Foetus has unveiled the first material from the forthcoming final album. When JG Thirlwell told us at Aural Agravation it was going to be ‘epic’, he wasn’t kidding. AS if we ever thought he might have been.
‘Succulence’ is featured on the imminent new Foetus album HALT. All instruments on this track played by JG Thirlwell except drums, which are played by Brian Chase of Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Play it LOUD!
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Portion Control are a highly influential British electronic group who formed in London in 1979. Their early, innovative use of drum machines and samplers on classic albums such as I Staggered Mentally (1982) and Step Forward (1984) inspired a subsequent generation of acts that included Skinny Puppy, Nitzer Ebb, Front Line Assembly and Nine Inch Nails.
True forefathers of scenes such as electro-punk, Industrial and EBM, they continue to excite and inspire, regularly releasing new material promoted with bursts of hi-octane live energy, vocalist Dean Piavani prowling the stage as audiences are assailed by a deluge of electronic sounds aligned to a barrage of visuals.
Following decades of staunch independence, Portion Control have just signed to Artoffact Records with the intention of providing a much deserved broader platform from which to promote their work. Alongside new material, the label will curate and reissue the group’s back catalogue, allowing their work to be fully appreciated at last.
Marking the announcement of this exciting new partnership is the release today (5th December) of a fully remastered and expanded version of SEED EP3, first issued in 2021 as a set of short and long-form pieces. Expertly overseen by Paul Lavigne at Kontrast Mastering, SEED EP3.1 boasts an additional three new tracks that include ‘Possessed’ video. Now containing 16 electronic songs and instrumentals, with a total duration of almost 64 minutes, SEED EP3.1 acts as both a starting point to discover Portion Control as well as providing an enthralling revisit for existing fans.
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Finnish industrial band, THE FAIR ATTEMPTS welcomes the coming year with a haunting new single, ‘Anniversary of Our Destruction’. Diverging from their usual bombastic fusion of industrial rock and metal, THE FAIR ATTEMPTS founder, Timo Haakana along his wife & lyricist, Starwing step boldly into the realm of gothic dance music, drenched in deep emotion.
’Anniversary Of Our Destruction’ has a very personal story attached to it. As founding member, Timo Haakana explains, “One year, our wedding anniversary was a lovely, romantic day with a twist. So many things broke that day. Together, we laughed about the destruction the day left behind, and thus, that special day became the ‘Anniversary of Our Destruction’”.
The song was also inspired by Timo’s personal trials and the struggle that we all often walk through. Amid disease and hardship, The Fair Attempts found beauty and elegance in how we’ve always held our dignity even during our darkest hours.
The message of ‘Anniversary Of Destruction’ is this; We live through our ruin and walk this path collectively – all of us. It’s dark times. As Timo states, “If I could share a New Year’s message and piece of inspiration in the fashion of The Fair Attempts, it would be this song.”
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22nd November 2025
Christopher Nosnibor
The second collaborative release of the year by Deborah Fialkiewicz & {AN} EeL (aka Neal D. Redke) lands amidst a blizzard of output from two musicians who are both insanely prolific – by which I mean prolific on a scale which isn’t far off Merzbow or Kenji Siratori: they each release more frequently than the average person has time to listen to it. I don’t in any way consider myself to be an average person – and we’ll not go there – but writing about music means that having something play in the background while I do other stuff, like changing the cat litter or whatever, isn’t always something I fancy, and certainly isn’t my way of hearing a release for the first time. Ok, so this is not how, say, my daughter, who’s fourteen, or her generation, or even some of my peers take in new music, but my formative experience of new music involved sitting down and setting a new album to spin and giving to my undivided attention for its entire duration. Sometimes twice in succession, or more on a weekend.
Attention, in 2025, is, it would seem, in short supply. And yet, flying in the face of this, albums with long tracks seem to be becoming increasingly more common. Perhaps it’s a sign of artistic rebellion. Perhaps it’s that artists feel a need to reclaim the focus and concentration associated with longer works. Whatever the reason, it’s welcome, and Purple Cosmos contains three compositions spanning a solid half an hour.
This is a thoughtful, delicate trilogy of compositions, which build from hush to tumultuous tempests of sound incorporating powerful space rock and progressive elements within their protracted ambient forms.
