Posts Tagged ‘Industrial’

Elektrikill – Küntzpiracy

Posted: 20 July 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Evol Music Group – 26th June 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Over on this side of the pond, in the UK, we have plenty to beef about, and more than enough to worry about, too. But while we see endless footage of war in Ukraine, Gaza, and the whole of the Middle East as the US and Iran wrestle their way through the most futile war, we’re in a petty sheltered place, and as much as we may reel in horror over news of the latest high school massacre and laugh at Donald Trump’s daily meltdowns, we do so from a position of relative safety. However hard we continue to lumber into a state of total surveillance, however emboldened the racists become thanks to the rising right, however rapidly our government are eroding our right to protest, favouring perpetrators of genocide over those who speak in opposition to it, there’s still no danger of some masked ICE psycho pulling your car over and demanding your papers before shooting you in the head. Our politicians may nearly all be slippery, deceptive careerists who accept ‘donations’ from individuals and companies with vested interests, but we’re not led by a demented narcissist who’s openly professed to being a wannabe dictator. In short, I don’t think we fully grasp what it’s like to live in America right now.

Elektrikill’s founder, Steve Vil, says of Küntzpiracy – a title that’s both a fairly lame pun and a bit of cliché, but gets a pass because America and an approximation of a Butthole Surfers reference – “Basically it’s my most political album touching on themes of government corruption and half of this country’s loss of humanity while claiming it’s all in the name of Jesus. That pisses me off. I also call out closeted government officials in ‘The Scream’. Look, guys, just be gay instead of crashing Grindr any time you meet in large groups. I do give the listener a break from the political stuff. ‘Vampire Blond’, for example, is about a vampire drag queen.”

There’s a fair bit to unpack here, and he makes a number of valid points. It’s not the whole of America. In fact, it’s a slender majority backing the MAGA madness. Unfortunately, they’ve voted to facilitate an insane power grab, meaning that while there are a fair few who aren’t happy with the direction things have been taking lately, tough shot: you could have seen it coming, so this is on you. And this also involves the most overtly racist, homophobic administration in memory – but as with anything which involves hypermasculinity, what the world outside sees is massive repressed gayness. Yeah, we’re looking at you, Andrew Tate, with your no-bollocks swimming trunks and purple satin blouse, and the culture you espouse. What utterly fucked-up times we live in.

‘Thrum’ makes for a dark, dense start to the album, throbbing bass dominating, the distorted monotone vocals low in the mix as extraneous squalls of electronic noise burst all around, and ‘S(t)imulation’ keeps things dark with some hefty tribal percussion battering away through a murky wall of sound – although the choruses break out with a genuine hook driven by a pumping beat and punchy snare. It’s like leaping from Coil to late 80s Ministry, but it works, and the aforementioned ‘Vampire Blond’ swings into classic electrogoth / technoindustrial territory, and I could chuck a raft of touchstones in here – and that’s no bad thing. they clearly know what they’re doing, and where they’re positioning themselves, and do it well.

‘The Scream’ is again a bit Ministry circa The Land of Rape and Honey, and perhaps a bit KMFDM, and more broadly, a bit Wax Trax! Hardly innovative, but the delivery is top-notch. The beats slam hard.

Landing at the album’s midpoint the piano-led ‘A Chill in the Air’ is both expansive and claustrophobic, and slowing the tempo to explore a more brooding atmospheric, it’s well placed, ahead of full-throttle rager ‘Monoshift’ which brings the industrial aggression pumped to the max. Indeed, the second half of the album is harder, faster, and the altogether synthier ‘My Salvation’ rhymes ‘my salvation’ with ‘masturbation’ in a style reminiscent of early Revolting Cocks.

Stylistically, Electrikill don’t really break any new ground, but Küntzpiracy is intense, angry, and relentless, the aggro and the tempo picking up noticeably in the second half, with ‘Manifesto’ delivering a power finish. With Küntzpiracy, Elektrikill bring the fury and bring the force – and the political ire. This is very much an album of the now, and it hits hard.

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Listen: ‘Manifesto’ by Damage Control x OHMElectronic

Posted: 17 July 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Damage Control is an international electro-industrial group centred around a core quartet of Bill Barsby, Richard Thacker and Alex Wise (all based in Australia), plus Markus App from Germany. Barsby and Thacker are originally from the UK.

The group released an EP in mid-June entitled Master Of Silence on Metropolis Records that contained four songs recorded with Leæther Strip (the Danish musician Claus Larsen). They have followed it today with ‘Manifesto’, a new single resulting from another collaboration, this time with the Canadian duo OHMelectronic.

