BIO

For as long as he can remember, Jason Weiche has suffered from a profound and unrelenting depression. Not only is it something that’s always been there, but it’s also only gotten worse with time. It’s both the acceptance of that fact and his intentional push back against it that inspired Bad Cry Loud, the debut album from DIV3R. Both its title and its songs are derived from abject existential malaise, and the intrusive thoughts it often induces in the band’s vocalist and guitarist.

Indeed, he jokes that the title is a heavier, more morbid version of the “ugly cry”—that visceral physical reaction to the worst news that results in uncontrollable facial expressions. Except that ‘bad cry loud’ is pure primal, abject suffering, the human condition reaching its lowest point—one from which there’s often no return.

“This album, especially the lyrical content, is based around wanting to die,” he explains, “but also coming out of it with something that inspires you. Some of the best artists in the world end up killing themselves because they feel too much and have this heightened sense of awareness about depression. I wanted to write about that as a way to keep myself alive.”

Together with drummer Carlo Marquez, with whom he played in the acclaimed post-hardcore band Stolas, and who he’s known since they were five, Weiche set about writing himself out of that black hole. It’s worth pointing out, however, that DIV3R—rounded out by bassist Ryan Graves and Bobby Lyons—isn’t a continuation of Stolas per se. That band broke up in 2018 after three albums, and Weiche left in 2015 after two, before reuniting in 2023. It is, however, a continuation of their undeniable creativity and chemistry. More importantly, it’s an elongation and extension of their early history—Marquez and Weiche grew up in the same city as Graves and played in the same band with him, while Lyons is an old friend from Las Vegas who knew the pair when they were in pre-Stolas band The Akashic Record, and who eventually became the bassist for Stolas. As Weiche succinctly puts it, starting and being in DIV3R “felt like coming back to each other.”

“After going through so many things, especially touring, for so many years, and coming back to this,” adds Marquez, “it almost feels like Bad Cry Loud is a death and a rebirth.” That’s true in more ways than one. Because beyond the provenance of their past—one remolded to fit both the present day and the future—there’s also the question of this record’s lyrical themes.

Because while this record might be about wanting oblivion, by its very existence it rages against the dying of the light. And while it’s very much rooted in the travails and tribulations of life (or the wish for its opposite), its songs are also set in alternate dimensions — places that Weiche actually experienced through some extremely intense encounters that he’s had with plant medicine — something he says has helped (and continues to help) him come to terms with his morbid desires.“I feel like few months I've got to do it,” he admits, “but the last year I've been dragging my feet because it's literally the most intense, fucked-up feelings you could ever feel, just the most of everything. But after being so open and connected because of it, I do feel the connection closing and the window closing. And then you reopen it and it just comes pouring out.”

That’s captured in the music, too—the otherworldly atmospheres of opening one-two gambit “Sober” and the frenzied space-time vortex of “Wrung”, the freewheeling, careening fist single “1047 AD” and the electrifying, high-octane nihilism of “Metroid” with its urgent, desperate screams of ‘Dance with death/Dance with nothing.’ All of them are complex yet visceral songs that tap into that human condition—even if they’re set in an elsewhere, the emotions they convey are very real, very human, very honest. Take, for instance, “Neue Neptune” or “Luna”.

While the latter is one of the few more tender, vulnerable songs of the 12 here—a late night ocean sway that teeters between freedom and oblivion while reaching towards its epic crescendo—it still feels like a communiqué from another plane of existence, a swathe, a rush, a jolt of pure feeling that, like the rest of these songs, is dark and heavy, full of the burden both of being human, and just being.

There is, however, some unexpected levity on closer ‘Skary’. An upbeat blast of pure fun, it diffuses all the dark energy that precedes it into something more uplifting and less serious. It doesn’t, however, undermine the gravity of what comes before it. If anything, it intensifies it, because you suddenly become aware of just how dark the wormhole you’ve been hurtling through was.

“This whole album is really serious,” says Marquez, “and then that last track is just a dance song. It's a deeper dance song, but it's really just something to end the album on a high note. It’s very out of left field, especially for a post-hardcore band.”

Deliberately made to sound “haunted”, the song winds the album down in fun, frivolous and very literal fashion—at its end, the song suddenly slows down, warping to a halt like an old cassette tape, like a human life finally ready to give in to its demons. Thankfully, Bad Cry Loud is the sound of resistance to those very demons. For Weiche, it also serves as something of a redemption arc, a return—after a near-decade break—to fully immersing himself in what he loves and what makes him complete.

“In 2015, I left Stolas,” he says. “I had this crazy relationship that took me away from friends and family, and really threw me into the dark. Me and Carlo didn't talk for a while, and we didn't write music for several years. Coming back to that was how DIV3R was born. Something was just missing in my life—and this is totally what it was.”