‘The Floating Monk’ is centred primarily around a thick, earthy drone that has the texture of soil, and it’s enmeshed with dark layers of serrated tones and thunderous rumblings. It’s dark and it’s dense, and it’s uncomfortable. The rest of the album doesn’t offer much by way of light relief.
Yes, the title track strays more toward bleepy electronic experimentalism –a different kind of space rock, if you will – and the final track combines wailing synth overload with some persistent beats… but first and foremost this is an unashamedly experimental work.
Purple Cosmos is a work which reflects a rare attention to detail, and it possesses a certain persuasive relentless in its marrying of dark noise, analogue undulations, and insistent beats. There’s more than a hint of Throbbing Gristle about it, and perhaps a dash of Factory Floor. It gets inside your head, and at the same time enwraps your entire being with its otherworldliness. It sure is a far-out groove.
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OMEN CODE reveal the pulsating and vibrant new SF-track ‘Tensor’ as the sinister final advance single taken from their forthcoming album Alpha State. The debut full-length has been announced to be released on December 5, 2025.
OMEN CODE comment on ‘Tensor’: “This was the second Omen Code track that I have recorded as a vocalist”, frontman Agi Taralas reveals. “Everything about it came very natural to me and exactly in the way that the vocals turned out in the end. As far as I am concerned, this track includes a few Nitzer Ebb tribute moments, which is hardly a surprise as they have largely shaped my personal preferences in electronic music.”
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With their debut album Alpha State, OMEN CODE deliver the sound of the future – and the future is grim and dark! Their future is also firmly built upon the remains of the past. Certainly constructed to fill the dance floor, the international duo channels the bleak, cold precision of mid-tempo FRONT LINE ASSEMBLY and the cinematic story-telling soundscapes of John Carpenter electronics into a thrilling sound that is both resurrecting a classic 80s vibe and also fresh at the same time.
OMEN CODE are the new rising star on the EBM firmament. Deep, dark, and gritty industrial sounds are channelled into captivating mid-tempo tracks that create the atmospheric feeling of a dystopian future ruled by technology and marked by social decline.
This grimdark science fiction approach is not meant to indicate that OMEN CODE embrace any political agenda or message. Rather the international duo took inspiration from the writings of Philip K. Dick and Alfred Bester as well as cinematic masterpieces by British director Ridley Scott such as Alien and Blade Runner among others.
OMEN CODE were originally intended as a one-time project by Kevin Gould. The engineer, programmer, and lyricist was a member of the English Industrial EBM trio JOHNSON ENGINEERING CO. together with Sean Bailey and Ian Hicks, which released the album Unleash in 1988. He went on to found the electro-industrial act ELECTRO ASSASSIN with Ian Taylor. Following the release of Jamming the Voice of the Universe (1992), Taylor was replaced by Richard McKinlay with whom the next albums Bioculture (1993) and The Divine Invasion (1995) were recorded.
When vocalist and lyricist Agi Taralas was hand-picked from a stack of applications for the frontman position, the chemistry between the two artists proved so productive and strong that Gould and Taralas decided together to turn OMEN CODE into a permanent project that would also aim to perform live. The vocalist had already left his mark on the scene in a joint project with German electronic musician Stefan Böhm under the moniker OUR BANSHEE that released an album entitled 4200 in 2017.
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Legendary Italian experimental trio Zu recently announced their return with Ferrum Sidereum (produced by Marc Urselli), a big and bold double album arriving on House of Mythology on the 9th January.
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 new single and video for ‘A.I. Hive Mind’ – about which the band comments, “Smart cities, brain computer interfaces, internet of things, singularity. This particular track addresses all of these things as well as questioning the loss of self, the idea of single consciousness and collective predictable behaviour. Perhaps the most burning question for us is: What does it mean to be human in a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, simulated realities, and technological control?”
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Zu have also shared live dates in support of the new album – dates and details below.
