Posts Tagged ‘Review’

Decent News – Computer

Posted: 25 February 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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17th February 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Decent news is hard to come by these days – by which I mean for the last five or six years. During the pandemic, every day was a nightmare, as the graphs and charts and rolling death toll was beamed into our homes via every available channel. A lot of people simply switched off and went to the greatest lengths to avoid any form of news media at this time, but for many of us, it became a compulsion, an addiction we couldn’t kick even while fully cognisant that it was fucking us up.

It seemed that dark shit was building up under lockdown, and the moment restrictions were lifted, Russia invaded Ukraine, and not that long after, al hell broke loose in Gaza, and then Trump ‘won’ a second term in office. The entire globe has lost the plot. But snippets of decent news do filter through occasionally, like the arrest of The Artist Formerly Known as Prince Andrew, and former US Ambassador, the Former Prince of Darkness, Peter Mendelson. We can only hope this is the beginning of a toppling of a much, much bigger house of cards.

In other decent news, we have the arrival of Computer, an EP by US industrial metal act Decent News, and ten years and three albums into their career, they seem to be absolutely thriving on this fucked-up state of affairs. Perhaps ‘thriving’ isn’t quite the word, but as the accompanying notes summarise, ‘Computer, as a whole. is largely inspired by the current state of the world. The same generation that taught us to not believe everything we read on the internet somehow keeps believing everything they read on the internet and is therefore, making the world a far worse place.’ We’re on the same page on this.

The five tracks on Computer are pretty wild: the first of these, ‘Flesh for the Feast’, which addressed the topic of ‘being brutalized while trying to exercise your right to protest’ blends sequenced backing elements and robotix vocals with squalling guitars, powerhouse percussion, and raw, raging hollering, and it all blasts in at a hundred miles an hour. ‘Drowned in Power’ is harsh and metallic, inviting comparisons to PIG at their gnarliest industrial metal points, but with the raging anger cranked to the max. While the lyrics aren’t often decipherable, it’s clear that this is the voice of protest. ‘Help Computer’ continues in the same vein, bringing the pumping energy of KMFDM.

After the slow, slow-slung bluesy sleazer that is ‘Bloated & Blue’, ‘Valueless Trade’ swaggers in on a ballsy bass groove and a mess of guitar noodling and samples before hitting an overdriven riff-centric blast that straddles hardcore and metal.

Pretty, it is not. Blunt and hard-hitting, it is. Decent news for everyone who isn’t a fan of insipid sonic chewing gum or a right-wing wanksack.

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Licorice Chamber – Remnants

Posted: 24 February 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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24th February 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

It may only be February, but 2026 is looking like the year of the long-threatened goth renaissance. It’s been bubbling for a while, with first-wave bands like Red Lorry Yellow Lorry releasing new material for the first time in decades late last year, as well as second wave names such as Corpus Delicti making strong comebacks. And what’s noticeable is that their audiences don’t consist entirely of old bastards who’ve been adherents of the scene since the 80s: on recent ventures to see Corpus Delicti and Skeletal Family – whose current singer, it has to be said, is considerably younger than the rest of the band – I’ve witnessed first-hand a substantial proportion of the audience represented by under thirties, even under twenty-fives and teens – and they’re getting into the dressing up, the hair and makeup, too. Why? A vaguely educated guess based on observation and an A-Level in Sociology taken just over thirty years ago suggests that there are a number of factors involved here: what goes around comes around – this always happens – with an element of kids raiding their parents’ music collections or otherwise becoming nostalgic for the music they heard growing up (thanks to my parents, I have records by Barbara Dixon and Phil Collins, although I drew the trauma line at Steeleye Span and The Bee Gees) – and also the times in which we live. Depression, oppression… post-punk and the substrain that would become goth emerged from pretty bleak times – and we once again find ourselves in bleak times, bleaker, if anything. We no longer live under the shadow of the bomb as we did during the Cold War. Instead, we live in a world at war, a world where AI is taking over in a way that resembles the maddest sci-for dystopia, and where the prospects of work and home ownership for those finishing school and college are nothing short of abysmal.

It’s not all gloom and doom, though, because… no, wait. It is, but Licorice Chamber are coming through on the emerging wave of bleak bands to provide a fitting soundrack to existential mopery.