Consisting of Chris Peterson (Unit:187, Front Line Assembly, Delerium, Decree) and Craig Huxtable (Noise Unit, Landscape Body Machine), OHMelectronic issued two albums in the 2010s and recently resurrected the group to record new material.

The lyrics of ‘Manifesto’ have been written and sung by Huxtable. Exploring themes of sovereignty and personhood in the digital age, he states that “it is about sticking to your principles in an age of hyper disinformation. There is a lot of manipulation, false narratives and false idols out there. We are bombarded every day and we all need to stand strong in the face of it all. Declare your independency, set yourself free.”

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TATV GRAL – Treachery EP

Posted: 5 July 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Christopher Nosnibor

Active since the mid-nineties, Chicago’s TATV GRAL (tätü ’gräl) are an industrial-leaning dark synth act, the vehicle of Allen Addington, and one very much represents the seedy, sleazier, grindier aspect of the scene. As they put it, ‘Forged in shadow, shaped by archetypal psychology, the gay male gaze, and the ritual power of containment’, and the songs in their catalogue are abrim with hints of fleshly sensuousness and dark desires pitched alongside pulsating beats.

The Treachery EP offers four versions of ‘Treachery’ – the original, plus remixes by DSTR (Daniel Myer of Haujobb), Tweaker (Chris Vrenna of NIN), and fellow Chicago industrial outfit [melter]. These are some names to be reckoned with, making this a significant release for TATV GRAL, making several steps up the ladder, so to speak. And it flexes some muscles, too.

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In terms of context, there’s a fair bit to this, from Hellenistic astrology to the psychology of James Hillman, we learn that ‘the song places these symbolic forces in dialogue with Coil’s ritual electronics, Kenneth Anger’s astrologically timed film work, and the Jungian tradition that informs them.’ Thankfully, knowledge of all of this is not a requirement when it comes to appreciating the song or the EP. But add to this the fact that Addington requested the project’s collaborators to not simply remix the track, but to draw out an emotional aspect not present – or at least, not explicitly conveyed – in the original, and it’s yielded some interesting results, which take it beyond the standard remix EP – thankfully. It’s a format that tends to feel lazy, delegating creative responsibility to others and milking material for all its worth and more, and more often than not I find I’m bored shitless of hearing the same song back to back to back with bigger beats or more bass or synth and stretched out over double the duration of the original… after Nine Inch Nails released Fixed, the remix EP had reached not only its peak, but its limit, as far as I’m concerned.

There are, of course, some exceptions, and this is one of them.

In its initial iteration, ‘Treachery’ grinds along, breathy, suggestive, with a pumping groove and with hints of DAF and Man 2 Man and Depeche Mode circa Black Celebration in the mix, and as when listening to ‘Stripped’, it’s hard to decide of you need a wank or a shower most.

The DSTR Remix is the longest of the three, adding almost a whole minute to the running time, and accentuating the heavy grinding bass synth and altering the vocals by downtuning them. The effect is weird, filthy, and vaguely menacing. The [melter] mix is all about the stomping beat and feels more aggressive, sweatier, more muscle-flexing. The arrival of the Tweaker Remix is well-timed, being altogether sparser, more minimal, and more expansive, picking apart the components and introducing significant space. You might say it’s less techno and more industrial, but whatever you say, it’s a dramatic shift in interpretation, and it works well.

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Noir Addiction – Money For The Honey

Posted: 20 June 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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19th June 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

If you couldn’t guess by the name, one look at these guys and you know that there’s some industrial action in the mix. This Italian trio describe themselves as ‘dark alt. rock’ and as blending ‘alternative rock, darkwave and industrial influences with a strong focus on songcraft and melody’. And as the tiles of previous releases, which include ‘Decadent Desire’ and ‘Lust of the Flesh’, they have something of a penchant for the seamy and the lascivious.

A year on from their debut single, ‘Chemical Bride’, they serve up single number six.

Front man Sonny Lanegan explains that “‘Money for the Honey’ is about the things we chase when we know they probably won’t give us what we’re looking for. There’s desire in it, there’s attraction, but there’s also that feeling of searching for something more. The song plays with those contradictions and leaves room for people to find their own meaning in it… The phrase ‘Love me for the money, taste me for the honey’ became a kind of centerpiece for the song. It’s playful on the surface, but it also hints at the different reasons people connect with each other and the expectations we bring into relationships.”

