Dissect HXC @ Monster Mouse Studios, Marrickville Saturday, October 11, 2025

It’s a balmy Saturday evening in Marrickville. Various band members (whom I mistake, on two occasions, for staff) direct people to bathrooms, re-fill the water dispenser, and perch on the couch propped up against a whitewashed wall in Monster Mouse Studios’ open-plan artist’s space. I realise that there’s just one guy at the door handling tickets —–- presumably the owner —–- who later leans out of the bar-in-the-wall, people-watching. It’s vacant; this is an All-Ages, Hardcore 4 Palestine, DIY show.

The vocalist of another band on the bill, Dharawal country’s emoviolent exit: Seraphim, transcribes his Notes app poetry while newfound friends Vinnie and Lomey show me their Kandi and recount —- between slices of a maxed-out pedestal fan —- the exodus of a certain disgruntled bassist. Sharing members is the nature of the scene, as is cigarettes on the footpath. It’s DIY’s familiarity with proximity that makes this hot white studio and the anticipation of a hotter-yet box downstairs (where the soundcheck is cleverly projected onto the wall behind me) exciting, and not dreadful, on this 30°C day. 

Downstairs, pink and purple LED pinpricks struggle against ceiling lights, but legs are already jittering along to ‘War Bad’’s punchy bassline. Somebody turns off the lights, and with all the vehemence of hardcore but the bouncy groove of Minor Threat, Dissect’s opening song turns arms into scissors (and my own into a bulwark hovered over my chest).

Dissect —–- Dana, Nina, Harry, and Moss —–- are queer and brown hardcore punk. If there’s one thing they’ve got downpat, it’s a breakdown: they’re scattered and measured, but hearty and urgent, navigated by Dana on drums. Their energy peaks and plateaus, but in the awesome kind of way that demonstrates an acuity to the crowd’s energy and lets us stew on precisely what they’re saying. Vocalist Nina goes, within a minute, from the guttural, kneeling wails of ‘Snuff Us Out’ to a standing imploration, hardly breathless:

‘Everybody’s saying protect the dolls; protect the dolls.…Tell me how you’re going to Protect the Dolls’. 

As an uptick in new and established local hardcore acts prompts talk about age and accessibility within the scene, Dissect drills down on their genre’s ethos: they want you to be able to walk the walk,; whoever you are. But do it, and do it well.  

See my favourite of the set, ‘Wave of Loss (Femicide Song)’:

Take the victims and write them off

System must change, keep your hands off

…

You’re all complicit in this new wave of loss

Women lost to violence is part of the cost 

They close with ‘Bender’, a song about drug abuse and the ‘horrible shit it makes people do’. People, spurred to action, enliven the four walls of the space. As a friend puts it, there’s a ‘battlefield’ emanating from the squat diamond platform: ‘some brave soldiers charge the stage, while others rally in support close behind’. We’re left wanting more as they spiral downward to the buzz of feedback and limbs crackle in reluctant stasis.

Dissect’s set was the perfect length to demonstrate their knack for responsive structure and lyrical urgency. If this was any measure of the music Moss, Harry, Dana, and Nina are yet to make and perform, I can’t wait to hear more from them. And, you should go to your next AA show.