Licorice Chamber perhaps isn’t the greatest band name ever, but it’s in keeping with the latest influx of goth and goth-adjacent acts like Just Mustard (and also reminds me of Fudge Tunnel), and since band names are inherently stupid by nature if you pause and reflect on it in any depth – dissect any band name and conclude that it’s not at least vaguely stupid, is my challenge – it’s fair to let it ride. After all, it’s the music that matters.

On Remnants, Licorice Chamber serve up three brooding slices of classic contemporary goth which are thematically linked under the banner of the EP’s title, as they explain: “The EP title Remnants suggests aftermath, what survives destruction. Rather than romanticizing despair, the songs feel like they’re exploring what’s left when illusions fall away.”

‘Feign’, the first of these three cuts, is magnificently understated, a mid-tempo song that’s as much about the space between the sound of the instruments as the instruments themselves, and while there’s a heap of reverb around everything, something in the production calls to mind the quiet flatness of The Cure’s Seventeen Seconds. But the backed-off drums and fractal guitars serve to place Layla Reyna’s powerful, emotive vocals to the fore.

Heavy by name and heavy by nature, the second song packs a far greater density, a cinematic rock workout, which builds to a climactic finale and finds Layla floating majestic through a sonic maelstrom.

The final cut, ‘Never the Same’, is the longest of the three, and is a slow-burner rendered more kinetic by some busy drumming moments, and with its picked guitar and dark atmospherics, it finds Licorice Chamber inching into the kind of territory occupied by doom / goth acts like Cold in Berlin and Cwfen – and that’s not simply a case of lumping heavy bands with female vocalists into a bracket together: there’s positive commonality here.

Remnants is dark, but bold, and in its own way, uplifting.

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Abrasive Trees – Carved Skull

Posted: 16 February 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Argonauta Records – 13th February 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

A little over two years on from the short film, Mill Session, Abrasive Trees have made another leap in pairing with Argonauta Records, a label which specialises in stoner, doom, sludge, and post-metal, and have unveiled ‘Carved Skull’ as a taster for upcoming album Light Remaining.

At first glance, having been variously described as Post-Punk/Post-Rock/Post-Folk, Abrasive Trees are a strange fit for the label, but with this seven-and-a-half-minute epic, it makes sense.

The intro is a slow-build, with echoes of latter-day Swans in the insistent percussion, repetitive jangling guitar and wordless droning vocals which pave the way for a spectacular sustained crescendo which introduces the riff which provides the track’s recurrent motif, and it’s almost two minutes before we arrive at the lyrics, in which Matthew Rochford reflects on the times in which we find ourselves and yearns for something better – a return to, if not necessarily simpler times, then honesty and humanity.

Can we write a eulogy, for this current age?

And leave the lies behind

Our fears are carved upon our skull

Our pain marked on our skin

The undercurrents reach back into dark folk imagery, and this is mirrored in the sound, too. Sonically, it’s rich and layered, simultaneously weighty but uplifting – which is perhaps a foreshadwing of the album’s thematics as alluded to in the title Light Remaining, which implies looming darkness, and yet., still some light – light synonymous with hope. These are dark times. But we must have hope. Without hope, what do we have?

With ‘Carved Skull’, Abrasive Trees have conjured a big sound, as is befitting of a big tune, which is bold and impactful, and likely an indication of what’s to come.

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Ergocaust – Souls In Pain At Work

Posted: 9 February 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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27th January 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

The context for this, the debut release from Ergocaust, is in some ways an uplifting tale, whereby something positive emerges from a bad situation. They explain that the track was ‘Composed the day I got fired and refined until I made peace with reality, this song was forged out of blood, sweat, tears, hunger, and misery.’

The wheels of capitalism drive our lives, and we have simply no choice in the matter. Hate your job? Tough shit. Suck it up. You’re expendable, and easily replaced. Labour is cheap, and so is life, and not just to the highest echelons of society, but even to lower-level management. They’re only interested in the stats, and will do anything to save their own arses when under scrutiny by the next level up… and so it goes on up the hierarchy. The bottom line is about profit, and survival, and the person above you does not give a fuck about how you pay the rent or feed your family. It’s about how they pay their rent and feed their family, and how they can make cuts to boost their own bonus.