There’s a strange interconnection in western culture with sex and money, and the notion that an abundance of the former has an allure and appeal that begets an abundance of the latter seemingly isn’t entirely without foundation. It’s a fucked-up world, but that’s capitalism for ya. Then there’s the sex and death equation… And Noir Addiction bask and revel in all of this, and never more so with the sleaze-grind industrial-tinged glam-groove of ‘Money For The Honey’. In some respects, it calls to mind latter day PIG, in its combining of pulsating synths, thumping beats and an unashamedly big chorus – all of which is a strong positive – and delivered with the swagger of Depeche Mode at their most overtly stadium.

The dark is very much the undercurrent rather than the main focus, instead pushing up the hookline ‘All I wanna do is make you think that I could kill it’. Well, they’re certainly killing it here.

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Photo by Valerio Fanelli

Watch: ‘Treachery’ by Tatv Gral

Posted: 16 June 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Chicago-based dark synth / industrial artist Tatv Gral (ˈtätü ˈgräl) announces the release of the Treachery EP, a new remix EP featuring the original version of the ‘Treachery’ single, produced by William Faith at 13 Studio, alongside exclusive remixes by DSTR (Daniel Myer of Haujobb), Tweaker (Chris Vrenna of NIN), and fellow Chicago underground denizens, [melter]. The EP is released on 6 July 2026, with presales available on Bandcamp now. The EP release is also flanked by the new video for the DSTR remix of the track, following on the heels of the video for the original single version in June.

Thematically, ‘Treachery’ emerged from a chance encounter that led Tatv Gral’s Allen Addington deeper into the symbolic world of Hellenistic astrology, as Addington explains: “It was a discovery in the ancient texts that unlocked the whole song – both Saturn and Mars independently carry the signification of ‘Treachery’, translated directly from the Ancient Greek. Two malefic forces, each already marked by betrayal, meeting in the same charged space. Following Richard Tarnas and James Hillman, I wanted to explore that archetypal collision phenomenologically – the Old Man and the Young Man, bondage and erotic force – seen through a gay male gaze and the cinematic shadow world of William Friedkin’s Cruising.”

Drawing on the archetypal psychology of James Hillman, who argued that images arising from the psyche carry their own intelligence and must not be immediately moralized, Tatv Gral uses music as a container for difficult energies rather than a platform to promote them. This approach places ‘Treachery’ in a lineage that runs through Coil’s ritual electronics, Kenneth Anger’s astrologically-timed film workings, and the Jungian shadow work that informs all of them. The queer lens is not incidental: it is the specific viewpoint through which these archetypal forces become visible.

Musically, Tatv Gral draws on the colder edges of industrial, EBM and dark electronic music, combining mechanical rhythms, claustrophobic textures and cinematic tension with an emotionally exposed vocal approach. Coil’s occult philosophy as genuine practice is at the centre of Tatv Gral’s frame of reference, while other influences range from Chicago’s industrial lineage via WAX TRAX! Records, through to the brutalist intersection of early British and German electronic music, shaped by the severity of Kraftwerk and DAF, while also maintaining a distinctly personal and contemporary perspective.

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Lumirex – Hurts

Posted: 14 June 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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28th May 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

It may only be three minutes and twenty seconds long, but this latest offering from Lumirex – an Italian musician based in Munich – has a lot happening. It’s dark and stark, with low, stealthy industrial bass tones strolling and bubbling. So far, so much standard dark electronica, the kind of stuff that’s been circulating since the late 80s when Wax Trax! created the template for all things of an electronic industrial persuasion. But with ‘Hurts’, Lumirex take that template and expand on it in the most unexpected of ways.

It begins with stealth, before building… and then something happens. That something is a magnificent vocal which soars and glides – not quite operatic, but every inch classical and the perfect contrast. Compressed and breathy, it suddenly soars skywards in a departure from this domain, while the beats flurry faster, evermore glitchy, evermore tense.

There’s a break where things clamour down to a hushed moment of breathing – a tense gasping, where the word ‘kill’ is repeated, and it feels dangerous, before, out of nowhere, a banshee scream erupts and the beats flitter in again and you find yourself in a total spin.

Sure, it incorporates myriad things you’ve heard before, so much so that it’s not only familiar, but borders on the cliché – but these are just the elements. The way Lumirex draws them together is something else, and ‘Hurts’ is nothing short of mind-blowing. It has to be heard to be believed.

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Black Leather Birds – of Children and Their Sorceries

Posted: 13 June 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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22nd May 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Black Leather Birds – the musical vehicle of A.G. Syjuco, based in Chicago, IL., like so many projects, began during the pandemic. Unlike so many projects, Syjuco has not only kept things going, but remained incredibly prolific.

He describes this new five-tracker, of Children and Their Sorceries, as ‘a deliberate piece of work — heavy on atmosphere and slow-building tension. Themes of anxiety and existential dread run throughout, handled with a literary sensibility that places spoken word, prose poetry, and ritual chant alongside more conventional song structures’.

