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.
British industrial/EBM artist ESA is proud to release a new music video for the song ‘Pound Of Flesh’, taken from the artist’s recent album Sounds for Your Happiness out from July 5th via Negative Gain Productions label.
‘Pound of Flesh’ is the most ambitious cinematic journey from ESA to date. Shot on location in Bangkok (Thailand) during July 2025 with additional scenes filmed in Manchester UK, the video sees the participation of Tan Toafa Maneepasopchock (Gotham/Oceans 10) and Panita Hutacharern along with three other native Thai actors. ‘Pound of Flesh’ is in part a powerful and compelling narrative experience, alongside a love letter to Thailand. A country that has meant a lot to Blacker over the years.
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The story follows a troubled soul, tormented by inner demons, trapped within their own mental prison, happening upon a vehicle to allow astral projection from one body to another in a vain attempt to escape their own pain and anguish. From body to body, it soon becomes apparent that dwelling within a new host body is not the solution it might first appear to be. As time passes within the host, breakdowns begin to emerge and the demons that are tethered to the troubled now take up chase, culminating in a powerful and incredibly cinematic exorcism experience.
‘Pound of Flesh’ is a music film in 3 parts, both adventurous in script and energetic in its execution. The acting of Tan and Panita levels up further the Universe that Blacker is trying to achieve with the ESA multimedia experience.
British artist J. Blacker, mastermind of ESA, has released a powerful music video for ‘Golden House’. The song is taken from the artist’s new album Sounds for Your Happiness, released on July 5th via Negative Gain Productions.
The new single and music video for ‘Golden House’ is an erotically charged, Roman tragedy inspired slab of pumping dancefloor power. Featuring Jo Hysteria from Massenhysterie on vocals, the video for ‘Golden House’ is a cynical POV on the infamous Roman rulers; Nero & Caligula (played by Jo Hysteria and Jamie Blacker respectively). As we witness their hedonistic and power hungry daily affairs (which include a servants wrestling match and body builders performance) before accompanying Nero and Caligula as they travel into modern times and seek to satisfy their hunger for pleasure.
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Inspired heavily by the pomp of the 1979 film Caligula, the video features competition winning body builders Jeannie Ellam and Vikki Varley alongside Jenova Rain and Stephan Sutor as the video Finale’s Insurgents, looking to swipe the ‘throne’ from the naive and arrogant Nero & Caligula.
The context that inspired this piece is the realisation that even after 1548 years since the demise of the infamous Roman Empire, the elected powers in place will still conduct themselves in the same way..and that abuse of power pays no real attention to time periods.
The single for this club edit of the track and music video is available from today (July 18). Whilst the original version of this track (which includes a historic re-telling of these two Emperors by Konstantia Buhalis) is featured on ESA’s album Sounds for Your Happiness, released on July 5th.
Sounds for Your Happiness is yet another milestone in the creative universe of ESA. Striking and thought provoking visuals, enormous electronics and powerful messages is always expected from an ESA release..Sounds for Your Happiness does not disappoint with any of these ingredients.
With this album, J Blacker paints ESA as a sinister technology company, with the musical structures from the album, utilised to create an emotional response from its listeners, which is transferred as energy to run the simulation we all live in. Its a nod to shows and films such as Severance and Soylent Green.
Musically, Sounds for Your Happiness is a bleak and furious slab of electronic meat. A journey of EBM / Industrial / Black Metal / Dark Ambient / Power Noise / Punk / Techno and Goa, the album is as ambitious as it is exhilarating and genres merge seamlessly into an energetic free-fall of sonic chaos.
Get plugged in and let the happiness wash over you.
It’s been three years since Curse Mackey deliveredImmoral Emporium. Three years may not be a long time, but a lot can happen in three years – and it has. And very little of it has been good. There has always something about industrial music – something I’ll unpick in a moment – which has displayed a sense of the apocalyptic, to the extent that at times it seems to almost bask in it. And that is not a criticism. The end is nigh, and while it’s always a question of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’, we seem to be ever closer to the brink of total annihilation. These are dark times, which call for dark music.
