FÏX8:SËD8 unveil the nightmarish video clip ‘Oathbreaker’ as the next single taken from the forthcoming sixth album of the German dark electro act. Octagram has been slated for release on October 3, 2025.
FÏX8:SËD8 comment: “The track ‘Oathbreaker’ builds up menacingly over four minutes before it explodes in a thunderstorm of metallic distorted drums and a bass-line that rattles your bones”, mastermind Martin Sane writes. “This song is somewhat unusual in its heaviness for us and it represents the future development of the project – while it also keeps all the elements that have characterised our sound until now such as atmospheric pads and pleasing sequences.”
KHNVM drop the visually lush lyric video ‘Purgatorial Pyre’ as the final advance single taken from their forthcoming new full-length Cosmocrator. The fourth album of the German death metal act with Bangladeshi roots has been chalked up for release on August 29, 2025.
KHNVM comment: “A celestial masquerade collapses into ash as mortals kneel, deceived, their cries devoured by a silent, indifferent deity”, singer and guitarist Obliterator oracles. “The album’s opening track ‘Purgatorial Pyre’ does not sing of redemption, but of the cruel theater that mankind mistakes for grace – where each prayer drips with despair and the divine remains an elusive phantom.”
Stockholm’s heavy rock titans Lugnet have recently released a brand-new single titled ‘Fading Lights’, now available worldwide on all major digital platforms through Majestic Mountain Records.
Stretching across an awe-inspiring 11 minutes, ‘Fading Lights’ is far more than just a single, it’s a musical odyssey. With guest contributions from Dr. Carl Westholm (Candlemass) on keyboards and Hilda Norlin on vocals, the track weaves together towering riffs, soaring vocals, and sprawling instrumental passages. The result is a colossal opus that showcases Lugnet’s remarkable ability to channel the primal energy of the ’70s while forging something that feels undeniably vital today.
Louisiana-based ‘industrial bass’ pioneer, SINTHETIK MESSIAH has unveiled their latest EP, Beneath The Surface.
Beneath The Surface is a descent into the undercurrent — a raw, unfiltered excavation of the chaos, cruelty, and confusion that define the world we live in. Each track is a spade hitting the dirt, digging deeper into the systems, histories, traumas, and human instincts that keep everything so relentlessly messed up. It’s not about offering answers. It’s about refusing to look away.
Sonically, the EP blends the smoky unease of 90s trip-hop with the rusted edge of 90s industrial — a fusion of broken textures, distorted synths, and dragging, dirt-covered beats. It’s jagged, emotional, and sometimes angry — the way truth sounds when it’s unearthed.
‘Caught In The Grip Of The City’ is representative of the EP’s dark atmosphere. Hear it here:
The differences between proper indie labels and major labels are manifold, but a key one is not professionalism, but passion. Riot Season release records for the love, not the money: they make enough to keep releasing albums, and that’s pretty much the aim. It’s by no means a capitalist endeavour. So when Andy announces the next release thus, it’s a sincere reflection of what it’s like to release an album by a band you love:
Over the years, I’ve released many a great noise rock (for want of a better term) record.
And pretty much every one of those bands have been influenced at some point by the Swedish underground legends BRAINBOMBS.
A band that thrills and disgusts in equal measure. With their bludgeoning repetitive riffs, and interesting lyrical themes, They’re pretty much held up as masters of the genre.
So, to be sat here in August 2025 announcing I’m releasing their new album on my little label is a fucking thrill. I’ve been listening to it non stop for about two solid months, and now you lot finally get to have a taste yourselves
And the press blurb is gold. Read it, and then get stuck into ‘Midnight Slaughter’ below. It’s a killer.
PRESS BLURB
The Swedish underground legends return with a brand new album.
Let this reddit user take over …
“Listening to Brainbombs has been one of my weirdest experiences with music.