As Ergocaust writes, this ‘encapsulates the idea very neatly just by the title’. It’s fairly direct, and puts an emotive, anguish-laden spin on the notion that under capitalism, workers are confronted with the contradiction of producing and reproducing the conditions of their own alienation. Never mind religion: work is the opium of the masses, whereby the workers are too busy earning a crust and too exhausted from doing so to rebel. The reason everyone is trapped on the hamster wheel is that as much as you hate your job, you need to work to survive. You want out of the hellish job, but to be released from the hellish job is to wonder how you will survive. There are no options.

Ergocaust channels a host of conflicting emotions by the medium of a song with a complex, detailed structure, which draws together a range of musical styles, spanning black, thrash, and industrial metal to forge a compelling hybrid. The fact that its instrumental is perhaps an asset. Articulating complicated and conflicting emotions is something which, all too often, words fail to achieve: in such instances, the language of sound and the power of music serves the purpose more effectively.

It may clock in under three minutes, but ‘Souls In Pain At Work’ is dense and it speaks – by which I mean, it howls anguish, rage, pain. But therein lies beauty and joy, in that  from trauma emerges great art.

GLDN – Vessel

Posted: 4 February 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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6th February 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

GLDN – the musical vehicle of New York industrial / metal artist Nicholas Golden. It’s been a good couple of years since we’ve heard from him, but he’s back with what he’s calling a ‘hard reboot’. And there’s some emphasis on ‘hard’ here.

Of ‘Vessel’, GLDN is up-front, writing of ‘abandoning the organic grit of the First Blood era, this track establishes a cold, clinical architecture. It is an industrial-metal indictment of the “Trauma Economy”— where pain is sold as content…. merging the mechanical dissonance of 90s industrial with the high-fidelity aggression of modern metal.’

The first fifteen seconds alone are a brutal slab of overloading distorted guitar, bringing that nu-metal brick walling, lump hammer-like bludgeoning. The sound is thick and heavy, and when it arrives, Golden’s vocal is menacing and tortured, at first a whisper, then a scream. Amidst a snarling trudge of heaviosity, Golden evokes Trent Reznor circa The Downward Spiral in his vocal delivery, but occasionally veers into raging metal, following the instrumental work into squalling grindcore territory.

Although tightly structured, ‘Vessel’ is not a verse / chorus song: it’s a relentlessly brutal assault of the most devastating order. It’s the sound of extreme emotional violence, it’s having your oesophagus ripped out by a clawed hand, it’s nihilistic rage distilled into less than four minutes. It’s nothing short of devastating.

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The 113 – Leach

Posted: 21 January 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Christopher Nosnibor

I find it most disconcerting shopping in my local Co-op. The self-service checkouts film you, and you can see yourself on the screen above your head while you scan your items. Surveillance and facial recognition is everywhere now. The other day, I passed a venue where a guy in a flat cap was ordered my security to remove his hat and “look into that camera” before being told he could replace his cap and enter the venue. We really have come to this: you can’t go shopping or go for a drink without a capture of your visage ‘for security’. I appreciate that shoplifting is at a record high and violent crime is rife, but is this really the solution? How about asking why we have these issues? And what happens with these captured images? Who views them? How long are they stored, and where? Are they being passed off to train AI?

The ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to worry about’ argument is missing the point, and no longer holds water. The state of things in America with brutal ICE raids where countless American citizens have been mauled, detained, and even murdered (because regardless of the official line, Renee Nicole Good was murdered: those shots were not fired in self-defence, and we live in a horrible, brutal, fucked-up world). And this shit affects you. Well, it certainly affects me, and I know I’m not alone in feeling jumpy, on edge, endlessly anxietised by the prospect of what may happen next, the prospect of waking up to discover that WWIII has broken out while asleep.

This new single by 311 touches on this, significantly, as it happens. as their bio notes summarise: ‘Propelled by discordant guitars and thunderous offbeat rhythms, ‘Leach’ is an abrasive dystopian statement on surveillance, data harvesting and the quiet unease of modern digital life; both a rallying cry against the advancement and negative impacts of big tech, and an honest admission of powerlessness and inevitability in the face of it all.’