Industrial has come to mean many things, in terms of musical forms over the years, while Throbbing Gristle were the progenitors of all things industrial, technological advances saw acts more interested in pursuing more structured works with tape loops and drum machines, eventually giving us the more electro-orientated strain of industrial that became synonymous with Wax Trax!, and, subsequently, industrial metal, not least of all due to Ministry’s evolution from one to the other. Curse Mackey’s work very much belongs to that late 89s / early 90s Wax Trax! domain.
Concluding the trilogy which began with 2019’s Instant Exorcism, Imaginary Enemies promises to be ‘his most intense and intimate album to date… A bleak, beautiful meditation on paranoia, grief, and the ghosts we conjure from within’.
And so it is that the listener is lead into the album by route of looped samples, layering across one another, before a pounding beat crashes in, and Mackey, accompanied by a low, thumping synth bass groove, sets out his stall with ‘pressure points’, ‘psychosis’, and ‘decay’ delivered with a processed growl. There are many layers to the arrangements, creating simultaneously an expansive and claustrophobic feel. Single cut ‘Vertigo Ego’ swiftly plunges into darker, denser territories: brooding and ominous, Mackey’s vocals are a barely audible whisper. It sounds tormented, stressed, anguished.
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If ‘Discoccult’ and ‘Time Comes Clean’ (which calls to mind early (electropop) Ministry and Trudge era Controlled Bleeding) find us in fairly familiar industrial territory, something about the production imbues the material with a suffocating intensity. More often than not, there’s a brightness, a crispness, something of a ‘digital’ cleanness about the genre. In contrast, the sound here is murkier, more ‘analogue’ in feel, alluding to eighties synth music – something I’ve never been quite able to pinpoint as a listener and critic rather than a producer.
One can reasonably assume that album centrepoint ‘Blood Like Love’ makes a reference to Killing Joke’s ‘Love Like Blood’, even if only in title, but sees Curse lean towards gothier territories, stark, brooding, yet ultimately layered, graceful, with synth melodies and dramatic piano weaving around the samples and mechanised beats.
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The second half of the album locks into an atmosphere that’s less aggressive and attacking, and more brooding, moody, and introspective, and as such, marks a clear departure from its predecessors. What’s more, it works well, with the more uptempo title track marking a high point in the album, sitting comfortably alongside some of the more contemporary goth classics with its nagging, reverb-heavy guitar line and pulsating bass all held together by that classic, relentless, drum machine sound.
For my money, it’s Curse Mackey’s best release to date.
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.
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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.
ASTARI NITE has just announced the release of their new single, ‘Miss Rain On My Parade’ courtesy of Negative Gain Productions. The highly-anticipated single follows the recently successful, ‘Unisex Games’.
Vocalist Mychael states: “Validation is not love, and some people are confused by the two. It’s unfortunate how many live their lives, yearning for that certain approval by others. This world can be very dishonest if you allow it to be and the longer you continue to dive into someone else’s sea of lies, you’ll always be alone, with your telephone, and all four walls of the room.”
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ASTARI NITE is an alternative rock band that has made a significant mark in the dark wave music scene. Originating from Miami, Fl, their music blends elements of alternative, post-punk and new wave, resulting in a distinctive dark glam sound.
ASTARI NITE’s style is reminiscent of classic alternative bands like Clan of Xymox and Placebo, yet their modern production and unique lyrical content give them a contemporary edge. ASTARI NITE have supported notable acts such as Peter Murphy, The Damned, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Cold Cave, Peter Hook and The Light, Psychedelic Furs, Modern English, Midge Ure (UltraVox) as well as newer acts on the scene: Actors, Twin Tribes, Then Comes Silence, Rosegarden Funeral Party and Bestial Mouths.
