Posts Tagged ‘Industrial’

She Spread Sorrow & Luca Sigurtà – The Grimorian Tapes

Posted: 28 June 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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The Helen Scarsdale Agency – 23rd May 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

The pitch alone is harrowing: ‘“Don’t be scared by death,” Alice Kundalini (aka She Spread Sorrow) calmly instructs at the beginning of her collaborative Grimorian Tapes with partner Luca Sigurtà. Her words slither from her lips with a subtle, sinister unease, compounded by the unsettling quality of her whisper. The fear of death, this most profound condition, has long been a subject of philosophical, spiritual, and existential inquiry. To fear death is undeniably human; to transcend that fear is often seen as reaching a higher plane of existence. At least, that’s the intention behind the rituals, the spells woven into the fabric of The Grimorian Tapes.”

I myself have spent a lot of time contemplating death, and the fear of death, especially of late. We are all scared of death, particularly in Western culture. When my wife was diagnosed wit stage 4 breast cancer, where it had spread to her bones, I was terrified, not only of losing her, but of waking up to find her dead in the bed beside me. What do you do in that situation? I did not want to see her dead, and she did not want me to see her dead. Thankfully, she made it to a hospice for her last day, but I lived for a year under the shadow of that ‘what if…?’

You might think that her passing brought peace, but it did not: instead, I have spent many mornings twitching and drenched in sweat lest I should die and leave our daughter an orphan, being thirteen. This is not a call for sympathy – simply as summary. It’s hard not to be scared by death, inevitable as it is.

For additional context, it’s worth delving into the details of the album’s inspiration, a large portion of which comes form The Black Pullet, ‘an 18th-century French grimoire filled with instructions for making talismans and magical artifacts’. We learn that ‘Kundalini weaves her own take on the book’s esoteric themes into the shadowy tape loops that comprise The Grimorian Tapes. The Black Pullet is a detailed guide into alchemy, divination, and occult practices, with a particular focus on harnessing hidden forces through the construction of specific objects imbued with magical power. Though Kundalini doesn’t practice these rituals per se, she finds a deep, poetic resonance with these ancient teachings. The allure isn’t in the performative aspect of these rituals but in the seductive power of its symbols and ideas, which speak to a long-forgotten language of metaphysical mystery. It’s this sense of transmutation, hidden knowledge, and occult wisdom that lends The Grimorian Tapes its dark, ritualistic intensity.’

And so it is that ‘grimoire’ introduces the album with a dark etherality, whispered vocals, the words indecipherable. Echoing amidst rumbles and a persistent drone which ebbs and flows. It’s compelling, and enticing, but at the same time, unsettling. It’s the fear of the unknown, of course: the esoteric and other-worldly and anything that speaks of a realm beyond one’s ken is always difficult to assimilate. This, in a nutshell, is the appeal of horror, because a lot of us find entertainment in being scared. It’s the same reason people go on rollercoasters. Being scared half to death reminds you that you’re alive. And The Grimorian Tapes is pretty scary, in the suspense and horror sense.

‘initiatory’ rumbles and hovers dark and murky, sonically entering the domains of Throbbing Gristle, and again, the whispered vocals are menacing, and reminiscent of Prurient’s Cocaine Death, while ‘the stairs’ brings a hint of disturbing playground, psychological derangement, the other ‘other side’ we’re all so afraid of due to a lack of comprehension. And the further this album progresses, the more uncomfortable and unsettling it becomes, the further it extends beyond the domains of the ordinary, the mainstream comprehension.

‘babele’ is a dank, muddy morass of sound over a slow thudding heartbeat rhythm, while ‘kirtan’ brings flickering, stuttering beats, while again leading the listener through hair-prickling terrain, with triffid-like stem-clattering and gloomy swirls and abstract vocals. ‘we worship you’ plunges deeper into a darker space, with sputtering electrostatic sparking, and gargled vocals, deep and robotic, growling, threatening and emanating from another place, another world, one beyond reach. ‘me and I’ churns like slow machinery, and is industrial in the primitive sense. Again, the way we have come to understand ‘industrial’ has evolved: Foetus is a far cry from Throbbing Gristle, and both are a world away from NIN and Ministry. But The Grimorian Tapes takes us right back to the origins of the genre.

This is one dark and difficult album, heavy and suffocating and uncomfortable from beginning to end. Two thumbs up. And now I need to lie down.

