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:
US electronic musician and vocalist Mari Kattman has issued a video for ‘Typical Girl’, the opening song on her new album Year Of The Katt, released in late June by Metropolis Records. The clip was shot in downtown Providence (Rhode Island) by Mark Allison of @401FilmsPVD.
“Typical girl. People say it constantly, so much so it feels almost criminal to be female by birth,” Kattman states when explaining the meaning of the song. “Like it’s vulgar or something to carry characteristics that are even remotely female. That it makes you difficult, unlovable or crazy when it’s not packaged up and tied with a pretty bow or something. There are so many misunderstandings about what it is to be a woman.”
AA
AA
Kattman has recently announced a UK tour in October 2025 as the special guest of Assemblage 23, the electronic act founded in 1988 by Tom Shear, who is Kattman’s collaborator in the electronic duo Helix and her husband. 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 (downstairs)
Industrial rock insurgents Jesus on Extasy 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 just dropped the heavy-hitting ‘Soul Crusher’ as a new single, with Deveraux stating that “it’s a post-breakup song dealing with the feeling of reality kicking in after you’ve basically mourned the loss of a loved one. You start to see them for what they really are and you start wondering if any of it was even real or if you’ve been gaslighted all along. I’d be lying (mostly to myself) if I told you the song isn’t autobiographical. It was written in the aftermath of a pretty dark period in my life and was an outlet to deal with the trauma.”
‘Soul Crusher’ offers a further brutal preview of the forthcoming new JoE album, Between Despair And Disbelief, 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 subsequently signed to the label to issue ‘Days Gone By’ in late 2024. Both were 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.
JoE will tour Europe with Die Krupps in September, on which fans can expect an unrelenting live set packed with new material and reimagined classics, proving that their resurgence is built. With a harder edge and a fire that refuses to burn out, JoE fully intend to leave an everlasting mark on the alternative rock landscape.
FÏX8:SËD8 present the hard-hitting track ‘New Eden’ as the first single taken from the forthcoming sixth album of the German dark electro act: Octagram has been scheduled for October 3, 2025.
AA
AA
FÏX8:SËD8 comment: “The song ‘New Eden’ comes with an epic buildup that is almost reminiscent of 70s progressive rock – just executed with electronic means”, mastermind Martin Sane explains. “I am particularly happy how the lyrics turned out and also with my vocals that change style several times over the course of those 8:45 minutes until it all culminates in an epic finale. The length of ‘New Eden’ is also not accidental but rooted in an ambitious concept that structures the whole album. Each of the 8 songs on Octagram consists of several different parts and is 8 minutes long. They were not created as ‘extended editions’ of shorter tracks, but every song follows a meaningful dramatic composition, with huge introductions, changing drum patterns and time signatures. I went to great lengths to ensure that nothing appears just stitched together but rather comes seamlessly fused into one complete piece – and admittedly to even my surprise: it finally worked out!”
Heddlu is the new musical project by Rhodri Daniel. The Ceredigion native was a founding member of renowned Welsh band Estrons who had a major impact on the industry having gained rave reviews from the likes of NME, Vice, DIY and Clash to BBC Radio, Radio X, Ultimate Guitar, The Guardian and Independent.
After finishing the band in 2019, Rhodri became aware that his hearing was severely damaged. Years of touring the live circuit had taken their toll, Rhodri ultimately being diagnosed with hearing loss, tinnitus and severe sensitivity to noise. The effects were so acute, Rhodri was unable to play live music, leading to him composing his critically acclaimed debut album (Cantref, 2022) in his head whilst completing the entirety of the Wales Coastal Path (900 miles). His family and namely his sister, were great sources of comfort and hope during this difficult period. Serendipity led Rhodri back to music, and heddlu was born. Meaning ‘Police’ in Welsh, from the words ‘peace-force’, heddlu’s music has been true to its’ name, offering a force of peace to the songwriter.