2026 LIVE DATES
10/01/26 – Bologna, TPO – Italy
21/01/26 – Caserta, Lizard Club – Italy
23/01/26 – Palermo, Candelai – Italy
24/01/26 – Catania, Zo Culture Contemporanee – Italy
28/01/26 – Milano, Santeria – Italy
29/01/26 – Verona, Colorificio Kroen – Italy
30/01/26 – Zagreb, Mocvara – Croatia
31/01/26 – Nova Gorica, Mostovna – Slovenia
01/02/26 – Bratislava, Žalár – Slovakia
02/02/26 – Prague, Palac Akropolis – Czech Republic
05/02/26 – Berlin, Neue Zukunft – Germany
06/02/26 – Copenhagen, ALICE – Denmark
07/02/26 – Malmo, Inkonst – Sweden
09/02/26 – Bruxelles, Magasin 4 – Belgium
10/02/26 – Eeklo, N9 – Belgium
11/02/26 – Amsterdam, OCCII – Netherlands
12/02/26 – Paris, Le Chinois – France
13/02/26 – Bulle, Ebullition – Switzerland
14/02/26 – Torino, Magazzino sul Po´ – Italy
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 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.”
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Photo credit: Marco Franzoni
The pioneering UK industrial music act Test Dept have issued a 1983 John Peel Session version of one of their earliest tracks, ‘State Of Affairs’, as a digital single. It is taken from Industrial Overture. Studio & Live Recordings 1982-1985, the first in a series of planned box sets that will chronicle the group’s career.
“We went into the BBC studios in Maida Vale [West London] to record our first John Peel session in 1983 and devised much of the material right there as we liked to explore spontaneity and experimentation in the studio environment,” the band explain. “’State Of Affairs’ started from a collection of sound source material we had gathered and brought in to work with and we then developed that into a live piece and recorded it. Its theme of burning books seems once again relevant to the times we are living through.”
Out on 5th December via the Artoffact label, Industrial Overture. Studio & Live Recordings 1982-1985 consists of 42 tracks across 4 CDs and will also be available digitally. 26 tracks are new to CD and digital formats, of which 12 have never been previously available at all. All contents have been compiled by Test Dept and are newly remastered by Paul Lavigne (Kontrast Mastering).
The box set includes a first ever reissue of the group’s 1983 cassette-only debut album Strength Of Metal In Motion, the classic Ecstasy Under Duress and Atonal & Hamburg albums (both of which have been unavailable for over three decades), plus a disc of hitherto unreleased studio recordings that incorporate two full sessions recorded for the John Peel show on BBC Radio 1.
Seattle-based industrial/goth/post-punk artist MORTAL REALM is proud to release the new single ‘With A Heavy Heart’ via Negative Gain Productions, following the album Stab In The Dark released last year with the same label.
‘With A Heavy Heart’ is accompanied by a visualizer video that you can stream here:
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MORTAL REALM is the multi-genre, industrial-driven project of Adam V. Jones, known for his work in Haex and Sterling Silicon. Following the debut album Stab In The Dark, the project expands on Jones’s blend of heavy electronics, melodic textures, and esoteric atmospheres.
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Christopher Nosnibor
Bite the Boxer is unquestionably an unusual and intriguing name for a musical project: my mind immediately leaps to the infamous ‘bite fight’ between Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield in 1997, where Tyson lost through disqualification after biting off a chunk of Holyfield’s ear in one of sport’s most shocking moments.
In combining an eclectic range of elements spanning industrial, alt-pop, trip-hop, and ambient lo-fi, there’s nothing about Matt Park’s music which indicates any connection to this moment in sporting history. The same is true of his objective to create music imbued with ‘he feeling of impending doom but with just a glimmer of hope’, which is inspired by ‘horror video games and dystopian, post-apocalyptic films’.
‘Venom Test’ is haunting – at first ambient, before bursting with an expansive, cinematic feel, then plunging into darker territory. Even without the aid of a beautifully-shot and remarkably stylish video, the rack leads the listener through an evocative sequence of sonic transitions. Although never harsh, the distant drums are weighty, powerful, and the overall experience feels like a juxtaposition of must and decay with rays of shining hope breaking through cloud. The listener feels as if they’re being pulled in opposite directions, the suspenseful end offering no conclusion, but instead, leaving a sense of emotional quandary, an uncertainty. ‘Venom Test’ creates a tension, and provides no closure or conclusion, only a sense of a door being left ajar. It’s a deftly woven piece, and one which feels very much like it belongs to a much larger project – which it does, being a taster (which doesn’t remotely have the flavour of bloodied ear, to the best of my knowledge) for the forthcoming album, Haunted Remains Pt.2. As a choice of single, it’s a good one, leaving us in suspense to hear it in the context it was intended.
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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’.”
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Aural Aggravation 