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Listen: ‘White Noise’ by 16VOLT

Posted: 23 June 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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With roots dating back to the early days of the industrial rock scene, the US band 16Volt also crossed over into related genres as soon as group founder Eric Powell signed his first record deal in 1991 while still in his teens.

Brand new single ‘White Noise’ is taken from a long-awaited album by the band entitled ‘More Of Less’. Scheduled for release on 25th July, it is their first full-length record since 2017, when Powell put 16Volt on a hiatus that lasted seven years.

“‘White Noise’ is a song about feeling unheard, when your voice gets drowned out and it seems like you can’t get a word in or no-one is listening to you,” he explains. “To others, you become just white noise, that static sound of nothingness.”

The single follows just two weeks after a first ever (and already sold out) vinyl pressing of Wisdom, the group’s 1993 debut album. Powell’s reactivation of 16Volt in 2024 had been marked with the release of Negative On Arrivals, which combined songs from the group’s previous two records in 2016 and 2017.

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Sicker Man – Stop The Gravy Train / Hollowed

Posted: 6 June 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Limited Edition 7" Dubplate / DL Blank Records – 13th June 2015

Christopher Nosnibor

Tobias Vethake aka Sicker Man has spent a quarter of a century doing things differently – differently from other artists, and differently in terms of his own sound and approach to making music.

As his bio points out, ‘as our world changed a lot during the last 25 years, so did his music. On his last release, KLOTZ WENZEL VETHAKE, the interaction with other musicians and the political dimension of a musical wake-up call became a main focus… The single „Gravy Train / Hollowed“ marks a new and fresh look at both, his musical history and present. It features Sicker Man’s love for dub, noise and electronic music as well his passion for classical composition and spiritual jazz… ‘Stop The Gravy Train / Hollowed’ feels like a collaboration of Moondog and The Bug’

It certainly does. For these two pieces, Sicker Man has enlisted saxophonist Matze Schinkopf, and

How many ideas is it possible to pack into four and a quarter minutes? With ‘Stop The Gravy Train’, Sicker Man manages more ideas per minute than it’s possible to even begin to count. The piece starts with a low, grinding bass and industrial hums, before the saxamaphones enter the mix, interweaving through and across one another. They trickle smoother, teasing with points and counterpoints, laid-back and mellow over the simmering rhythm section, the bass and the beats building currents beneath. Around the midpoint, the piece makes a change of trajectory, the gentle jazz giving way to something altogether more urgent and driving, locking into a robust groove with low saxophone punching rhythmically and in syncopation with the whip-cracking snare and palpating kick drum.

‘Hollowed’ is different again: a swampy surge of seething electronica, a morass of meshing noise – at least to begin, and then it melts into a rather pleasant swaying jazz work, a clip-clip beat nodding along nicely. Swells of noise bubble and surge, but don’t quite break through, and industrial grooves settle in while the saxes tootle off in different directions, hither and thither to brain-melting effect.

‘Genius’ is a word which is chronically overused and often severely misapplied. Is this a work of genius? Maybe not, but it’s got to be close. There’s no question that it’s wildly inventive, and unexpectedly listenable, while challenging every musical preconception.

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Merzbow – The Prosperity Of Vice, The Misfortune Of Virtue

Posted: 7 May 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Room40 – 9th May 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Merzbow is an artist who requires little to no introduction, and one with a catalogue so immense – with in excess of five hundred releases credited – it’s beyond daunting for not only a beginner, but even a keen noise-lover. This is the reasons I personally own very few releases, and have only picked up a few incidentally along the way.

As Masami Akita approaches seventy, and Merzbow marks forty-five years of noise, this output shows little sign of abating, but it does seem an appropriate time to reflect on some previous releases which may be considered either ‘classic’ or ‘pivotal’. 1994s Venereology has been receiving some retrospective coverage of late, revered largely on account of its reputation for being the loudest, harshest thing ever, ever.

But here we have a reissue of The Prosperity Of Vice, The Misfortune Of Virtue, released a couple of years later, a much lesser-known work, but still during what’s broadly considered to be the golden era of the 90s, and, as the accompanying notes suggest, it’s ‘one of a series of unique editions from his vast catalogue that reveals a side of his practice often under represented.’

During the late 1980s and into the 1990s, Masami Akita was sometimes working on film and theatre music. In this space he created a series of recordings that capture the full scope of his sound worlds.

