Huge Molasses Tank Explodes will release their new album III on 6th September via Tidal Wave Records.
Having recently shared ‘Bow of Gold’, a track built upon contrasting kraut-derived sequenced synth lines, spacy textures, jangly guitars drenched in reverb and full psych fuzz-driven drone walls, the band has now shared new single ‘Indeterminate’.
The track is driven by a motorik rhythm sustained by a stubborn synth bass sequence on top of which layers of synths, spacey guitars and vocoder vocals complete the soundscape. It explores one of the main elements of Huge Molasses Tank Explodes’ third album: the merging of late 70’s “kosmische” synths with space rock and a full-fledged wall of sound where all the sonic elements collide and balance out simultaneously.
Listen to ‘Indeterminate’ here:
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An immersive psychedelic reverie. This is what Huge Molasses Tank Explodes has to offer: a liquid continuity of landscapes, as envisioned by the minds of Fabrizio De Felice (voice, guitar, synth), Giacomo Tota (guitar), Luca Umidi (bass) and Gabriele Arnolfo (drums, now played by Michele Schiavina). The Milan, Italy-based band offers us a kaleidoscopic experience, ranging from rugged and evocative beats to dreamy soundscapes, inspired by post-punk and psych-wave. With a hypnotic and almost serene sound in mind, transfiguring humanity with new electronic streaks and vocal blends, the brand-new album ‘III’ showcases ethereal, yet powerful, musical canvases that celebrate the band’s influences, taste and psychedelic vision.
King Thief (consisting of members of Teenage Bottlerocket, This is a Standoff, Choke and ex-The Fullblast) have released their debut single ‘Gymposter Syndrome’ off the upcoming debut album, out this fall on Thousand Islands Records.
King Thief is:
Eric Neilson – Vocals (Change Methodical, Midnight Peg)
Ryan Podlubny – Guitar ( ex-Fullblast)
Shawn Moncrieff – Guitar (Choke)
Nick Kouremenos – Bass (Fire Next Time, This is a Standoff, TheJohnsons)
Darren Chewka – Drums (Teenage Bottle Rocket, Old Wives)
the Jesus Lizard, who release Rack, their first new album in 26 years, on Friday the 13th of September via Ipecac Recordings, offer a second preview of what has become one of 2024’s most eagerly-awaited albums with today’s arrival of ‘Alexis Feels Sick’.
Inspired by Girls Against Boys/Soulside drummer Alexis Fleisig’s guarded opinion of modern life, the four-and-a-half-minute track is met with an esoteric, David Yow created video.
Yow shares insight into the concept behind the clip: “The ‘Alexis Feels Sick’ video is a disgusting and comically impressionistic portrait of American Late Stage Capitalism… with some doggies.” Duane Denison adds that it’s a “study in greed, gluttony, and… dogs.”
Check it here:
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News of the band’s return came last month via The New York Times, who said the new LP is “a raucous record that recaptures the lunging momentum, stealth nuance and unhinged Yow-isms of [their] best work.” ‘Hide & Seek’, the first taste from the 11-song album, was described by Yow as “a perky ditty about a witch who can’t behave, and it’s got nearly as many hooks as a Mike Tyson fight.” The video captures the band – Mac McNeilly, David Wm. Sims, Denison and Yow – recording Rack with Producer Paul Allen at Nashville’s Audio Eagle Studio.
the Jesus Lizard reconvened in 2009 for a limited number of shows and have maintained their bond both as friends in close contact with one another, and touring bandmates. “We literally only made the record because we thought it would be fun to make the record,” says Sims. With McNeilly highlighting the strong relationship amongst the musicians: “We are bonded by the music we make, and also by the respect we have for each other.”
Album pre-orders, which include several limited-edition vinyl variants, as well as CD, digital, and cassette offerings, are available here.
The band also recently announced a number of tour dates, stretching into 2025, with recent additions including a performance at Chicago’s Warm Love Cool Dreams festival on Sept. 28, a newly added date in Cincinnati and second shows added in Dublin and Seattle.