Rhodri spent the next few years writing and experimenting with new sounds and instruments as his hearing slowly recovered. Whilst writing and recording his 2nd album, life found a way of both disrupting and influencing the creative process, leading to multiple re-writes and an entire album being erased. Eventually, despite the interruptions, heddlu’s 2nd album, Tramor – was completed.
Meaning ‘Overseas’ in Welsh, Tramor is series of intimate and volatile songs, detailing years of loss, estrangement, trauma and hope.
‘Wish You Were Her’ is the 2nd single from heddlu’s 2nd album Tramor, it is a raw emotionally charged track that pleads for someone close to grow into a better version of themselves—driven by equal parts frustration and love. Both confrontational and compassionate, it’s a self-aware lament that blurs the line between calling someone out and looking inward, capturing the messy beauty of caring deeply and hurting honestly.
‘Wish You Were Her’ is out 12th June 2025 on Zawn Records.
Just as the birds of prey from which they take their name are creatures of the night, so this Irish act – essentially one guy – who draw inspiration from the darker realms of postpunk, goth, and synth-based music are very much dwellers of the dark hours, as debut album Death Games attests, with titles such as ‘Perfect Nightmare’, ‘Tombs’, and ‘Send Me to My Grave’. The album’s themes are timeless and classic, offering ‘a haunting exploration of love, mortality, and the fragile nature of existence,’ while casting nods to touchstones such as Lebanon Hanover, Boy Harsher, and Black Marble.
Lead single ‘Give Me Your Stare’ opens the album in style with a disco beat and throbbing bass giving this bleak, echo-soaked song a dancefloor-friendly groove. The vocals are backed off but ring clear through a haze of reverb, offering a hint of The Cure’s Seventeen Seconds in terms of production values.
AA
The compositions on Death Games are pretty direct: there’s not a lot of detail or layers, and it’s the electronic beats and pulsating basslines which not only define the sound but drive the songs. The sonorous synths which twist and grind over the top of these predominantly serve to create atmosphere more than melody, although haunting, repetitive motifs are commonplace, and the vocals, too, being low in the mix and with a fairly processed feel, are more a part of the overall sound than the focal point.
‘Skin on Skin’ brings a wibbly, ghosty synth that sounds a bit like a theremin quivering over a minimalist backing of primitive drum machine and bass synth, and the likelihood is that they’re going for early Depeche Mode, but the end result is more like a gothed-up Sleaford Mods, although, by the same token, it’s not a million miles away from She Wants Revenge around the time of their electro-poppy debut, and that’s perhaps a kinder and more reasonable comparison. ‘Fevr 2’ brings an increased sense of urgency with skittering bleeps skating around the reverberating drums: it has both an 80s movie soundtrack vibe and a vintage goth disco feel, and despite its hectic percussion and busy bass, ‘Tombs’ conjures a haunting, requiem-like atmosphere.
The ‘death’ thematic may not always be literal, and as much concerned with the death of love and the ends of relationships, but the duality the theme offers serves OWLS well. There’s no denying that it’s both a stereotype and a cliché that an obsession with death is such a goth thing, and OWLS fulfil these unashamedly – but then, why should there be shame? Why is it only goth and some strains of metal which embrace life’s sole inevitability, and explore mortality and the finite nature of existence? Even now, after millennia, we aren’t only afraid of death, but, particularly in Western cultures, we’re afraid to think or talk about it. People passing in their eighties and nineties still elicits a response that it’s a tragedy or that they should have had more time, and I’ve seen it said of people departing in their sixties or even seventies that it’s ‘no age’. We seem to have a huge blind spot, a blanketing case of denial when it comes to death, as if it shouldn’t happen, that it’s an injustice, and that no-one deserves it. But nothing is forever, be it love or life, and while loss – any loss – is painful, it comes attached to inevitability, being a matter of when, not if.