Given the nature of these settings, his compositional approaches were varied, seeking to create both intensely crushing walls of sound and more spatial, and at times rhythmic, pieces that plot out an approach to sound making which atomises his universe of sound, and uncovered the singular detail that is often consumed in the whole.

The Prosperity Of Vice, The Misfortune Of Virtue is the soundtrack to the theatre piece Akutoku no Sakae/Bitoku no Fuko by Romantica. Based on Marquis de Sades’s Historie de Juliette ou les Prosperités du vice & Les Infortunes de la vertu, this recording was originally released with limited distribution and remains one of the lesser available Merzbow recordings.

Completely remastered and contains an additional cut from those original sessions, this reissue of The Prosperity Of Vice, The Misfortune Of Virtue presents nineteen blasts of noise and rumbling and shrieking, scraping discord and dissonance. Many of the pieces are brief – a couple of minutes or so – and there is so much texture and tonal rage here, its sonic vision is remarkable. To many, of course, it will just ne noise – horrible, nasty, uncoordinated noise. But listen closer, and there is a lot happening here. The noise is, indeed, nasty, and the output is, brain-blasting chaos, for sure. But what these untitled pieces showcase is an intense focus and an attention to detail which is so much more than brutal noise. The Prosperity Of Vice, The Misfortune Of Virtue is, comparatively speaking, not that harsh – although when it is harsh, it’s absolutely next-level brutal with shards of treble exploding in walls of ear-shredding punishment. It contains a lot of clattering and crashing, like bin lids being dropped, and cyclical, thrumming rhythmic pulsations. There are tweets and flutters, bird-like chirrups flittering above cement-mixer churning grind with gnawing low-end and splintering treble, overloading grind and would oscillations.

The Prosperity Of Vice, The Misfortune Of Virtue is the sound of a man pushing all the buttons and turning all the dials at once and seeing just how far he can tweak them. There are moments of minimalism, of slow, stuttering beats, of mere crackles, passages one might even describe as ambient – a word not commonly associated with Merzbow. But the way in which The Prosperity Of Vice, The Misfortune Of Virtue explores these dynamics, and contains quieter more delicate segments, not to mention some bleepy electronica that borders on beat-free dance in places, is remarkable: while so much noise is simply repellent to anyone who isn’t attuned to it, The Prosperity Of Vice, The Misfortune Of Virtue offers engagement and offers openings to listeners with a broader interest in experimental music.

Eclectic is the word: we hear a chamver orchestra at the same time we hear strings being bent out of shape and what sounds like a Theremin in distress. While a fire alarm squawks in the background. This is everything including the kitchen sink. Imaginative and experimental, it’s noise with infinite dimensions.

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staraya derevnya – Garden window escape

Posted: 23 April 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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2nd May 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

British-Israeli krautfolk collective staraya derevnya are the epitome of obscure and underground, and it’s precisely for releases like Garden window escape that Aural Aggravation exists. Obscure and underground are not criticisms or judgements here: the world of music is broad and exciting because it affords room for all forms of expression. I’m not going to touch on politics or anything else that may impinge on this as an exploration of a creative work, and suffice it to say that I in no way consider any government to be representative of all of the people, especially not the artists, the creatives. staraya derevnya are the kind of artists who exist not only beyond politics, but simply beyond, and Garden window escape is one of those albums which isn’t only bold in its experimental, but

Precisely what ‘Tight-lipped thief’, the album’s first track expresses, is unclear to me. While containing traditional folk elements, the experimental edge is strong, and it twitters and tweaks, like a squeaky toy for a dog or a baby, over an array of clattering percussion, and the cumulative outcome is a wild, murky, jazzy cacophony, whereby the muttered vocals are largely submerged beneath a discordant tumult.

This isn’t only discordant, but it’s also pretty dark: while ‘What I keep in my closet’ brings a sandpapery scrape and a monotonous vocal yelp, and the effect is cumulative, like sandpaper applied to the skin slowly but steadily, becoming increasingly sore over time, before the woozy, warping, dissonant drone of the twelve-minute ‘Half-deceased uncle’ offers up new levels of discomfiture. It’s a gloopy Krauty swell and surge, combining elements of Suicide and Throbbing Gristle with the electronic pulsations of Chris and Cosey’s Trance, along with some low and heavy drone and tooting horns which evoke the spirit of Joujouka, but with a sci-fi swirl a creeping uneasiness and a tension which pulls away as the chords, the limbs, and ultimately the senses. Noises peel and lurch over a loping rhythm which plugs and plods away relentlessly for quite some minutes. There’s an acoustic guitar strumming away amidst the pings and pows and muffled vocal mutterings which melt together in this lo-fi sonic froth which occasionally calls to mind the breathy discordant tension of Xiu Xiu.

