For the second time in the last six months Cell Division teamed up with Firenado for a twin-bill show in the basement of The Exchange. Tasked with kicking off the bank holiday weekend with their crashing, rusty saw rock music for a few dozen punters in attendance. It was one task effortlessly crushed with confident and swaggering aplomb.
I’ll get to Cell Division’s snarling, grunge-inspired set in a moment, but first a few words on Firenado. Flanked by two blue and orange flames billowing from box machines in front of the stage, the 4-piece produced an expansive and layered heavy rock sound which, at various points throughout the set, is replete with trilling guitars, face-melting solos but also some sophisticated, complex and atmospheric melodies.
If I had one criticism it would be that a couple of the more intricate and layered attempts have a slightly muddled and bloated composition. The band were at their best when they cut the flab and explored dirty, lead-heavy bluesy riffs with chugging, mechanistic flavour, or when they doubled-down on the atmospheric to deliver slower tempo, trudging-through-the-mud-type rhythms. That being said, you always feel that their live songs take you on a journey. And although the vehicle for that journey can sometimes be a bit laboured, it is, nonetheless, never boring.
When Cell Division take the stage their frontman, and lead guitarist, announces that this is the group’s “first gig in fifteen years” (aside from the same show held in this venue in December 2025). After the opening song commences with a delicate tinkling of strings, it suddenly lurches into a brief and bruising cacophony before reverting back again to the softer tinkling interlude and then alternating between the two extremes. Following the bi-polar intro the trio bursts into searing grunge apoplexy reminiscent of Bleach-era Nirvana. It’s an impressive tone-setter.
The band stays faithful to the early 1990s grunge-powered sound throughout with other subtle meanderings outside of this lane. ‘Coming Back Tonight’, a song, the band explains, that was written in 1993, opens with a siren-like distortion. The guitar work pays unmistakeable homage to The Smashing Pumpkins’ Gish recordwhile the guitarist tilts his axe upright and howls the song’s refrain. You’d be forgiven for thinking you were inside the soundtrack of a GTA video game replete with highway police pursuits and car jackings.
The bassist plays high up giving the set a penetratingly deep bassline and scuzzy quality which complements the squealing, high-pitched lead guitar. If the band had accumulated any rust during their 15-year live playing hiatus, it barely shows tonight. The trio all approach their craft with confidence and the lead singer-guitarist engages the audience, and introduces songs, with witty and sardonic banter.
We are approaching the halfway point and a song about “a man who fell in love with a man in a tutu”, with the comical title, ‘Downstairs Mix Up’, projects a jumpy, scuzzy feel with a rapid tempo which provokes the band into frequent displays of flair and stage histrionics. They’re really enjoying themselves as performers again and it shows, organically. Nothing is forced. The music plummets to heavier character with the next song. A low, piledriving bass underscores the trio’s channelling of Black Sabbath to generate a deep pulsing rhythm. The song ‘Lost’ follows on and plunges the basement into a new depth of heaviness with the singer enunciating with a spitting venom as if the object of his ire is staring him right in the face.
Aside from the clear grunge influence and penchant for the employment of Sonic Youth-like distortion techniques, the obvious like-for-like comparison, to my ears, is the alternative band Failure. A frustratingly underrated American band active 1990-1997 before reforming again in 2014. Cell Division carve out huge slices of Failure’s first two albums – Comfort and Magnified – to inform their own sound. This was to the point where I was driven to listen to Failure on my journey home from the gig.
The band finish as they started, a clean mid-tempo start to their final song gives way to a caustic clamour of angsty aggression. If this really was one of the band’s first gigs in 15 years, then it never showed in their performance throughout this 11-song set, except for a couple of prolonged moments fumbling with interests between songs. Triumphantly, the band makes their final witty proclamation to the charged audience: “that was fucking great! Now who’s getting the beers in!”
Dan Adshead
