electro / EBM / industrial

Dans Les Profondeurs

Nowadays it feels strange to imagine the pre-digital underground music world.  We can still remember the young tape traders spreading obscure DIY experimental try-outs like rats from cellar to cellar. After decades of dust eating, a treasure of subsurface sounds is coming back to the obscure exterior digital realms of music.

Under Starch Clouds is a compilation of a small electronic and industrial scene from the 80’s. The scene operated from an underground pub The Yellow Lemonade in Aalst. Aalst is a town in Belgium known for its rebellion priest Daens and carnival. It was during the 80’s this industrial city blew clouds of pollution that infected the minds of the local artists and music freaks.

Nearly all the material on this compilation was originally recorded on tapes.  Those demos were exchanged among friends and played on DJ Attila The Nun’s (Peter Vercauteren) radio show “The Fall Of Western Civilization” (Radio Katanga). The tracks by Killvision and Neoprene Grt come from their debut demo tapes. Under Starch Clouds stands for experimental electronica without high tech tools. The artists used their inspiration to create effects with all kinds of kitchen gear or ancient hair dryers. Samples were taken from taped radio shows and therapeutic sessions.

This compilation is filled with pure rebellion against every known mainstream soundscape from the past and the coming future.  The music styles of the selected 10 tracks are situated between dark, sharp edged, industrial electro and electronic body music.  Under Starch Clouds is a black diamond with experimental insurgent music from an underground scene hidden in the industrial dungeons of Aalst. It was too difficult to choose a favorite track between all these outstanding items of Belgian electronic music. 

Under Starch Clouds is available on LP and digital. Hurry, grab your hands on this rarity because the (white) vinyl is limited to 223 pieces. The emperor of Wool-E Discs made us clear that in the future more of these secret sounds could be released to the world. For the time being this release has already a special place in our darkened hearts.

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Patsker

industrial / power electronics

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Institution D.O.L. is already more than 20 years active. The Austrian power electronics-noise duo, mastermind Barbie B. (music, vocals & lyrics) and his accomplice Meta Dolor (music, vocals & lyrics) released their 9th album, Our Love Can Destroy This Whole Fucking World. The band claims to be the one and only active playing Power Electronics artists in their country.

The release starts with an organ intro drowned in spiritual chanting. This surprising but cliche intro vaporizes when the second track, We Are The Black Ones, cracks our skull with harsh noise and threatening shouting vocal sounds. The horrifying mood continues with the apocalyptic track You are All Lost. Nostradamus would be rewriting his prophecies of the end of the world, after listening to the terrifying track Abschlachtung (slaughter). The noise combined with combusting soundscapes and frightening screams create an inhuman world filled with an overkill of horror. Abschlachtung makes you clear that in the world of Institution D.O.L. you want to die before you were born.

And the nightmare continues further with Absolute Hell. Institution D.O.L. forces the listener to follow their hypnotizing and addictive creations. They mixed a soft, but so mind touching piano choir guiding a speech of death with echoing screams in the distance. We embraced this Absolute Hell with pleasure. The album sounds better track after track. In Dust And Death, Institution D.O.L. reveals dark power electronics with pumping sequenced electronica taking you away, beyond your imagination. The evil vocals predict total devastation.

OLCDTWFW (Our Love Can Destroy This Whole Fucking World) is the most varied and intensive piece on this album. Twelve minutes feel like two minutes with this bursting volcano of noise changing into soundscapes and distorted voices. All fade away into an ambient piano piece releasing tranquility in this beautiful hell. Catharsis is the final end. Spoken emotions, screams of despair, grief and pain come to the surface guided by a piano, dimming into oblivion.
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The sounds and moods on Our Love Can Destroy This Whole Fucking World are definitely not for the common family and not for noise music tourists. Institution D.O.L.  gave us one hell of an industrial-power electronic-noise trip. The artists use the term “death scape” to describe their creations and they have a point. The album is available on CD and LP.


Patsker
 

black metal / industrial / psychedelic

Yeruselem is a side project of Blut Aus Nord's Vindsval and W.D. Feld. Blut Aus Nord has been around since 1993, starting out as a black metal band, but gradually drifting into more experimental/industrial territory.

While very influential, it is also a fact that their music is not exactly easy listening. Industrial metal is often quite fatiguing to listen to, so imagine what happens if you throw a heap of ambient noise and dissonant riffs on top of that...However, BoN's last release (Cosmosophy) started showing signs of going into a more accessible direction (relatively speaking, of course, it's still not Steel Panther).