Sometimes, an album really slaps you round the face with its sheer force and brutal intensity. Boom! Sauerstoff, the latest fromHasswut is one of those albums. No two ways about it: this one is a real face-melter.
Technoindustrial acts in the vein of KMFDM are ten a penny, and while Europe has long been a hotbed for this kind of thing, it’s in the US that it really seems to have take off in the last decade, and something that was once predominantly the domain of the Wax Trax! label in the late 90s and early 90s is now ubiquitous. And that’s cool, but it’s no longer ‘edgy’ like it was, because it’s simply become so commonplace, an endless conveyor belt of bands with distorted vocals snarling over pumped-up techno and some gritty sampled-sounding guitars.
Then Hasswult come along and absolutely piss on the majority of their peers by taking it to the next level. It’s more metal, for a start, and less processed. And it’s brutal. Sure, there are beats you can go nuts to, but the abrasion is intense, and hits so hard you’ll see stars.
It’s overtly European to my ears – if I didn’t know they were Spanish I’d think they were German, and not just on account of the lyrics being in German, which presents an unexpected, unusual, and interesting twist – and proper, full-on aggressive, a complete melding of aggrotech, technoindustrial, and industrial metal. Sure, the obligatory KMFDM nods are on display, and in the mix there’s a whole load of Rammstein, and Ministry circa Psalm 69. It’s hard, it’s heavy, and it’s seriously potent.
Post-Punk duo, SUPERNOVA 1006 recently unveiled their latest single, ‘How I Need You’ via Negative Gain Productions.
‘How I Need You’ is a semantic continuation of SUPERNOVA 1006’s Chains album. It was planned to release it as a bonus initially. However, it looked isolated and self-sufficient. Therefore, it was decided to make the song an independent work. Its distinctive feature was a return to the old sound, characterized by the “stringiness” and buoyancy of a cold sound.
‘How I Need You’ gives the feeling of being immersed in a big cold black lake in which no one lives with the silence and comfort of a lonely existence. It is a sonic journey through a cyberpunk landscape, filled with pulsating rhythms and melancholic melodies.
The single release also features remixes from artists such as Casket Cassette, Giirls, CULTTASTIC & Blind Seagull.
Pitched as ‘a battle cry against the facade of perfection that suffocates an authentic connection’ and a song that’s ‘about the dark, often unseen journey of seeking forgiveness and finding solace in the unexpected kindness of strangers’ ‘Necessity Meal’ is perhaps the ultimate hybrid of everything that’s gothy and on the darker side of electro/synth pop.
I’d wager it’s pretty much impossible to write about ‘Necessity Meal’ without recourse to Depeche Mode. That isn’t to say it’sjust some rip-off, so much as an indication of just how deep and broad their influence is felt at the darker end of the electro spectrum.
‘Necessity Meal’ is built around a rolling drum beat with a harsh snare, and some brittle, trilling synths pave an intro that gives way to some guitars that are by turns cutty and deliver strains of feedback. The verses are a bit rappy / spoken and I can’t help but think of it being like a gothy take on grebo and it sort of works but sort of doesn’t – in the way that The Sugarcubes worked but didn’t: you know, you either dug – or more likely tolerated – the Einar bits, or outright hated them as rubbish intrusions into some great songs, but ultimately, it worked because the Björk bits and the overall thing was more than worth the clash. This feels confused and confusing, a bit messy. But then, as front man Mychael says of the song, “In the end of it all, life can be rather messy, and I can sing if I want to, at my own pity-party!” In the mix there’s a bunch of noise that casts a nod to Nine Inch Nail, and…
…And so it is that from all of this sonic jostling emerges a magnificent refrain: the vocals suddenly come on like David Bowie, and with a heavy sarcasm, deliver the line, ‘Thank you, thank you for the guilt’. It’s unexpectedly, and almost inexplicably, affecting, but somehow, in this moment, the whole song, and everything around it makes some sort of sense.
Aural Aggravation 