Straight from the off, it’s heavy and intense. A thick, grinding bass greets us – that is to say, it churns our guts out – and a back-and-forth spoken word dialogue paints a bleak scene. The mellow breakdowns between verses include vinyl crackles and a low ache of nostalgia, before that heavy grind returns twice as heavy, twice as dense, and twice as ugly. In combining elements of Beat-influenced spoken word, trip-hop, and industrial, ‘Nothing Ever Grows Here’ makes for a dizzying and hard-hitting first four minutes.

At just over a minute, ‘Monster’ is but an interlude, but it’s a dark one, which culminates with crashing, crushing beats reminiscent of Dälek, and it segues into the narrative-centred ‘The Box’, a piece where noise rock meets spoken word. It’s actually been a while since I heard anything so narrative-orientated. More than anything, I’m reminded of Enablers – the words are first and foremost, and the atmosphere is tense, and there is noise, and there’s a certain sense of a duel for dominance between the words and the accompaniment. There are elements of jazz and noise rock and post-punk bubbling and jostling away behind Syjuco’s nonchalant narrative, which at times spins some pretty grim imagery – grimagery, even, if you’re so inclined (and I am). I’m also reminded of the smart-witted spoken word of King Missile, only with less of the sassy wordplay.

This is some pretty dark, bleak shit. ‘Almost’ is the most conventionally song-structured piece of the set, and ventures into industrial territory, with mechanical whirrs and dark electronic sounds, not to mention thudding mechanised beats, before the slow, melancholic ‘Goodnight My Darling’ lowers the curtain on this visionary work with a sadness that’s difficult to define. But sad it is.

of Children and Their Sorceries is inspired and inspiring: it’s wide-ranging, and straddles numerous genres. I have no idea where to locate it – but it’s good. And that’s what you need to know.

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Choke Chain – Decomposition EP

Posted: 3 June 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Negative Gain Productions – 10th July 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Nothing says angst-filled industrial rage with a dash of harsh Sadism than calling your band Choke Chain. But while the pitch is that their latest release is ‘the aural equivalent of existential dread’, there’s nothing about this which says ‘edgelord’. It feels like we’re in a new era here, where extreme acts are ditching the extreme shit, the shock shit, the right-wing shit, and are instead engaging with environmental issues, emotional issues.

As they pitch it, ‘The human race continuously proves itself to be largely incapable of any kindness or empathy, instead being completely obsessed with killing and destroying. That’s the central focus of Decomposition.’ It really does feel this way: the US and Israeli governments in particular seem hell-bent on annihilation right now. A part of me misses the Cold War: while we huddled under the perpetual fear of nuclear annihilation, there was equally a certain comfort in the protracted stalemate. The last few months, I’ve woken each morning, soaked in sweat and a state of anxiety and the first thing I’ve done is check my phone to make sure I’m still alive, and then check the news to see that the world is still there. This may sound extreme, but this is the nature of things, and I know I’m not alone in this feeling of perpetual panic.

Says Choke Chain founder, Mark Trueman: “The EP was mostly written during a time where I was very close to giving up. Everything felt completely hopeless, and still does to some degree. I really tried to put all of that feeling into these songs. I also tried to confront some of my personal trauma on this record, which is something I’ve pretty explicitly tried not to do through my music in the past”.

The EP is a positive proof of why we should be glad he didn’t give up, but it’s not hard to understand why things reached that point. Everything’s fucked. And we’re doomed. Whether it’s AI takeover or global climate change or WW3 (if we’re not there yet, we’re on the brink or in denial).

‘Misunderstood’ is a quintessential snarly industrial / metal plus samples intro, but Trueman’s rabid vocal gives hints of Dominic Fernow. The title track is relentlessly brutal: electronic industrial at its darkest, harshest, most metal. It’s very much in the vein of late 80s Wax Trax! with surging grooved and pounding electronic percussion, and the vocals mangled to fuck.

‘Morgue’ is classic sample-soaked dark electronica. It feels brittle, it broods, and there’s something unsettling about the layers of vocals which build layers of discomfort. ‘Life Ends’ is nothing short of rabid, an anguished roar of pain against a relentless electronic pulsation.

There’s no escaping it: with Decomposition, Choke Chain have delivered an EP that’s harsh, and heavy. It’s nasty, it’s uncomfortable. It’s like a punch to the gut, and leaves you feeling short on breath.