Brainbombs are most definitely a band. I guess at the core they’re a hardcore punk/noise rock hybrid I guess? But… its so unlike anything I’ve ever heard and I still don’t know if its good or bad. I saw the edgelord Ed Gein album cover, and it intrigued me, so I listened to their biggest song and it was easily THE WORST thing I had EVER FUCKING HEARD. I shut it off as soon as it got to the vocals. I was shocked by the fact that it had almost a half million streams. But, a few hours later, I clicked on it again and didn’t know why.
Over the past few days, I’ve listened to all of their discography and looped a lot of it. And I don’t even think I like them. The music is abysmal, its the same single riff and verse repeating for 5 minutes. To make it worse, the vocals are just a guy with a swedish accent awkwardly talking about murder and rape. That sounds awful right? It is awful. But at the same time I want to keep listening? It’s so childishly edgy and obnoxiously repetitive but so.. intriguing? Catchy? I’m not even sure. Its one of if not the weirdest experience I’ve ever had with music and I don’t know how to feel about it.”
At the risk of sounding like a stuck record – and we don’t care, Aural Aggravation exists to put word out about new music – the number of quality emerging acts to be discovered playing grassroots venues is mindboggling.
Historically – since the advent of contemporary / rock / alternative music as we know it – new acts have cut their teeth in these little venues. While the story of how Oasis were discovered playing at King Tut’s in Glasgow, so many people have an anecdote about how they saw Arctic Monkeys, or Editors, or Franz Ferdinand, or [insert band who went on to be huge here) in a 150-capacity venue, either to 30 people, or to 100 people who they whipped up in such a way it was clear that they’d not be playing 150-capacity venues on their next tour.
Glasgow’s Slime City might not be about to be touring the UK’s academies come the spring, but catching them in a cozy WMC in York recently, they showed significant potential, and ‘Do the Math(s)’ , the first single from forthcoming album National Record of Achievement, released in November only confirms that they’ve got that cut-above quality.
Papillon de Nuit’s latest single, ‘Frozen Charlotte’ recently got a straight-up rave review here on its release just over a week ago. They’ve since released a magical, haunting video to accompany it. Check it here:
This October, the indefatigably enigmatic trio The Necks will release Disquiet, their 20th full-length release, a triple disc via Northern Spy. It’s an absolutely intoxicating listen, over three hours of incredible music.
The band has shared the mesmerizing 26-minute ‘Causeway,’ as a first listen. Hear it here:
British electronic artist Max Rael presents ‘Pressing Against The Glass’, a danceable elegy for the unbelonging. Capturing the deep-seated ache of being on the outside, this is a soundtrack for those who feel eternally separated from the warmth and safety they can only observe.
Based in Hertfordshire, Max Rael is a key creative force in the UK underground through 1990s-2000s electro-goth trailblazers History Of Guns, frontrunners of the Wasp Factory / FuturePunk scene, and Decommissioned Forests. Here, he showcases his singular talents on this record, featuring unique twists on sound design and his acclaimed outsider lyrical perspectives. Musician, writer, actor, engineer and producer, Max Rael has collaborated with Fish (Marillion), Last July, Kommand + Kontrol, Freudstein and Bienheldenschafgegenstand.
“I’ve always been taken by the image of someone being outside alone in the cold looking in through a window to warmth, comfort and safety that’s not for them. I was thinking of Heathcliff looking through the windows of Thrushcross Grange in Wuthering Heights or Frank Abagnale Jr in the film "Catch Me If You Can", outside in the snow at Christmas, unseen looking in through the window at his mother with her new family, happy and warm indoors and realising there is nowhere he belongs, and no one he belongs to,” says Max Rael.
This is the latest audio-visual offering from his debut solo album The Enemy Is Us, released via London imprint Liquid Len Media. Offering up a dark bouquet of minimalist synth, darkwave and spoken-word electronic pop, this album introduces Rael’s compelling ‘futuretroist’ sound: an alternative sonic universe built on a unique sound design that feels at once familiar and alien.