It’s a killer single and yet again evidence of just how fertile Leeds is as a spawning ground for fantastic bands. London, Manchester, even Sheffield receive so much hype, but despite being the epicentre of goth in the early 80s and the place for post-rock in the mid 2000s, Leeds seems to be criminally lacking in recognition for its contribution to music, despite Blacklisters, despite Pulled Apart by Horses… and 311 are another bands that should be flagging the city on the national – and international – radar. Because ‘Leach’ brings it all, from churning math-rock, angularity and anguish, colliding post-rock with post-punk and huge energy, they pack menacing and searing riff energy and… and… yeah. This is good.

It’s worth remembering punk and post-punk emerged from terrible times, where it felt like music offered a rare escape, both for those who created it and attended shows. And here we are again.

AA

Eville – Blow Up

Posted: 18 January 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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16th January 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Woah. They’ve gone and done it again. Eville continue to chart their own ascent through their single releases, and having previously toured with Glitchers and played at Reading and Leeds last year, they look like they’re on the brink of really ‘blowing up’ as tour support for As December Falls. They’re a band that tours hard and wins fans at every show, and that’s coupled with a steady output of singles over the last couple of years, culminating in the Brat Metal EP late last year. They’re kicking off 2026 where they left off last year, and ‘Blow Up’ is another rip-snorter, an audacious hybrid of slugging nu-metal, hyperactive rave metal, and autotuned pop.

As such, ‘Blow Up’ draws together all of the elements of their previous releases, and, true to form, compresses them into a pumping three and a half minutes (which is actually quite long for them). It’s not quite a party tune, but it is a beefy riff-driven banger with real bounce. It’s more electronic, more processed-sounding than any of its predecessors, and leans more into pop territory than metal – at least in the main – but the late-landing mid-section goes heavy… And then it bounds to the finish line with another surging chorus.

Right now, it seems as if Eville are reinventing nu-metal for the 2020s, and on their own terms. They’ve got Kerrang! jizzing themselves over their every move. And rightly so. This is a new kind of metal. Power to them.

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R. Schappert – Hellherz

Posted: 4 January 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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r-ecords – 19th December 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

A crackle of static washes in and obfuscates the murky bass and beats which begin to emerge. It’s a strange experience, like listening to a tune while under water. Over time, this shifts: hypnotic beats with clicking, cracking snares and low, thwocking bass drum sounds cut through the curtain of hiss which hangs like heavy rain. And so it is that ‘Waiting for nothing’, the first of the three compositions on R. Schappert’s Hellherz EP. It’s an intriguing piece, layered and unpredictable and multi-faceted.

In context of his bio, which informs us that ‘Roland Schappert pursues border crossings in the form of an “organic digitality” oscillating between melos, sound and rhythm’.

The EP’s accompanying notes are somewhat winding, kind of cryptic: ‘Where do we put all the words that held us captive? We put them in a bottle post and send them out into the open sea. Back on land, there is fluttering in the space of spaces. Corners and edges crumble away in tumultuous layers. Let us take the time that the melos urges us to take, let us entrust him with our voice.

Sensually coded sequences of notes disrupt the free flow of our thoughts. Cranes hop and counter common notions of progress. Hopping instead of marching. Jumping instead of stomping. Up into the sky. From 3/4 to 4/4 time and back again. With hissing and quiet humming. Do we like it better up here? Where do we come from, where are we flying to for the winter? No more getting lost: Wrap your words. Our hearts are light.’

It appears that much of this is cultivated around the EP’s centrepiece, ‘Wrap your words’, the credits for which draw my attention in a way which imbues me with a certain unease:

Lyrics by R. Schappert

Vocals: revised AI voice

AI’s ubiquity is cause for concern in itself, and the reasons for this are a thesis in themselves. But specifically, given the way AI trains itself, voluntarily feeding it words to recycle and regurgitate feels like an abandonment of artistic ownership. When William Burrroughs cut up existing texts in order to form new ones, he questioned the notion that anyone ‘owned’ words, contending that the act of writing was simply the selection and manipulation of words in differing sequences. But this is not the same challenge of ownership and methods of creativity, because the application of AI serves to remove the artist from the process, partially or even wholly. Moreover, while AI is being used for military and medical purposes (and fears over where that may lead again are another thesis worth of debate at least), in the day-to-day, AI for the everyman seems to be about creative applications. Personally, I would rather AI did my admin and cleaned the oven in order to give me more time for creative pursuits. The idea that an artist would delegate any part of their creative work to AI is something which I find truly bewildering. Yes, there are skills we may lack, but the joy of art, in any medium – is learning those skills, or collaborating with other creatives to fill those skills gaps. There are real people with real skills, and working with them and learning from them is how we grow as artists.