‘Cork flight operation’ grumbles and rumbles on, and on, and constructed around a sparse guitar, it’s faintly evocative of later Earth, but instead of rolling beats, there’s an insistent crunching thud like slow-marching feet and there’s rippling synths and slow drones backing the almost melody of the vocals.

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Amidst squealing circuitry and melting synths, ‘Onwards, through the garden window’ emerges, sparse and gloomy. The hushed vocal, thick with a syrupy distortion, is menacing, the instrumentation borders on jazz but with an industrial / dark ambient edge, which is unsettling, uncomfortable, and this is how Garden window escape slowly grows its unsettling sonic tendrils. There is nothing easy or accessible about it, but it is strangely compelling.

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The Birthday Massacre – Pathways

Posted: 13 April 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Metropolis Records – 11th April 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

For some of us, at least, 1999 feels pretty recent still, but the depressing fact of the matter is that the 90s are as far behind us now as the 60s were in the 90s. And I write as someone who, growing up in the 80s, would watch things like The Golden Oldies Picture Show with my parents on an evening. The premise of this particular show was to play 60s hits with naff reimagined contemporary promo videos, many of which were absolutely heinous – a cartoon of a ball bouncing around as an accompaniment to Bobby Vee’s 1960 hit ‘Rubber Ball’ stands out as a particularly excruciating example. Things have – thankfully, when it comes to this – progressed, but the point here is that it’s been twenty-six years since The Birthday Massacre came into the world. At that time, it felt like the interesting in goth was diminishing and both cybergoth and technoindustrial had kinda had their day, too. But as is often the case, and to paraphrase Throbbing Gristle, I think it may have been, if you stick around long enough you’ll come into favour. No doubt someone will correct me on this, and that’s fine: the point remains valid.

That The Birthday Massacre have sustained a career for more than a quarter of a century is impressive, and testament to both their perseverance and their capacity to connect with a niche audience. It’s often the way that a cult act which never really achieves commercial success or comes into fashion will retain the kind of hardcore fanbase trendy acts will only ever be able to dream of, and while there’s much scoffing about so-called ‘one-hit-wonders’, many no-hit acts enjoy far more consistent careers.

And consistency is the word here: The Birthday Massacre have become dependable for the consistency of their output. And if Pathways sounds like a quintessential cut from The Birthday Massacre, well that sounds good to me, and likely will to fans, too. It packs a hard edge, but balances it with some magical melodies. It has poppy, commercial tendencies, but then, the same is true of 2022’s Fascination.

The album careens in on a bluster of feedback before hefty industrial guitar grinds in hard on ‘Sleep Tonight’, a track that bangs with such energy that it guarantees you most certainly won’t sleep tonight or even maybe for a week. It’s a magnificent blend of hypnotic, ethereal electropop and grating industrial metal. KMFDM and PIG immediately spring to mind, particularly in the execution of the hefty, chugging riffs and expansive, discordant mid-sections, but equally, Pathways presents glorious gothic grandeur and, by way of a more commercial reference, the emotive arena rock of Evanescence.

The title track is a contemporary goth-rock stomper, anthemic, with crystalline lead guitar meshing atop a driving bass and pumping percussion. It’s accessible and tuneful, and casting aside genre distinctions for a moment, a cracking rock / pop song delivered with some power, and with ‘Whisper’ they pack another anthem and once again demonstrate their consistency.

‘Wish’ may be a shade lighter, a bit more 80s radio rock / pop, but it’s delivered deftly, and the final song, ‘Cruel Love’, which stretches out for almost five and a half minutes is suitably anthemic, in the most 80s pop way. It’s quite a shift from the opener, but there’s a trajectory which is traceable through Pathways, as The Birthday Massacre lead the listener toward the light – and it works nicely.