September 7 Raleigh, NC Hopscotch Music Festival September 26 Cincinnati, OH Bogart’s September 28 Chicago, IL Warm Love Cool Dreams October 13 Las Vegas, NV Best Friends Forever Music Festival October 31 Dallas, TX Longhorn Ballroom November 1 Austin, TX Levitation / The Far Out Lounge December 9 Pittsburgh, PA Stage AE December 11 Brooklyn, NY Brooklyn Steel December 12 Boston, MA Roadrunner December 13 Philadelphia, PA Union Transfer December 14 Washington, DC Black Cat December 15 Washington, DC Black Cat December 18 Atlanta, GA Variety Playhouse January 7 Glasgow, UK QMU January 8 Manchester, UK Academy 2 January 9 Leeds, UK Brudenell Social Club January 10 Bristol, UK The Fleece January 11 London, UK Electric Ballroom January 12 Brighton, UK Concorde 2 January 14 Belfast, UK The Limelight January 15 Dublin, IE Button Factory January 16 Dublin, IE Button Factory May 2 Solana Beach, CA Belly Up Tavern May 3 Los Angeles, CA The Fonda Theatre May 5 San Francisco, CA The Fillmore May 8 Portland, OR Revolution Hall May 10 Seattle, WA Neptune Theatre May 11 Seattle, WA Neptune Theatre
German electro-industrial band, NEON INSECT has just unveiled their ambitious, & highly-anticipated album, LIBERTY FLOWERS.
LIBERTY FLOWERS sheds some light into different aspects of life in New Moscow, in times where unrest slowly settles in, even though everything is done to oppress its citizens. The ever-recurring concept of NEON INSECT’s music features the only habitable place in North America. It’s a dystopian version of New York in an alternative timeline, serving as a experimental playground for implants, cyborgs and indoctrination.
With this album, NEON INSECT also takes you on a trip sonically, with noises sounding like they’ve been taken straight from a dystopian nightclub, combined with analogue madness. The goal with this record was to rephrase the grit of old-school, early 90s electronic-industrial music, while not shying away to cross some boundaries. LIBERTY FLOWERS is a love letter to this era of music.
LIBERTY FLOWERS is currently available on CD and cassette formats as well as Bandcamp, digitally. It will be available on most major streaming services on August 30th.
Watch the video for ‘There is Beauty in Noise’ here:
NEON INSECT (Nils Sinatsch) is a dystopian storyteller, telling tales from New Moscow – New York in an alternative reality, where the cold war went hot and the soviets won. As a normal citizen somewhere in Germany by day and a rebel by night, NEON INSECT fetches the stories through the cyber web from his contacts in New Moscow. – he only habitable city in a nuked America, where cyborgs rule the streets, where lower Manhattan is a prison and the last bastion of the local rebellion.
The stories are told in an old-school industrial fashion, the sound of the cold war, enhanced with stutters and glitches, the sound of the cyber web – a soundtrack George Orwell would approve of.
German electro-industrial mainstays Haujobb have just dropped the sinister sounding retro-futuristic slo-mo banger ‘In The Headlights’ as the first single from their forthcoming new album, The Machine In The Ghost. Scheduled for release on 20th September, it is the 10th full length record by the Prague-based group, which formed in 1992 and has existed as the duo of Daniel Myer (vocals/programming) and Dejan Samardzic (programming) since the mid-‘90s.
“’In The Headlights’ was actually one of the first tracks written for the album,” explains Myer. "Dejan recorded and sampled his exhaust hood, which kind of sounds like a jet engine, and we built the song around that sample. There is also a sound that might be identified as a tambourine, which is really just a key chain dropping onto the floor. This and other physical constructions that are sampled throughout the album act as relics of interfaces between man and machine.”
Maintaining an impressive penchant for refusing to do the same thing twice on each studio album, The Machine In The Ghost deploys field recordings to create some of its most prominent sounds. In order to achieve the desired effect, the duo used a mix of software and hardware in the shape of everyday items. This deliberate nod to a previous era with more analogue shifting of the dials complements the retro theme of The Machine In The Ghost (albeit without indulging in nostalgia for its own sake), the album revolving around the highly charged relationship between mind and matter, analogue and digital.
Despite their constant artistic evolution, a unique musical handwriting is present throughout the Haujobb catalogue. Originally founded as a trio in the West German city of Bielefeld, they were initially influenced by the ‘Vancouver school’ of industrial electronics (the likes of Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly), but it did not take long for them to be recognised as figureheads of a more modern take on this sound that incorporated elements of IDM (intelligent dance music) that helped catapult them onto the wider international scene.
