Based in the Texan city of San Antonio, darkwave/synth punk artist Night Ritualz (aka Vincent Guerrero IV) weaves deep Latin influences into his songs, blending English and Spanish lyrics with music that combines atmospheric soundscapes suffused with pulse-pounding beats to tell stories that are both deeply personal and universally relatable. New single ‘Brown Skin’ is the first track to be teased from a new album out in early 2026. An unapologetic expression of identity, struggle and survival, the song blends personal storytelling with social commentary, confronting feelings of displacement, family separation and the weight of heritage. The song lyric is sharp and direct, carried by a vocal delivery that makes every word hit like a protest chant.
“This song is about resilience – working hard every day, facing systems that try to erase you and still standing strong with pride in where you come from,” explains Night Ritualz. “The repetition of the hook and the outro were designed to channel frustration into power, making it both deeply personal and universally relatable.”
Ahead of the release of her forthcoming self-released, crowdfunded album, Mosswood – which we absolutely love – minimal electronic pop artist Mayshe-Mayshe has released a third single by way of a taster.
‘Little Yeah Whatever’ encapsulates the spirit of Mayshe-Mayshe perfectly – subtle, understated, shy-sounding, but with an unexpected strength at the core.
Minsk, Belarus-based alternative metal act Mission Jupiter have recently issued Aftermath, their third album but first with powerhouse new singer Kate Varsak, whose voice is suited perfectly to a set of epic, drama-packed songs that should see the group achieve lift-off far beyond their home territory.
Describing the song’s meaning, the group explain that “it asks if we can be less selfish. Most of us tend not to look beyond our own doorstep….can we be better?”
Aftermath contains ten superbly produced songs in all. Fans of alternative and hard rock, progressive rock, metal and even Eurovision-esque crossover rock (on ‘Jak Spyniajecca Bol’, recorded in the group’s mother tongue and translated as ‘How The Pain Stops’) will be wowed by Mission Jupiter’s new songs, which combine sounds, moods and melodies wrapped around a stunning voice to leave listeners breathless.
Hailed as a “hardcore Toxic Holocaust,” Wellington’s BRAINWAVE have just released ‘Lost My Way’, a ferocious new single from their upcoming debut full-length Ill Intent, due out October 22, 2025.
“’Lost My Way‘ channels the rage of feeling disorientated and directionless, of not achieving your potential and the sense that every way forward is blocked. It’s extremely personal, but in our atomised modern world, it’s also a sentiment that everyone has felt at some point,” says vocalist Rob Thompson.
OMEN CODE unveil the new track ‘Ultra Fear’ as the next single lifted from their forthcoming debut album Alpha State, which has been scheduled for release on December 5, 2025.
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OMEN CODE comment: “I had orginally planned to use ‘Ultra Fear’ for my previous music project”, mastermind Kevin Gould reveals. “The pace is quite low key again, but the sequence layers fill it out nicely. The lyrics have an abstract but also quasi religious feel. Back then, I had put some angry, shouted vocals over the track. Then Agi came along and did his ‘new vocalist’ thing. He basically rescued the track. We wanted the chorus to have a distant and alien tone so used a lot of treatments and vocoder. There is nothing like a machine telling you that ‘God is near’.”
Legendary Italian experimental trio Zureturns withFerrum Sidereum (produced by Marc Urselli), a big and bold double album arriving on House of Mythology on the 9th January.
Ferrum Sidereum – Latin for ‘cosmic iron’ – draws inspiration from the mythological significance of meteoritic iron, found in artefacts like ancient Egyptian ritual objects, Tibenta “Phurpa” blades, and the celestial sword of Archangel St Michael. This elemental force imbues every moment of the album’s apocalyptic sound. Whilst heavy in tone and subject matter, bassist Massimo Pupillo comments that their music also aims to "raise good energy… people would come up to us after the show and tell us that they felt alive."
The music combines the complexity of progressive rock, the grit of industrial music, the precision of metal, the spirit and energy of punk, and the freedom of jazz. The result is a sonic journey that is as cerebral as it is visceral, defying easy categorisation while remaining unmistakably Zu.
Today they share the track "Golgotha", about which Massimo says; “Once upon a time, the stars spoke to men, but now cosmic destiny brings a silence. Silence in which lies what men say to the stars. Man radiates atmospheres and is in continuity with the cosmos. These are atmospheres of colour and atmospheres of sound. What we radiate is colour and sound. And the cosmos listens. The return of what it incessantly gives to the earth.”
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The trio – Paolo Mongardi (drums, percussion), Luca T Mai (baritone saxophone, synth, keyboards) and Massimo Pupillo (electric bass, 12-string acoustic guitar) – spent a year refining this sprawling 80-minute epic through relentless rehearsals and live studio recordings in Bologna. Produced and mixed by three-time Grammy-winning engineer Marc Urselli, known for his work with Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, and Mike Patton, the album balances raw intensity with refined production tweaks and textures.