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Kadaitcha – Urban Somnambulistics

Posted: 7 April 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Ant-Zen – 7th April 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Kadaitcha’s Urban Somnambulistics was originally released on cassette in 2017, and was lauded for its dark atmospherics and rumbling narrative, spoken in Russian. A lot has happened since then, and the Ukrainian duo have, against all odds, remained active, releasing Tramontane in September 21023, and now a new version of Urban Somnambulistics, with the vocals in English. It’s not only the urban landscape of Ukraine which has changed since the album’s initial release, but the cultural landscape also, and the decision to re-record the lyrics in English was in some ways a reaction to the cultural and political context which has evolved, with Andrii explaining to me that, for him, Russian has become ‘a language of occupancy’.

There had been a shift following the annexation of Crimea in 2024, with some people switching from speaking Russian to Ukrainian, something which became more prevalent following Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

It’s hard to really grasp, from a position of comfort and safety, what it truly means to be an artist in a country which is not only at war, but has now been so for more than three years. The idea of making art under such circumstances seems completely wild, but at the same time, something we’ve learned from the long history of war – and indeed, history as a long thread, riven with tribulation – is that art has always been something we’ve made. It seems as if it’s almost a part of our survival mechanism, and that in difficult times, it’s a compulsion within the human psyche that there’s an absolute necessity to document, to create.

Urban Somnambulistics is dark and intense, and while it’s devoid of beats, it’s far too noisy and gnarly and bears the hallmarks of Throbbing Gristle at their darkest, most experimental best, abrasive, and anything but ‘very friendly’. The vocal on ‘hiding the angel’, while clean but reverby on the original version, is thick with distortion this time around, and significantly darker and more menacing in tone. ‘bushmeat’ is nine minutes of blown-out distortion and fizzing electronics, snapped cables and firing sparks, and it’s not only tense, but intense, not to mention unsettling. It’s a messy noise drift that would work as part of a soundtrack to Threads, a post-apocalyptic drone with the whistle of a bleak wind cutting across a desolate landscape. There is shredding noise, too, metallic devastation: you can almost picture ruined farm buildings hanging on their frames beside cropless fields.

Things really step up with ‘symbiote’, five minutes of oppressively dark industrial grind, before the rather more airy expanse of ‘paninsecta’, a piece that groans and drones, clanks and clatters, cut through with snarls and burrs, distorted vocal utterances just beneath the level of audibility adding an unsettling layer of discomfort. The eleven-minute title track provides the finale, and again, it’s very much in the vein of Throbbing Gristle’s more experimental works – menacing, uncomfortable, unpredictable, and noisy, collaged overlays enmeshing with crunching metal, melting circuitry, harsh drones rising up, a surging sonic tempest.

It’s remarkable that this is an album which was recorded before life in Ukraine changed beyond all recognition, because Urban Somnambulistics appears to convey all the tension and all the devastation of conflict in its presentation of sonic extremities, and its embracing of noise that hits like… like… It has significant impact, and that’s a fact.

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Machine Mafia – Zoned

Posted: 4 April 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 4th April 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Machine Mafia may be largely unknown, but the duo’s members have some pedigree, being Adam Stone of Pound Land and Jase Kester (Omnibadger/Omnibael/Don’t Try/Plan Pony), all regulars at Aural Aggravation. Jase joined Pound Land’s ever-shifting lineup as the (then) sixth member in 2023 for a handful of live shows, and contributing additional noise to Mugged (because it needed more noise). Deciding to collaborate in early 2024, they slipped out a couple of self-released EPs, which as the notes which accompany Zoned observe, ‘more or less went under the radar at the time’ – which is why they’re getting a second go here, with Zoned being a compilation of those EPs plus four new tracks, or a new EP packaged with the previous ones, depending on your perspective. The tracks aren’t in their original order of release, and have bene resequenced, presumably for the purpose of creating a flow that’s sonic rather than chronological. And so it is that the album starts with ‘Killzones’, arguably the most overtly Pound land-like track on the album, which eases fans of Pound Land into the world of Machine Mafia nicely, or will otherwise alienate pretty much everyone else, unless they’re on the market for something that sounds like Sleaford Mods in collaboration with PiL while monged on Ketamine.