Yeruselem shows these guys going further into this direction. The sound immediately reminds me of Godflesh, but the guitars would not be out of place in a goth or deathrock band, and the melodies are at times, well, poppy. Vocal-wise,it also sounds refreshing - at times it made me think of Jesu, Front 242, or even Depeche Mode (go figure). Don't get me wrong, it's still heavy, but a more accessible way.

There are 9 songs on "The Sublime", two of which are instrumental mood-setters. The rest are fairly short songs, barely exceeding 5 minutes at max. Of note are album opener "The Sublime", (brilliant guitar work) , and "Eternal", with twisted drums and catchy vocals. 

What Jesu is to Godflesh, Yeruselem is to Blut aus Nord. And since I'm a big fan of Jesu, this really made my day. 2019 is off to a good start!


Koen

black metal / dark ambient / experimental / industrial

Here's a review for an interesting release that flew largely under the radar: Haiku Funeral's "Decadent Luminosity", released end of October 2018. I do find it strong enough to revisit - after all, at the year's end, one should be compassionate to those who do not get what they deserve.

"Decadent Luminosity" is a double CD, with a total of 12 songs. Thematically, both discs stand on their own: the first one, called "Decadent", sounds like diabolical industrial metal - the band themselves call it "blackened industrial darkness". The second disc is called "Luminosity" and is a more ritualistic, organic affair ("ritual satanic ambient").

So what exactly is blackened industrial darkness? Imagine hammering industrial drums, meandering fuzzy basslines, some metallic impacts here and there, ancient string instruments, and, to top it all off, ritual chants and declamations. The end result is pretty electrifying, at times reminding me of NATO- or Wat-era Laibach, and of the icy cold declamations of Coph Nia's Aldenon Sartorial.

Highlights on this disc are the church organ solo at the end of the first song (Scientia Intra Satana), the eerie piped melodies on Lunata Sveti Kato Smwrt, and the Laibachian The Crown Of His Glory.
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As already stated, the second disc sounds more organic, largely due to the absence of the industrial drumming. Instead, what we get is a carefully constructed atmosphere, composed of slow drones, reverberating vocals, bells, saxophones, and other odd instruments. Perfect background listening, in my opinion - again, Coph Nia seems to have been a big inspiration (e.g. Poems of infernal Flesh).

Haiku Funeral is a French duo, operating from Marseille since 2008. Published by Aesthetic Death, Decadent Luminosity is their fifth release. Is it perfect? No, at times I find the lyrics to be somewhat silly. But apart from that, this is a gratifying and immersive listening experience for those cold days and nights spent sitting by the fireplace.


​Koen

drone / ambient

death metal / grindcore

death industrial / dark ambient

Exabyss Records

post rock / ambient / electronic

ambient / classical

funeral doom

gothic rock / alternative / metal

drone / ambient / folk

dark ambient 

alternative rock / funk rock

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indie / dreampop

industrial / electronic

Perc Trax

​Serge (2 & 3 by Patsker)

dark ambient

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A fifteen minutes EP with four tracks, Dark Hymns lives to the glory of its simple, but energetic and suggestive title. With a very dark, subtle and obscure sound, the sensitive premises of the style are afflictive to the fullest – despite being paradoxically peaceful and serene –, and seems to anticipate the imminence of a profoundly terrible doom. While the work presents to the audience a very simple and surreal sound, its nuances are dense, and the excellence of its atmosphere dissipates a graceful and somber fear over the boundaries of the melodies. There is nothing too exceptional or extraordinary about this work, but for dark ambient genre enthusiasts, the vivid, morbid intensity displayed by the artist behind the project is certainly vast, very meaningful, and spiritually consistent. 

electronic / darksynth / dark electro / synthwave

Crossing Lights is an album released on June 22, by German electronica/ synthwave act Collapse Project. A wonderfully splendid album, with eleven tracks – Where everything began, Crossing Lights, Arise from the darkness, M.e.n.s.c.h., Pursuit,
Bloody Dancefloor, Cemetery Walk, Starfighter, Nightshift, Test Drive and Rewind – this marvelous and majestic state of the art work has colorful harmonies, a vibrant, lucid and energetic pace, an intense and cohesive style and a superb sense of rhythmic rapture. With softly pungent, dense and dynamic mordacious melodies that engraves its formidable intrinsic strength at the voracious pace of the music, the album is fulfilled with a tremendously aggrandizing and creative originality, displaying a talent that has everything to stand out as uniquely authentic in the contemporary underground scene. Showcasing a sensational musical grandeur whose artistry is effectively sidelined with the most vivid and hallucinating melodies, the genuine musical abilities of Collapse Project is a gigantic cosmic evolutionary step in what concerns the general development of the genre. With some of the most beautiful songs that I’ve ever heard, Crossing Lights is an unprecedented milestone in the history of electronica. Certainly, deserves not only to be fully appreciated, but highly highlighted as one of the most beautiful, sensational and singular albums ever conceived. 

