Electro-industrial band, THE FAIR ATTEMPTS have unveiled their latest single: the hauntingly cinematic, ‘Apart’.
‘Apart’ is a collaboration with renowned producer, Jaani Peuhu who also contributed vocals to the track. The single fuses melancholic depth with pulsating beats, creating a sonic landscape destined for gothic club nights and introspective moments alike.
‘Apart’ is a darkly captivating dance between sorrow and regret—a raw exploration of the human condition set against a driving industrial rhythm. Equal parts emotionally charged and dance floor-ready, it captures the essence of deep introspection while inviting listeners to move to its beat.
Imagine yourself adorned in grief, yet swaying in sync to a parade of emotions. That’s the soul of ‘Apart’. THE FAIR ATTEMPTS founding member, Timo Haakana explains. “I’ve carried my sorrow like a crown. There’s a certain elegance with it and I think we tapped into that feeling with our producer, Jaani."
BAIKAL is excited to announce the release of their new music video for the track ‘Rorschach,’ the first single from their upcoming project. At the origins of BAIKAL are guitarist Jérôme Colombelli (formerly of Uneven Structure and Cult Of Occult) and singer Matthieu Romarin (from Psykup and Uneven Structure). The project was initiated by Jérôme, who began crafting the first compositions in 2020.
Amid the global pandemic and a time characterized by confinement, the duo, along with other contributing musicians like bassist Julien Turrin, combined their diverse influences and backgrounds. This collaboration resulted in a unique sound that blends dark trip-hop atmospheres with powerful post-metal guitars driven by Sunn amplifiers, accented by electro-industrial elements and hints of post-black metal. In 2022, the band officially took on the name BAIKAL and made their live debut in Lyon, performing alongside Céleste.
The video created for ‘Rorschach’ vividly illustrates the imagery present in the lyrics and develops the aesthetic BAIKAL aims to present. Jérôme adds, “For us, music is inseparable from visuals. When I listen to music, images always come to mind, and when I watch a film, I need music that truly complements what I see to fully immerse myself in it.”
Electro-Industrial band, State Of The Union has unveiled their latest single release, ‘Purgatory’.
‘Purgatory’ is a song that explores the topic of suicide. As human beings, we go through the ‘ups’ and ‘downs’. Some of us have a harder time than others dealing with these emotions. Some of us can even get to the brink of suicide because we want to make it end as fast as we can.
In esoteric belief, a person who commits suicide disrupts their karmic flow and goes to a timeless place where one second could feel like a million years! This is very hard to comprehend within our own minds. To experience something like that, we have to have an out-of-body experience and travel to a very low-frequency dimension known as purgatory.
In some religions, purgatory is known as the place where spirits go to pay for their sins and burn karma before they move on to their next life experience. All in all, we will never know unless we go there. That’s why it is better to keep making powerful electronic music that makes club-goers dance their nights away to songs like ‘Purgatory.’
Electro-industrial band KRATE is back and once again teams up with a number of incredible talents on their fourth endeavor, It’s The Hope That Kills You.
The general theme of this release is hopelessness. No matter how hard you try, in the end nothing else matters as all matter is destined to die. Your prayers will be lost while you watch the horizon sink. There is no one to blame but us. We reach for the needle and ask ourselves one last time, "Where do we go from here?" Absolutely nowhere.
Songs like the hard-hitting title track featuring Anatoly Grinberg (Dead Voices On Air) & drummer Dan Milligan (The Joy Thieves). Other tracks feature members of Bow Ever Down, Slighter, Liquid Black Goo and Numbered Men.
Five tracks of electro – industrial spanning the full spectrum of what this subgenre encompasses; from nightmarish beat-driven to heavy orchestral/industrial. The Hope That Kills You is available now on all digital platforms including Bandcamp. Listen to it in full here:
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KRATE was born in late 2017 when Chris Shortt (VERIN) and Roland Zwaga (Acidrodent, Construct) began discussing a collaboration.
The initial concept was to compose a dark ambient project between the two. After the first stems were exchanged, however, they both quickly agreed that a rhythmic element would be required to augment the sounds thus far created, leading to the abandonment of the original ambient goal.
Dark electro/industrial beats were submerged in deep cavernous, rumbling structures that were later complemented by an ever growing roster of collaborators.
As the songs originate from the input of such a varied group of artists, the music virtually spreads itself across the entire spectrum of electronic music, all the while managing to craft a cohesive and singularly focused sound.
As the liner notes to Australian electro-industrial band SHIV-R’s fifth full-length album explain, ‘there is a Zen teaching that if you meet God on the road, you must kill him… What the killing of God means to each listener will be a unique and personal revelation. In a world full of gatekeepers and figureheads whose only interest in you is to tell you what to do, illusions will need to be shed and those who profess to have all the answers will need to be confronted’.
The title track launches the album with some harsh metallic guitars pitched against a pounding technoindustrial groove, where beats and synthesized bass are melded together perfectly. And while a lot of bands in this vein – even the likes of KMFDM to an extent – peg the guitars back in favour of pushing the synthesised elements of the instrumentation to the fore, to give a harsh, but ultimately slick, digital vibe overall, SHIV-R to crank up the guitars, and they punch hard, providing a strong counter to the danceable, mechanoid beats and throbbing low-end.
While growly or distorted vocals are common to the genre, it’s often strained-sounding or raspy, whereas Pete Crane has a rich, full-throated metal roar that has real depth and proper guts. That said, on ‘Spark’ and ‘Promises of Armageddon’ where they slip into grinding electrosleaze mode, evoking Pretty Hate Machine era Nine Inch Nails and mid-90s PIG, Crane shows a cleaner tone that’s poppy, but dark – which is a description that fits the slower pace of the Depeche Mode-like minimal electro of ‘Blue Turns to Black’. It’s well-placed at what would conventionally mark the end of side one – and highlights another strength of Kill God Ascend: it feels like an album in the classic sense, with ten tightly-structured and concise tracks that are sequenced in such a way as to drop the tempo, and conversely, slam in with an absolute banger, at just the right time. More than anything, it’s reminiscent of Stabbing Westward’s debut – but at the same time, Kill God Ascend is very much an album with its own identity.
Sixth track, ‘Empire’ is exemplary, kicking off virtual side two with a dark stomper on which Crane snarls, “I’m on my own path. Get the fuck out of my way.” He sounds like he means it, too.
There are some solid hooks, and Kill God Ascend sustains the angst from beginning to end – even when they bring it right down for the brooding penultimate song, ‘Valley of Death’, it’s as a prelude to the epic finale, the dark, slow-burning ‘Turpentine’ that’s gnarly and hefty and brimming with twists, turns, and glitches, a track where the machines finally devour the human components in a mangles mess of rust and dirt, blood and guts. And it’s at this point, you realise that god is indeed dead.
Aural Aggravation 