They describe themselves as ‘a voice/electronics duo in the grand tradition of Suicide, Silver Apples, Soft Cell, Pet Shop Boys etc.’ And it is indeed a grand tradition, to which one would reasonably add Sparks, Air, and Erasure, and even the final incarnation of Whitehouse, although what this list ultimately achieves is to demonstrate just how wide-ranging the electronic duo format stretches in terms of style. I very much doubt you’d find these guys donning big hats or flamboyant costumes and kicking out a set of brassy dancefloor-friendly pop bangers, at least on the evidence of the thirteen tracks on offer here. They recount that their first gig was ‘in a small craft ale bar in the Staffordshire town of Leek, receiving a ban for high decibel levels and foul language’. This sets the bar of expectation, and in this context, Zoned does not disappoint.

As I suggested in my write-up of the Killzones EP, the electronic duo they share the most common ground with is Cabaret Voltaire in their early years, mashing up samples and noise in a Burroughsian cut-up style, and churning out gnarly noise that sits between Suicide and Throbbing Gristle. This is particularly true of the collage chaos of ‘Lecture 0.3B’,

But then, ‘F.O.S’, is a blast of uptempo, lo-fi, bass driven drum-machine propelled hardcore punk strewn with feedback and snarling aggression, and ‘Where’s The Money Gone?’, from the Money Gone EP is a filthy racket with massive blasting beats which lands in the space between The Fall and Big Black, powering away at a motorik groove for the best part of six minutes while Stone hollers thickly and ever-more desperately ‘where’s the money gone?’ Well, we know it’s not gone into public services, but there some mega-rich cunts swanning around and jetting into space. And has anyone seen Michelle Mone since she sailed off on her multi-million quid yacht?

‘England’, originally released on Industrial Coast’s ‘Rock Against Racism’ compilation is very Throbbing Gristle, in the (pulsating) vein of ‘Very Friendly’.

Of the four new cuts, ‘Crabclaw’ invites comparisons to Selfish Cunt’s ‘Britain is Shit’, and this may not be entirely accidental, a stinking snarling assault on culture and the senses, with an overloading gritty bass and vitriolic vocals ranting in a mess of distortion and reverb over the murky morass of a musical backing. It’s the sound of frustration, it’s the sound of anger mashed together with despair. ‘Jackpot’, meanwhile, is like John Cooper Clarke spouting over a segment of Metal Machine Music. All the while, a drum machine and throbbing bass pulse away relentlessly: this is Sleaford Mods for real punks. ‘Human Like’ revisits the dubby tendencies first explored with ‘Killzones’, and it’s a dark, sprawling cavernous hell of reverb atop an organ-shaking bass, again bringing together PiL (think ‘Theme’) and Throbbing Gristle (think ‘What a Day’). It’s meaty, and then some, and crunches and grinds away for a full six echo-soaked minutes. Closing with the eight-and-a-half-minute megalith that is ‘Outside My House’, they go full Whitehouse, with a booming bass that’s positively weapons-grade density, over which Stone delivers a rabid, drawling rant from the perspective of a crabby right-wing old-timer while electronic extranea bubble and eddy around. It’s utterly brutal, and completely uncomfortable, and this is the brilliance of Machine Mafia. Gnarly, nasty, uncompromising, Zoned is not friendly, and it will leave you feeling drained, harrowed, punished. Mission accomplished. You’re not supposed to like this.

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Bellhead – Threats

Posted: 31 March 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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8th April 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s both an understatement and perhaps a needlessly obvious thing to remark that there is an overwhelming amount of new music around right now. And so it’s aggravating, not to mention disappointing, to hear people of a certain age – and I’m talking the over 35s here, but it becomes considerably more pronounced as the demographic slides up the scale – bemoaning that there’s no decent music being released anymore. No, that is not the problem. In fact, it’s simply not true, on any level. The problem is that there is so much new music that, depending on your tastes and preferences, finding the wheat among the chaff can be like finding a needle in a haystack, if we’re going to push some cliches. The cliches are relevant, because even among the ‘good’ music, stylistically, at least, a lot of what’s out there is a rehashing of other stuff, and finding anything that feels new or different is rare.

Bellhead are doing something different. Sure, there are elements of post-punk, goth, noise-rock, but there’s nothing ‘template’ or ‘by numbers’ on display here. The fact they don’t have a conventional musical lineup is a key factor, of course: two basses, a drum machine, and no guitar.

The title track is sparse at first, there’s reverb lead bass played high on the neck ringing out and taking the job of a lead guitar, over a grimy, low-slung low-end bass, with some menacing, distorted vocals snarling low and dark. It’s more atmospheric than industrial, at least in the verses – twisty, grindy, reminiscent of PIG with its breaking out into a roaring anthemic chorus – but that chorus sounds like UK goth circa ’86 when it collided with hard rock. It’s huge, it’s hooky, and it’s strong.