The stark and sombre ‘Send Me to My Grave’ commences a trilogy of dark, downbeat, funereal songs, which grow progressively darker, more subdued, the vocals more swallowed by evermore cavernous reverb. Even when the beats kick in and the bass booms, things warp, degenerate, and seem to palpably decay and degrade. There’s a weight to it, a claustrophobic heaviness, and the kick drum thwocks away murkily as if muffled by earth and six feet under sods. ‘This Must be the End’ is brittle, delicate, the calm that comes with the acceptance of… of what? What comes after the end? It feels like the song, and the album, leave this question hanging with an ellipsis, a suspense mark. It seems fitting, since we simply don’t know. But it does very much leave the door ajar for OWLS’ follow up, and that is something to look forward to.
‘Give Me Your Stare’ is the first taste of the forthcoming album, Death Games from Irish darkwave artist OWLS.
It’s pitched as ‘a seduction: a desperate call for the gaze of someone whose love comes with a quiet promise of devastation… a dance floor confession in the fog of emotional collapse…. With echoes of goth romanticism and a subtle menace beneath its polish.’
Seduction and desperation strike me as sitting at odds with one another: desperation has a scent, a look in the eye that’s less ‘come to bed’ and more ‘flee the situation’ – and yet with ‘Give Me Your Stare’ it makes some kind of sense.
These contradictions are elementary, harking back through time and now well-worn cliché to the tropes forged by Elizabethan sonneteers. I’m reminded of Sir Thomas Wyatt’s ‘I Find No Peace’, which contains the lines, ‘I fear and hope. I burn and freeze like ice’, and ‘I desire to perish, and yet I ask health / I love another, and thus I hate myself,’ concluding ‘And my delight is causer of this strife.’
And in essence, ‘Give Me Your Stare’ succeeds as a contemporary articulation of that inner turmoil, all delivered with a steely control that’s either clenched-tight keeping things together, or sociopathic.
With the vocals down in the mix, and delivered with an easy soulfulness, it’s the bass and beats which dominate, and the groove is simultaneously smooth and hard-edged, thanks to the combination of soft synth layers and a crisp kick drum that packs some punch. And for all of the glass-like production, there’s emotion there, and, what’s more, it’s all packed into a neat dark pop package that clocks in at a perfect three minutes and thirty.
The EP sees Kill Your Boyfriend experimenting with new sounds that lean towards electronic music, creating a more rarefied space for the guitars while maintaining the dark atmospheres that distinguish them. It features 6 songs drawing inspiration from past greats such as Kraftwerk, Moroder, and New Order, while also keeping an eye on artists like the Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, and Paul Kalkbrenner.
Kill Your Boyfriend have confirmed a series of European live dates in May and September this year, with more to be announced soon.
Fri 30 May - PMK – Innsbruck, Austria w./ New Candys
Sat 31 May - Rockhaus – Salzburg, Austria w./ New Candys
Since showcasing single cut ‘Discretion’ last month, I’ve been totally gripped by this new EP by Italian post-punk electro duo Kill Your Boyfriend.
There’s something about the consistent use of one-word titles that adds punch. The complete catalogue of Foetus albums is a strong case in point: Hole, Nail, Gash Blow… Four letters, forming a single syllable, prove to be powerfully evocative, even when there is no context – or perhaps more so because there is no context.
The titles of the six songs on here are rather less abstract, more descriptive, but still strong and evocative in isolation: ‘Ego’, ‘Obsession’, ‘Apathy’… words with emotional connotations, words which plug straight into the beating heart of the human condition. And, just as ‘Discretion’ threatened, Disco Kills is a full-on sonic kicking that registers blows from every direction.
It’s all about that throbbing, hard-hitting rhythm section, and once again, I feel compelled to sing in praise of the drum machine. Much-maligned and still contentious when used in a ‘rock’ context, the relentless thud and crash of programmed percussion can be so compelling – hypnotic, yes, but also in the way it registers in a purely physical way, the toppy snare explosion sending shockwaves through the nervous system while setting eardrums quivering. From Suicide to Uniform via Metal Urbain, The Sisters of Mercy and Big Black, there’s a rich lineage of bands for whom a drum machine used well – and at an appropriate level in the mix – absolutely defines the sound. It doesn’t work for a lot of rock acts because they’re more about having a certain flexibility, but for absolutely smashing the senses with precision timekeeping, drum machines really come into their own, especially when solid, four-square basslines which follow the beats with equal precision are involved.
