, noise ruptures, free-jazz saxophones, unexpected sonic collages. The record advances by lurches, refuses the straight line, weds the chaos of its subject. This formal feverishness, far from harming the message, multiplies its charge.
This density has a flip side: Diaspora Problems is a demanding, at times exhausting record that does not give itself on first contact and asks the listener for sustained attention. One might reproach it for an overflow that at moments verges on saturation. But that overflow is also the mark of a sincerity that spills beyond its frame.
Verdict: 8.5/10. A burning, necessary record where the fury of hardcore rediscovers its first vocation: to voice the unbearable and refuse to fall silent.