death metal 

Coffin Birth is an album released on July 20, by Californian death metal group Extremity. With eight songs – Coffin Birth / A Million Witches, Where Evil Dwells, Grave Mistake, Umbilicus, For Want Of A Nail, Occision, Like Father Like Son and Misbegotten / Coffin Death – the record is a satisfactory, lucid and efficient, but hallucinatory and hazardous death metal album, that works decently the most traditional elements of the genre. With heavy, fast rhythms that exposes the voracity of their style, Extremity showcases a peculiar, brutal, direct style, atrocious to the core of its corrosive nature. Despite the fact that the album at some rare passages becomes a little predictable and monotonous, this does not affect the general layout of the sound, nor does any damage to the competent and precise style of the band. Their aggressive strength is somewhat inherent to the most brutal and extreme ramification of the genre, and the name of the band certainly stands for it. While you can’t expect too much of innovative features on this record, Coffin Birth displays a decent amount of virtuosity, talent and definition, and certainly honors the genre with a virulent and passionate degree of astounding sonorous hostility, that will entertain avidly the most dedicated enthusiasts of extreme death metal.    

grunge / stoner rock/ power metal / black metal / alternative rock

Released on June 22, Desolation is an album by alternative post grunge/ power metal rock group Khemmis. With six tracks – Bloodletting, Isolation, Flesh To Nothing, The Seer, Maw Of Time and From Ruin – this gracefully peculiar, audacious and cohesive record showcases the splendid abilities of a band that does an amazingly superb and exceedingly sophisticated work in their amalgamation of several different genres and styles of music. With a power metal core heavily infused by a post grunge alternative rock density, the music of Khemmis has its own singular and energetic creative groundwork, fuelled by an outstandingly voracious and rude nitroglycerine spontaneous synergy, that explodes directly in the brain of the listener. A little reminiscent of more classic and mainstream acts like Manowar, Creed and Blind Guardian – although exposing a formidable degree of uniqueness – the band does a surprisingly splendorous and excellent work on Desolation, that reveals itself as a marvelous, profoundly genuine and sensational album, all the way through. Undoubtedly, Desolation deserves to be classified as one of the greatest masterpieces of the year.  

electronic

A beautiful, outstanding, lancinating and colorful EP, Gated Soul has four tracks: Blues For Jekyll, Last Raver, Hocus Pocus and To The Woods. With beautiful melodies, and very sensible, delightfully plausible harmonies, there is a genius spontaneity coming out from these songs that actually make you feel quite enthusiastic about it. With an exceedingly serene, but at the same time ostensibly sensational and mandatory vibe, the artist reveals a subtle, but formidable sense of originality on the framework of the sound that is the embodiment of this work. From within, the melodies gradually expand from a synergy that relocates the rhythm directly to the point of its graciously moving syncope. Exposing lucidity and showcasing an extraordinary degree of creativity, this electronic music artist from Great Britain has no fear in demonstrating his superb, masterful and singular talent, that easily reinvigorates in a more sophisticated sonorous artistry the greatest elements of electronica. Here you have four amazingly wonderful songs, that you will be pleased to hear over and over again. 

black metal / death metal

A very impressive, hostile and energetic album – although widely using exceedingly crude and conventional elements by some standards – Krwawy Sztorm, by Polish extreme metal group Moloch Letalis, is an aggressive, furious and bloodthirsty album. Only thirty minutes long, the record has nine tracks: Wielka Egzekucja, Sztorm, Krwawa Ziemia, Zatańczysz Ze Mną Kurwa W Piekle ?, Przysięga, Zdychaj Psie, Palownik, Gotowy Na Piekło and Żar. With ostensive and abrupt rhythmic grievances, the style of the group is simple and direct, a little reminiscent of punk rock, given the atrocious voracity, objectivity and rudeness of its style. With a solid fidelity to the most brutal aspects of the genre, the work is amazingly competent and full of acid rage. Although there is nothing too aggrandizing nor original about the work, certainly this album is a pearl for avid enthusiasts of the genre, since Moloch Letalis literally practices closely the most ardent, extreme, raw and violent aspects of death and black metal, executing a refined breed of these marvelous genres. If you like astoundingly heavy material, Krwawy Sztorm is something you would like to hear. 