“We are very spiritually-oriented people,” says Massimo. “Machines and AI do not have spirituality. So they can mimic and they can assemble existing things, but they cannot create. That spirit is probably the most important thing that our music carries.”
Set for release in January 2026, Ferrum Sidereum is Zu’s biggest and boldest statement yet that challenges all conventional boundaries. Uncompromising, innovative, fiercely original.
Wounds is Cold in Berlin’s long-awaited and recently announced fifth album – their first in six years. As heavy as it is haunting, the record masterfully blends doom, post-punk, and driving krautrock in a dynamic, hypnotic maelstrom – pushing London’s most exciting cult band into intoxicating new territory.
“Wounds is a series of songs about the different ways people live with and process ‘the wounds’ of their lives,” explains vocalist Maya. “A strange celebration of that formative pain we have all experienced in some way. The loss and joy of survival – the celebration of finding others like us, the gift of knowing life comes after fire.”
New single ‘The Stranger’ is a song that is meant to allow for multiple interpretations. Vocalist Maya adds:
“Perhaps it is a song about addiction- the wound that doesn’t heal. The way the focus of an addiction sings to you, searching you out, twisting and flowing through the body- whispering beneath the skin until you answer the call and find home once more.
Perhaps it is a song about finding your place in the world- groups of people watching and experiencing something meaningful together- a way to heal and close old wounds. How live music can stay with you even as you are separated from it. How finding the strange songs, sang in dark places can actually bring you home to yourself.
Or perhaps it is a song about that sharp kind of love at first sight that can overwhelm, offering freedom and constraint all at once. When you are drawn to that person that you know can destroy you, but you cease to matter because they are somehow instantly your home and only resting place.
‘The Stranger’ can be all these things- a healer, a cage, an addiction, but it is most definitely a call into the darkness, reaching out to the listener to join us in the howl of life, to wake up the bones and the skin. Be with us in the noise and know that whatever it is that led you to us, we are grateful you are home.”
It’s been two years since Deep Cross delivered Royal Water, and now they return with the enigmatically-titled Scaffolded Dawn.
As the accompanying notes outline, ‘Utilizing treated vocal drones, tape, modular synth and an array of found sounds, on the new album, Deep Cross delivers seven tracks of heavy Devotional Electronics. Blistering and crude yet ecstatic and sacred, Scaffolded Dawn focuses on transition points where tempers blur beyond ideas of convention. In each track discomfort, overcoming, decay, lure, attraction and beauty inhabit an axis of equal reign where multitudes thrive.’
As a taster for Scaffolded Dawn, they’ve landed a video for the track ‘Ranine Copper’. With hints of The Walking Dead, it’s suspenseful, disturbing, and very, very dark.
We love dark here at Aural Aggravation, so we are immensely proud to premiere this video. Brace yourselves.
Released on Friday, ‘Believe’ is the second single from a forthcoming new album by Assemblage 23, the brainchild of US electro-industrial/synth-pop artist Tom Shear. “This song is about believing that there is hope for better things, even with the state of the world as it is today,” says Shear. “We are responsible for making the kind of world we live in. In the face of bad times, sometimes the most subversive thing you can do is to have hope.”
‘Believe’ is included on Null, the tenth album by Shear as Assemblage 23 and the long-awaited follow-up to Mourn in 2020. Also home to the recent single ‘Tolerate’ , the album will be pre-promoted with a UK tour that commences on 15th October, immediately followed a one-off show in Germany. Dates are as follows:
15th October BRISTOL Exchange 16th October MANCHESTER Rebellion 17th October GLASGOW Ivory Blacks 18th October SHEFFIELD Corporation 19th October LONDON The Dome
British industrial/EBM artist ESA is proud to release a new music video for the song ‘Pound Of Flesh’, taken from the artist’s recent album Sounds for Your Happiness out from July 5th via Negative Gain Productions label.
‘Pound of Flesh’ is the most ambitious cinematic journey from ESA to date. Shot on location in Bangkok (Thailand) during July 2025 with additional scenes filmed in Manchester UK, the video sees the participation of Tan Toafa Maneepasopchock (Gotham/Oceans 10) and Panita Hutacharern along with three other native Thai actors. ‘Pound of Flesh’ is in part a powerful and compelling narrative experience, alongside a love letter to Thailand. A country that has meant a lot to Blacker over the years.
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The story follows a troubled soul, tormented by inner demons, trapped within their own mental prison, happening upon a vehicle to allow astral projection from one body to another in a vain attempt to escape their own pain and anguish. From body to body, it soon becomes apparent that dwelling within a new host body is not the solution it might first appear to be. As time passes within the host, breakdowns begin to emerge and the demons that are tethered to the troubled now take up chase, culminating in a powerful and incredibly cinematic exorcism experience.
‘Pound of Flesh’ is a music film in 3 parts, both adventurous in script and energetic in its execution. The acting of Tan and Panita levels up further the Universe that Blacker is trying to achieve with the ESA multimedia experience.
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