Formed by brothers Liam and Luke May (Trashmouth Records, Medicine 8), alongside Quinn Whalley (Paranoid London, Warmduscher) and Lias Saoudi (Fat White Family), DECIUS is a composite organism stitched from the UK underground’s sleaziest corners—equal parts queer ritual, acid invocation, and punk theatre. On May 24, DECIUS ignites Control Club's spirits with a live set, headlining a Tryouts London label showcase that takes over the entire venue, promising a night of maximal sleaze.
Though rooted in dance music, DECIUS owes as much to squat-club psychedelia and performance art as it does to Chicago House. Saoudi’s falsetto crooned come-ons scuttle across looped basslines and distorted snares. The drums are wet and wriggling, synths erupt in convulsions, and nothing sounds finished. What binds it all together is the convergence of each member’s creative world. The May brothers, through Trashmouth Records, shaped the careers of Fat White Family and Warmduscher, forging a South London sound equal parts post-punk derangement and psychedelic abrasion. Whalley’s background in Paranoid London lends an uncompromising analog purity—gear-driven and defiantly non-digital. Saoudi’s contributions are as literary as they are obscene, turning nightclub gestures into grotesque poetry.
DECIUS’s recorded history began in the mid-2010s with a string of raw 12″s on More About Music, a cult UK label known for no-frills, warehouse-grade house. Tracks like Come To Me Villa (2014), Bread & Butter (2015), and Rupture Boutique (2016) were sweaty missives from the underground, driven by live hardware jams, minimal overdubs, and a perverse sense of humor.
Their signature aesthetic took form slowly but deliberately. By the time Decius Vol. I arrived in late 2022 via The Leaf Label, the group had honed their approach into a fully realized body of work. The album stitched together sordid grooves and erotic tension with mechanical repetition and brutalist humor. Tracks like Masculine Encounter and Look Like A Man recalled the deviant urgency of Ron Hardy and the death-disco of Cabaret Voltaire, but laced with something even more depraved.
Their follow-up, Vol. II (Splendour & Obedience), released in early 2025, pushed this formula into more grotesque and voluptuous territory. Tracks like Queen Of 14th Street and Birth Of A Smirk felt like collapsed operettas of disco violence. The compositions became more layered, their arrangements bordering on the theatrical. Yet the content remained maximal, pornographic, and tragicomic.
This theatricality extends to the stage. Whether playing Glastonbury’s queer tent NYC Downlow, Berghain’s birthday weekend, or a haute couture afterparty in Paris, DECIUS performances are closer to sex magick rituals than conventional DJ sets. The May brothers man their custom-built DJ lecterns, twisting knobs and conjuring dirt from vintage drum machines. Whalley’s rig spews chaos from analog boxes while Saoudi hurls himself into the crowd, barks from behind strobes, or writhes provocatively across the booth.
In naming themselves after the Roman emperor Decius, who ruled briefly before dying at the hands of the Goths in 251 AD, the band announces their affinity for doomed spectacle. Their laurel wreath insignia is a camp emblem of decadent collapse in triumph and tragedy.
This formal chaos is underpinned by real discipline. DECIUS frequently record live in single takes with little post-processing, embracing errors, feedback, and overload as compositional tools. Many tracks are born from full-volume improvisation sessions, later stripped and looped to maintain their pulse. Behind the gags and groans is serious engineering. Hiss, delay, and clipped screams function as percussion; distortion is sculpted, not incidental.
In 2023, they launched their imprint, DECIUS Trax, with a series of rapid-fire EPs (Decius Trax I–V) aimed squarely at the dancefloor’s most ungovernable moments. These releases were built from saturated drum machines, hiss-slicked basslines, and minimal vocals, serving raw cuts for the DJs who know exactly what time of night to drop them, earning notable DJ support. Matthew Dear included DECIUS on his DJ-Kicks compilation; The Chemical Brothers dropped them in a BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix; Paranoid London and Hercules & Love Affair featured their tracks in guest sets.
There is a temptation to frame DECIUS as merely a pervy indulgence, a midnight joke in the shape of a record. But their output's scope, consistency, and intelligence suggest otherwise. DECIUS is what happens when the ghosts of Frankie Knuckles and G.G. Allin rave together in a Roman vomitorium.