Co-founding member Björn Jünemann left the band after their second album, with Myer and Samardzic subsequently releasing the acclaimed ‘Solutions For A Small Planet’ (1996) and thereafter maintaining a strong strike-rate that has included New World March (2011), their 7th record and regarded as another milestone effort. The Machine in the Ghost has seen Haujobb begin another exciting chapter in their career. As we enter the next industrial and creative revolution that has been ignited by the rise of AI, it shows that they still have their musical fingers on the pulse.
Darkwave/Post-Punk duo, REDWING BLACKBIRD have just unveiled their latest single, ‘Black Cloud’. This single is a departure from the more guitar-based approach of earlier tracks and sees the band leaning more into the energy of modern darkwave, synth bass & drive.
Lyrical Inspiration for the track comes from the fragile balance between faith & fanaticism – the ongoing blurring of the separation of church & state, the horrific loss of women’s rights & the slow, steady rise of nationalistic fascism, too often disguised as religious morality. All of this is put to an almost satirical "dance while your heads on fire " irreverence.
‘Black Cloud’ marks a clear change in direction leaning into more of the duo’s darkwave vocabulary that has only briefly surfaced on previous tracks, as it is the first recording of collaboration between Paul Baker & Lisa Jensen on entirely new material. ‘Black Cloud’ is also the fourth single collaboration with producer/engineer Tiffany Flanagan of Audio Pervert recordings.
Listen here:
REDWING BLACKBIRD is the focal project of Paul Baker & Lisa Jensen, currently based in Denver, Colorado, USA. Baker is perhaps best known for his time with nineties goth rockers Second Skin, and more recently, the deathrock trio Plague Garden’s first two full length releases on lead guitar & bass.
REDWING BLACKBIRD, on the other hand, distils influences from Baker’s extensive background working across multiple genres: from the political ideology and ethos of punk; the guitar tonality and melodic lead bass of post-punk, proto-goth, shoegaze, drone-rock, and dark wave; to the sonic nuances with the vocal growl of classic goth rock.
Comparisons have been drawn to everyone from Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, Big Black, and Joy Division to Swans and Nick Cave; Dead Kennedys and The Clash; and even points of reference as disparate as Slint or Ween. And yet, despite having clearly defied and confounded convenient genre pigeonholes, there is certainly a coherent, distinctive, and immediately identifiable REDWING BLACKBIRD sound.
Industrial band, CLOCKWORK ECHO has just unleashed their highly-anticipated new single, ‘Hallowed Be Thy Pain’.
Laden with raw emotion and haunting revelations, ‘Hallowed Be Thy Pain’ delves deep into the themes of deceit, faith, and the far-reaching consequences of a single lie. The song’s lyrics are poignant and introspective, unravelling a story that intertwines personal guilt with collective delusion. The song offers a powerful critique of faith, deception, and the human condition. It challenges listeners to question the narratives they have been fed and to seek the truth behind the comforting lies.
In a world where belief often triumphs over evidence, ‘Hallowed Be Thy Pain’ critiques the exploration of faith and the ease with which people are swayed by spiritual narratives, often lacking concrete evidence. Phrases such as ‘shadows in their eyes’ evoke a sense of collective blindness, a willingness to be deceived in exchange for spiritual comfort.
‘Hallowed Be Thy Pain’ serves as a haunting reminder of the fragile line between truth and fiction. As we navigate through the shadows of our own lives, may we find the courage to confront the lies we tell ourselves and others, and seek a path illuminated by truth and understanding.
Norway’s Shaving the Werewolf, known for their unique blend of noise rock and mathcore, has just released an animated music video for their single ‘’Sentient Husk,’ which is taken from the band’s most recent release, the God Whisperer EP.
“The video is a septic mess showing a general apartment complex from the future. People are miserable, the living conditions are hostile, enveloping pollution thickens, the wealth is spread unevenly to a perverse extent and power is centralized to one individual who develops a god complex because of it,” says vocalist Ottar about the clip.
He adds, “To withstand existence in such disagreeable conditions, people take to chemical solutions to dampen their symptoms—depression, feelings of alienation, loneliness, suicidal ideation, and general hopelessness. The guy on top is happy to provide whatever keeps the tenants ‘happy’ as long as he doesn’t have to deal with their problems.”