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Rael’s powerful and thought-provoking spoken-word lyrics confronts a world in freefall—its corruption, alienation, and misery. The result seemingly effortlessly conflates a painfully personal portrait of an interior world, with an achingly universal depiction of society and the world outside. He still unearths a resilient core of hope and gallows humour that burns brightly through the darkness, offering a complex and compelling take on the human condition.
Earlier, Max Rael released the poignant shadow-streaked ‘Slightly Less Than Human’, a nervy electronic track with a great hooky synth melody and spoken word vocals. Partly inspired by Japanese author Osamu Dazai. Lyrically, Max Rael relays his feeling of being somehow different from the rest of the human race, while the non-album B-side ‘When the Only Winning Move Is Not to Play’ relates to the 1983 film War Games and the book The Games People Play by Eric Berne.
In April, Max Rael shared his spoken-word electronic pop song ‘Brighter Future’, where he questions avoidant strategies of coping with life in a seemingly increasingly chaotic and unsafe world and queries how can we reverse course from an anticipated dystopian future. The B-side ‘The People We Love Have Won (Persistence Is All)’ is a darker beast, named after Coil’s 2000 London performance at The Royal Festival Hall, which also happens to be tattooed on the inside of Rael’s left wrist.
Spoken word, electronic music and loud drums feature strongly on the 12-track album, produced and mixed by Max Rael with additional mixing by Caden Clarkson and mastered by Pete Maher (U2, Nick Cave, Depeche Mode, Pixies. Nine Inch Nails). Fusing a range of electronic music styles with other genres, Max Rael is a master journeyman of existential exploration into humanity, self, society, reality, psychology, philosophy and the future.
Industrial rock insurgents Jesus on Extasy (JoE) are back – darker, heavier and more relentless than ever. Led by founding member Dorian Deveraux, the band has returned with an uncompromising sound that pushes their signature mix of industrial beats, searing guitars and raw emotion to the next level.
JoE have issued ‘Somewhat Happy’ as a new single today, with Deveraux deeeming it “the apocalyptic post breakup song you didn’t know you needed.” Describing the song as a paean to “how to move on after a traumatic relationship that left your world in shambles, when you’re starting to get clarity and see your ex-partner for who they really are,” the song can be seen as lyrically related to ’Soul Crusher’ its heavy-hitting predecessor released in July.
Like that single, ‘Somewhat Happy’ offers a further brutal preview of what is to come on the forthcoming new JoE album, Between Despair And Disbelief, which is out on 12th September via Metropolis Records. Giving fans a tantalising taste of their second coming with the single ‘Wide Awake’ in 2023, the band then signed to Metropolis Records to issue ‘Days Gone By’ VIDEO in late 2024, followed by ’Soul Crusher’ VIDEO. All three have been heavier, more intense and unapologetically aggressive than ever before. “It looks like the world is going to hell. We might as well deliver the soundtrack for that,” adds Deveraux.
Check it here:
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2025 shows with Die Krupps 27th August KORTRIJK (BE) DVG Club 2nd September WARSAW (PL) Hybrydy 3rd September KRAKOW (PL) Hype Park 7th September LJUBLJANA (SI) Orto Hall 9th September BUDAPEST (HU) Dürer Kert 11th September PRAGUE (CZ) Rock Cafe 16th September STOCKHOLM (SE) Nalen 17th September COPENHAGEN (DK) Pumpehuset 20th September UDEN (NL) De Pul 21st September LONDON (UK) The Dome 24th September PARIS (FR) Petit Bain
2026 shows with KMFDM 21st February OBERHAUSEN (DE) Kulttempel 22nd February EINDHOVEN (NL) De Effenaar 25th February LAUSANNE (CH) Les Docks 26th February WINTERTHUR (CH) Gaswerk 27th February MILAN (IT) Legend Club 6th March BERLIN (DE) Gretchen 8th March LEIPZIG (DE) Moritzbastei
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