She called herself “Diana, Hunter of Bus Drivers.” In the late summer of 2013, a woman shot and killed a bus driver who inflicted sexual violence on the women of Juárez, Mexico. Then she did it again, a day later. You probably heard this intense story on This American Life, or maybe the epic song that episode inspired, by The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die.
Now her vigilante rage courses through the blistering veins of Less Art, a new band featuring members of Thrice, Kowloon Walled City and Curl Up And Die.
Guest vocalist Meghan O’Neill-Pennie (Super Unison, ex-Punch) doubles down on the blood-curdling screams for “Diana The Huntress,” a hulking piece of post-hardcore sculpted from Drive Like Jehu’s nasty grooves and Unwound's squirrely tension. The track comes from Less Art’s debut album Strangled Light, masterfully menacing work from a group of musicians who have mainlined the chaos wizards of yore, and then became them. Paraphrasing a message sent to an El Paso news site, Meghan O’Neill-Pennie and Mike Minnick scream together as Diana in the track’s sludgy breakdown: “I am an instrument / This is a warning to those that think we are weak.”
“I’ve always been interested in writing songs about vigilantism, crime, and feminism,” Less Art vocalist Mike Minnick tells NPR. “And this story had all three. I was instantly fascinated with how the events unfolded and how Diana became a mythology.”
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