So, AI voice? Why? Why not find a vocalist? Why not even apply autotune to a real vocal if that’s the desired effect? The warbling, autotuned-sounding digital vocalisations sound pretty naff, if truth be told, and add little to a tune which clops and thuds along with some retro synth sounds hovering vaguely around a beat which stutters along in soft focus. But as I listen, the whole AI vocal thing gnaws at me: has AI been utilised, uncredited, to the instrumentation too? What can we trust, what can we believe now?

The title track draws the EP to a close, with some brooding, quavering organ sounds and glitchy beats and more static, returning things full-circle before an abrupt end. It’s atmospheric, and a shade unsettling, too.

It may be brief, but there are many layers to this. As a whole, Hellherz provides much to ponder.

AA

(Click image to link to audio)

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j:dead – Disgusting

Posted: 3 January 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Infacted Recordings – 2nd January 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Where were you when…? That’s the question that is so often asked when it comes to moments in history. Whether it’s the assassination of John Lennon or JFK, or 9/11 (I was at work on the third floor of an office in Glasgow, and as the news broke, it didn’t seem real. At some point, people may ask ‘where were you when America invaded Venezuela, abducted their president and declared that they would be running the country and taking their oil?’

Me, I was starting preparation for a pasta bake ahead of a visit from my elderly mother whose mental capacity is in severe mental decline, and my stepfather, whose mental capacity has been questionable for the thirty years I’ve known him, stressing over how much grief I would get over being vegetarian, yet again, or similar.

I found myself faced with the dilemma – did I actually want to write about music in the face of this? Was it even appropriate? The answer was that I needed to immerse myself in music, to take myself out this hellish unreality by retreating to someplace safe. Someplace safe, for me, is my office, with some candles, a large vodka, and the challenge of articulating the impact of new music in words.

Back in 1992, The Wedding Present undertook the task of releasing a single a month, on 7”, and each one hit the UK top 40, and scored the band a record number of chart singles in a year – beating Elvis Presley. A couple of years back, I covered the progress of Argonaut as they released a single a month to assemble their next album. Again, it was a great example of how deadlines and confines can push creative output, although I was rather glad I didn’t have to get busses into town after school and rush round the various record shops to source a copy of said monthly singles.

And now UK industrial/electronic artist j:dead are on a trip of twelve singles in twelve months, perversely starting in December, making this the second in the series.

For a moment, I shall step aside and share from the accompanying bio for expanded context:

‘Where opening single “Pressure” confronted the crushing weight of expectation, “Disgusting” turns the lens inward, addressing the uncomfortable realization of having slipped into complacency. Through candid, visceral lyrics, the track embodies the feeling of awakening to one’s own laziness, comfort, and decline; expressed symbolically through the erosion of physical appearance. It’s a raw, self-critical reflection delivered with the intensity that defines j:dead’s work.’

‘Disgusting’ is a slice of high-energy electronica with a gothy / industrial edge which hits hard. Pumping beats, processed vocals and buoyant dance derivative synths dominate this single release which has alternative clubnight rager written all over it. And it’s the perfect escape.

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KEE.– Sound

Posted: 2 January 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Christopher Nosnibor

The debut single from Nottingham band KEE. is a rare beast – it does something different. Sure, they’re an electro act who’ve been described as ‘Portishead on steroids’, but there’s a whole lot going on here. Yes, there’s a noirish aspect to the sound, and a haunting female vocal which has undeniable shades of Beth Gibbons about it. It’s also muted, low key, with something of a vintage analogue feel. But then there’s some twanging guitar soaked in reverb and it’s more desert rock than country, and suddenly, as if from nowhere, an urgent drum ‘n’ bass beat pumps in, jittery, frantic, like a fibrillating heart, an anxiety attack arising inexplicably in a moment of tranquillity.

The accompanying video – shot in part artful black and white, naturally, the rest blurry – captures and enhances the tense, dark atmosphere.

The groove builds as the track progresses, but so does the tension, and the abrupt finish seals it. It’s exciting, and promising, and I want more.

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KEE. Promo shot

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