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Watch: ‘Yo No Quiero Ir Al Cielo’ by Heavenly Trip To Hell

Posted: 23 May 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Industrial rock band, HEAVENLY TRIP TO HELL has just unleashed their newest single & video for the song, ‘Yo No Quiero Ir Al Cielo,’ recorded by Addasi Addasi at Fuel Music Studios.

Lead Vocalist G Christ explains the heart behind the track: “The song was inspired by the fact that we do not want to go to heaven where certain people can’t get in, I want to go to a heaven where everyone gets in.” This release continues HEAVENLY TRIP TO HELL’s signature sounds – industrial metal fused with goth and heavy metal – born from the dirty streets of Long Beach, California.

Check it here:

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HEAVENLY TRIP TO HELL aka HTTH is made up of 6 members – G Christ on lead vocals, Sergio on Bass, Vicky Vicious on synth and keyboards, Jose on drums, Kurt on lead guitars, and Frank on rhythm guitar. Over the years the band has built a strong underground presence, including a growing footprint in Hollywood, consistently selling out iconic venues such as The Viper Room, Whisky a Go Go, and The Rainbow Bar & Grill on Sunset Boulevard.

Now celebrating nearly 30 years on the streets. HTTH has shared the stage with some of the with some of the biggest names in rock n’ roll, including Dead Kennedys, Guns N’ Roses, Billy Idol, and more – cementing their place in the lineage of legendary live performers. From there, the band reflects on a legacy built deep in the underground scene. As guitarist Kurt puts it: “Give ‘em hell!” HTTH continues forward as a relentless force in heavy music, with a story still unfolding.

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Trowser Carrier + Fern – Helping Old Ladies Cross The Road

Posted: 1 May 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Dret Skivor – 1st May 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Trowser Carrier – formerly of Leeds and now of Värmland, Sweden – is a genre unto himself, being, to my knowledge the sole exponent of polite harsh noise on the planet. And if that seems like an oxymoron, that’s entirely the point: 2013’s A Flower for My Hoonoo (reissued in expanded form in 2023) offered up musings on cups of tea and tablecloths and all manner of English manners against backdrops of raw, skull-shattering abrasive noise.

For this release (I won’t suggest, as music journos so often do, that it’s long-awaited, as I doubt more than five people have noticed the time between Trowser Carrier releases), TC has paired up with fellow Värmland resident Fern (whose error was released by Dret Skivor a couple of years ago).

The compositions are considerably longer than on the previous releases by either artist, with Helping Old Ladies Cross The Road containing four new compositions, each four to nine minutes in length, plus a thirteen-minute remix courtesy of horse funeral.

It’s the title track which lifts the curtain on this characteristically quirky set, and it seems that Fern’s input has tempered the harsh noise of Trowser Carrier, replacing blanket distortion and abrasion with muffled, exploratory, experimental electronica, which swims casually between space-age weirdness, semi-ambient Krautrock, and sci-fi drones reminiscent of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. TC’s vocals are low in the mix and masked and mangled by distortion and a host of other effects, barely discernible and wholly indecipherable amidst layers of reverb and tremolo. It all sound quite polite and considerate in the delivery, though.

‘Lovely show pillows’ is a work of dank, dark ambience which is unnerving, unsettling. The lyrics are completely beyond unravelling, the voice serving more as another instrument in the slow swirl of sound, but the title speaks for itself, as is also the case on ‘Nearly clean? No really clean!’ a slow drift of cloudlike ambience with submerged vocals which likely references a TV advert from the 80s or perhaps early 90s, the specifics of which elude me. It sounds like a disjointed message beaming in via satellite from a space mission circa 1970, crackling through space and time against a backdrop of whale song. Maybe I need to clean my ears: perhaps they’re only nearly clean. But then a barrage of noise like a thunder storm breaking hits with the arrival of ‘The smell of a lawn at dawn’. This is, of course, peak absurdism, and precisely what one would expect from the label, and in particular Trowser Carrier, whose objective is essentially to take the piss out of harsh noise and power electronics and industrial ambient and all the rest, while exploiting the form with a commendable aptitude.

Horse funeral’s remix of ‘TC + Fern’ appears to meld down the album in its entirety to a single seething morass of undifferentiated slow-moving sonic gloop. Here, any vocals are boiled down and simmered to mere bubbles in a broiling broth, and the track eventually evaporates to nothing.

What to make of this? Well, it’s not designed to meet conventional musical standards. Quite the opposite, in fact. But Helping Old Ladies Cross The Road sees Trowser Carrier + Fern belongs to a territory all of its own, dismantling the tropes and forms of the genres to which the album belongs. It would be commercial suicide if commercial potential was an issue. As it is, it’s simply a magnificent example of obstinate perversity – and good noise.

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