Check it here:
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Since their inception in 2010, Shaving the Werewolf has delivered disagreeable music for disagreeable people, blending power violence, noise rock, and mathcore into an uncanny chimera. Their live shows, described as a slow-motion car crash or an endless head-smashing into a brick wall, have left audiences both gagged and worried.
They have churned up mosh pits at Høstsabbath, competed with metal extremists like Rotten Sound and God Mother, and even mooned Swedish model Vendela Kirsebom. These rat-fink hardcore pioneers are sure to leave a mark on your psyche.
Throughout their journey, Shaving the Werewolf has released several EPs, singles, and a full-length album. Last year, they released a split-tape with Bergen’s hardcore antiheroes Utflod.
Next up is their EP, God Whisperer, inspired by pathological know-it-alls poisoning the world with their selfish and militant ignorance. The band delves deeper into their established sound, offering catchy hooks and jagged edges, all bathed in corrosive dissonance.
God Whisperer was engineered, mixed, and mastered by Jørgen Øiseth Berg, with artwork by Martin Mentzoni. It was released on March 22nd.
Tokyo-based Noise-Rockers, MELT-BANANA have released ‘Flipside,’ the first single from 3 + 5, their long-awaited ninth studio album. The album is being released August 23rd on 12” LP vinyl, CD, digital download and streaming platforms on their own A-Zap label.
The album showcases the duo’s visionary musical approach and extraordinary abilities as performers: Yako’s giddy, hyperactive vocalizing and Agata’s glitchy, cyberpunk guitar, delivered at dizzying speed, bathed in a whirlwind of aggressive electronics. As on previous releases, the music on 3 + 5 is unpredictable, always filled with surprises and excitement.
Their aesthetic approach is exultant and experimental, fusing diverse genres, awash in chaotic energy.
3 + 5 synthesizes elements of a variety of Extreme Musics, Hyper-Pop, classic Punk, vintage Metal, and Noise. It’s informed by Japanese culture in general, and the subcultures of gaming, anime and homegrown underground music in particular. The album’s nine tracks have been crafted to maximize the independent appeal of each song (since so many listeners will be streaming and playlisting these songs). Each selection boasts its own unique charm and ideas that beg for repeated listening.
Besides making their music, MELT-BANANA hope to empower and encourage their fans and fellow musicians by example. They’ve foregone the convention of a full band line-up for over a decade and recorded and toured as a two piece since 2012. Yako’s wildly careening, staccato vocals ignore every convention of Pop and Alternative singing, guided solely by her own unique artistic vision. For 25 years, they’ve been in the vanguard of bedroom players and Egg Punks facing challenge of mixing homespun digital creations with live instrumentation head on with consistently brilliant results.
While Melt-Banana hasn’t explicitly explained the meaning behind the album’s title, 3 + 5, prime numbers symbolize mathematical integrity and independence, which could represent MELT-BANANA’s uniqueness and freedom. Why "3 + 5" and not "1 + 7"? That’s left for you to ponder.
King Zog is back with a vengeance, announcing the release of their highly anticipated second album, Second Dawn, set to be released on July 31st via Rue Morgue Records. Fans can get an early taste with the new single ‘Rat King,’ a track that encapsulates the band’s signature doom-laden sound.
Listen here:
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The genesis of ‘Rat King’ began during the pandemic when frontman Daniel Durack was inspired by a documentary on Rasputin. The captivating tale sparked a creative fire, leading to a song that stands out as a dark and heavy highlight on the new album.
Following their critically acclaimed 2017 debut, King Zog has solidified their status in the doom metal scene with relentless writing and performing. The current lineup – Daniel Durack (vocals/guitar), Connor Pitts-West (guitar), Martin Gonzalez (bass), and Sean Ryan (drums)—crafted Second Dawn during the pandemic and have been performing tirelessly since lockdowns lifted.
Second Dawn promises to surpass its predecessor with its immense weight and intensity. The album features monumental riffs, seismic bass lines, and thunderous drumming, all crowned by Durack’s powerful vocal hooks. Each track, from the blistering opener ‘Scelestic Dusk’ to the epic closer ‘Second Dawn,’ showcases King Zog’s otherworldly strength and doom metal mastery.
As Perth’s premier doom band, King Zog is gearing up to support Second Dawn with extensive touring, including headlining sold-out shows and tearing up heavy music festivals across Australia.
Prepare for the onslaught of Second Dawn. King Zog is ready to unleash their might once more.
Aural Aggravation 