Photo: A.F. Cortes

Alexis Marshall of Daughters goes solo with the excoriating “Nature in Three Movements”

Alexis Marshall, the iconic leader of hardcore legends Daughters, has released his first solo song, with an album touted for release at some point next year. The new song is called “Nature in Three Movements”, and Marshall says:

“The painstaking process of creating and honouring, pretending to know and asking for aide, questioning and conquering, and the pale, unending anxiety nipping at the heel. This past life come current is at last the realised direction of many excruciating years beneath the wheel. The evaluation process has grown enjoyable, the evaluation process is, at last, its own reward and the hands involved have made me a better human being; without these hands, I would surely have crashed to burn. Thank you all. I cull the hammer. I wield the hammer. I eat, breathe, sleep, shit, fuck the hammer.”

The above quote is about as serious, heavy and nihilistic as we’ve come to expect from Marshall, and “Nature in Three Movements” follows suit. Daughters are not afraid to experiment sonically, but here, with a team of Jon Syverson (Daughters) and Evan Patterson (Jaye Jayle, Young Widows) he has created a seriously strange body blow of a song. Booming percussion lays the ground work for chopped and warped guitar slashes, while Marshall is harrowingly hopeless in his vocal delivery. Across five minutes, “Nature in Three Movements” continues to warp and curdle, while Marshall gets more and more maniacal as he repeats the phrase “he couldn’t put the hammer down” with no shortage of menace – and yet you can’t turn away.

Listen to the song on streaming platforms or via the embed below.

The new song is out via Sargent House, with more to follow next year.