‘Heart Shaped Hole’ is hard and heavy, aggressive but with some well-conceived texture and a production that brings everything to the fore simultaneously, amplifying the intensity. The sound is dense, and having bemoaned how a few bands have suffered from their drum machines being too low in the mix during live performances of late, Bellhead utilize theirs to full effect, pitching the beats well up in the mix. It smacks you right in the face and lends the songs an essential muscularity, providing a relentless driving force to which the bass welds itself. The rhythm section is the pulsating heart of any band: with Bellhead, with everything being the rhythm section, more or less, the pulsations aren’t just strong – this is a relentless blast of bass and beats. And there is not much let-up, either. ‘Shutters + Stutters’ is gritty and dark but with a serrated pop edge.

The piano intro to ‘No Dead Horses’ is something of a false lull, because it soon twists and snarls and sneers, emanating menace and sleaze while crunching overdrive grinds over a loping rhythm.

The brace of remixes tacked into the end may be nice bonuses on one hand, but feel perhaps superfluous on the other, with a Stabbing Westward remix of ‘Bad Taste’ from their previous release, and a remix of ‘Heart Shaped Hole’ wrapping it up. The remixes are solid, the former being a super-high-octane dancefloor stomping smasher. But the EP’s five tracks alone are an outstanding document that feels complete in itself., balancing fire and force and heavy atmosphere. But from whatever angle you view it, Threats is all killer, and finds Bellhead taking things to another level.

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Watch: ‘Vex’ by Worst Ones

Posted: 31 March 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Philadelphia-based industrial sludge metal band WORST ONES has unleashed the new single ‘Vex’. The track is a crushing, no-holds-barred exploration of Americaʼs decaying ideals. Drawing from the bitter truth of the American Dream’s collapse, the track delves deep into the rise of fascism and the heartbreaking act of protest by soldier Aaron Bushnell, who self-immolated in protest of the war in Palestine.

Musically, ‘Vex’ fuses the raw aggression of ’90s hardcore with the sludgy weight of doom and the mechanical grind of industrial metal, drawing influences from the likes of Biohazard, Eyehategod, and Godflesh. A standout element of the track is the signature “sickness” – rhythmic noise loops that twist and churn alongside the brutal guitars and drums, creating a suffocating atmosphere of unease. It’s a track thatʼs as punishing as it is poignant, reflecting the chaotic, fractured state of the world today.

WORST ONES has explained the meaning of the song as follows:

“’Vex’ is an expression of disillusionment and resistance under the weight of a system built on lies. The lyrics question what freedom is when we live in a country that supports widespread oppression and death. There’s a sense of despair in the verses and searching for answers in the chorus but in the end the song turns into a statement of defiance and resilience.

The opening line “Wasted life is on us, covered all up in flames” addresses the heinous amount of people killed in war and how “the powers that be” utilize new types of bombs that don’t even leave behind a body, literally covering it up.

The lyric “Do you really believe the reaper will bring peace” challenges the concept that violence and killing would bring peace. It questions the false idea that through war or death there can be an end to suffering.

The final lines “They want to destroy us, but we can’t be beat" reaffirm that despite everything, resistance is still possible and even inevitable to triumph. It’s a defiant statement in the face of a system designed to crush individuals, but where the refusal to give up remains unbroken. I wanted to end the song with a statement of positivity and strength.

The story of Aaron Bushnell, who self-immolated in protest of the war in Palestine, deeply resonated with me. He was someone who joined the US Army, maybe out of ignorance or patriotism, only to feel betrayed by what he was asked to do. His act of protest was a refusal to be complicit in a system that had deceived him, and that sense of betrayal and defiance is something Vex reflects. It’s a statement of refusal in the face of violence, war, and manipulation.

As a Syrian American, these themes aren’t just abstract ideas to me. I’ve experienced how propaganda shapes people’s perceptions, how violence is justified in the name of power, and how the most vulnerable are always the first to suffer. I wrote the lyrics with a universal approach to the words because it’s not just now, it’s about the cycles of control, war, and resistance that keep repeating. This song is my way of expressing frustration, grief, and the refusal to be silenced.”

‘Vex’ is accompanied by a lyric video – watch it here:

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Worst Ones band photo

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