And so it is that for all the mesh of treble and distortion, Kill Your Boyfriend structure these songs around a punishing rhythm section. No fancy fills or extravagant bass runs – just hammering, solid grooves, which underscore all the rest. I say ‘all the rest’ as if it’s somehow lesser. It isn’t, not by a long shot. ‘Obsession’ would be dancefloor-friendly – to the point you could imagine people turning and clapping in time with the crispy snap of the vintage Akai snare sound, were it not for its dark, distorted vocal. ‘Apathy’ a bubbling dance banger that’s twisted by some dissonant chord changes and an echo-soaked shouty vocal, the end result sounding like The Prodigy remixing Alien Sex Fiend. Apathetic it is not: a Hi-NRG banger with a dark, serrated edge, it is.
They do trancey / shoegaze / synthwavey lightness on ‘Illusion’, which offers an unexpected – and unexpectedly welcome – pause for breath. But although it pulls back on the breakneck pace and abrasion of the tracks which both precede and succeed it, ‘Illusion’ is still dense, richly textured, and overtly beat-driven, with a thick, churning bass lurking beneath. It just doesn’t drive as hard or as aggressively, with an altogether gentler vocal delivery, and it builds tension with twisty guitars with strong echoes of the sound of 1984. Yes, it’s a bit gothy, and it sits well, and all of this means that the thick, buzzy, echoey electrogoth stomp of ‘Discretion’ hits even harder after the lull, highlighting just what an absolute beast it is. And make no mistake: it’s a pumping, pulverising dark disco monster. It’s brashy, it’s trashy, not so much a car crash as a flaming, petrol-tank-exploding pileup with Sheep on Drugs, Selfish Cunt, KMFDM, and Sigue Sigue Sputnik. It’s an instant adrenaline spike, a rush of pure exhilaration.
‘Youth’ begins darkly but offer something more buoyant as a bookend to the EP, like an electro Sex Pistols, it echoes and bounced its way in a rush to the end. It does feel like a rather flimsy add-on, but works in terms of bringing things down again to wrap it up.
Disco Kills is solid and fierce from beginning to end – and while it’s predominantly electronic in its instrumentation, it’s also very much rock, and it’s pure punk all the way.
Italian post-punk duo Kill Your Boyfriend has recently announced the release of their new EP Disco Kills on 9 May via Sister 9 Recordings.
Today they share new track ‘Discretion’. The song explores how the absence of truth can cause the downfall of a power structure that should be devoid of secrets. The sound captures the sense of a suffocating atmosphere through a series of echoes and reverberations. Right from the start, Kill Your Boyfriend immerses you in a vibrant, dark dance floor, creating a liberating universe.
AA
The video, shot by Alice Lorenzon, takes up the idea of a claustrophobic and frenetic dancefloor, where we can give vent to our most sincere ‘self’ free of secrets and that mask we are forced to wear in everyday life.
Disco Kills was created from the band’s desire to explore the hopes, obsessions, illusions, and disappointments of the many young people who frequent clubs and meeting places during the so-called ‘growth’ years, at a point when everyone is still searching for their true selves.
The EP sees Kill Your Boyfriend experimenting with new sounds that lean towards electronic music, creating a more rarefied space for the guitars while maintaining the dark atmospheres that distinguish them. It features 6 songs drawing inspiration from past greats such as Kraftwerk, Moroder, and New Order, while also keeping an eye on artists like the Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, and Paul Kalkbrenner.
Kill Your Boyfriend have confirmed a series of European live dates in May and September this year, with more to be announced soon.
Thu 08 May – Cemento – Cosenza, Italy
Fri 09 May – La Gramaccia – Macerata, Italy
Fri 30 May - PMK – Innsbruck, Austria w./ New Candys
Sat 31 May - Rockhaus – Salzburg, Austria w./ New Candys
Aural Aggravation 