electronic / techno / industrial 

With six tracks – Entrance of Gargoyles, Dance or Die, The Order, Mechanical Vampire, The Cavern of Noise and Theunderdogme 2018hardrem1x – The Cavern of Noise, by techno industrial French artist McClane is a formidable, very intuitive and lancinating work. With abrasive and disruptive rhythms, increasingly grotesque and infuriating harmonies, cohesive dilapidation of sound and very unpredictable, dense musical compasses, The Cavern of Noise is an interesting work of art, astoundingly engraved at forefront of the best tradition of techno music. With elements that plays on the fundamental axis of the noise and industrial genres, the artist evokes at the colorful blast of the music an atmospheric vitality that rejuvenates the harmonies and the anatomy of the music. With a lucid, compulsory and graceful creativity that is exponential to the ardent mordacity of the melodies, on this album, you certainly get the best the genre will ever offer you. The title track – The Cavern of Noise – is absolutely the best, and will leave you with the dense exposition of what electro techno music should really sound like. 

black metal

Mysteries of Earth, released by British black metal group Blutvial on July 5th, is a formidable, lucid and splendorous album. Fully energized, mortally intense and with sordidly aggressive, rapturous and impulsive, but lugubrious and poetic guitar lines, Mysteries of Earth is better described as a marvelous state of the art work. With ten amazingly placid and cohesive tracks – beneath the moon, black silence, existential rite, vault of unrest, carving nihil, midwinter's halls, urnacht, doomed to eternal night, in praise of noctula and where graves spring open – this fantastic work, besides its subtle originality, extraordinary grandiosity and proverbial musical audacity, consolidates firmly and brings about intrinsically the best qualities of the genre: hostile mordacity, somber harmonies, an aggressive stylish impetus, creative melodies, a rapid pace and an exceedingly volatile density. With the organic virtue of a profoundly vital and conscious musical dynamic, you can certainly highlight this record as one of the best black metal pieces released this year. Mysteries of Earth is a punctuating device and a majestic work of art in the history of the genre.     

black metal

Cosmic Autumn is the debut album of an eponymous black metal project from Germany. Released on July 13, the record has five tracks: The Last Deception, Event Horizon, Indistinct Visions, Realms Of Eternal Light and Solitude (Instrumental). With a beautiful and very original musical layer, very sober and proficient, the sound is definitely strong, sensitive, dynamic and fundamentally cohesive. Although the record retains the fury typical of the genre, Cosmic Autumn is also a lesson on sincere and poetic artistry, as the music revolves itself around a shroud of mortifying serenity, like a twilight that dies in the agony of an everlasting moment of unspeakable affliction. Since the music translates into sound these imponderable passages of pervasive anger, the overall loyalty of the project’s style to the genre is emphasized, but without compromising the ability of the artist in showcasing his own peculiarities. A very good work, that certainly exposes the mordacious talent of an exponentially promising black metal artist, Cosmic Autumn is the opening gate for a musician that has everything to aggregate into the genre a whole new conjuncture of possibilities, with his audacious and ostensibly brilliant creativity. 

stoner rock/ psychedelic rock 

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Earthborn is an album released by Greek stoner rock group Stone Age Mammoth. Forty minutes long, the record has seven tracks: Fearless, The Dark, Whispers, The Mysterious Life Of Mr Krips, The Secret, Earthborn and My Darkest Hour. An exceedingly calm, methodic and meticulous, but exceedingly vigorous and lucid album, undoubtedly, Earthborn is a fantastic state of the art work, that dissects, reverberates, comprehends and exposes the best aspects the genre has to offer. With singular, serene and soft guitar lines, a configuration of sonorous walls that grows from the sincere stylish leniency of the group and a marvelous sense of timing that knows from instinct what has to be done, Stone Age Mammoth has a formidable artistic security and a powerful domain over the genre, that comes out naturally. Revealing itself as a graceful masterpiece as the album evolves and revolves around its own atmosphere of calmness, omniscience and existential perception, the glorious creativity of the group certainly highlights them among other bands of the genre. With a singular conjuncture of sonorous qualities, Earthborn deserves to be greatly regarded, widely appreciated and publicized as the wonderful and fantastic work of art that truly is.

black metal

Nostalgia is an EP released on July 23 by German black metal artist ColdWorld. With five tracks – Cosmos Devourer, Demon Speed, The Dark Ages, Let The Devil In and Silva Nigra – the EP, almost twenty six minutes long, is concise. Exceedingly beautiful, with the typical elegance that is an engraved milestone of the artist, the proverbial guitar lines and the poetic harmonies anticipates the general conflagration of its overall majestic serenity, deeply fulgurated with the sensible character of its everlasting, elegant and somber  horizon of artistry. With rapid passages that are profoundly surrounded by graciously atmospheric interludes, the music on Nostalgia is overloaded with the imperial fragrances of its own rudimentary darkness, that is sustained by a lucid and dense, but marvelously whimsical ferocious resentment, whose vitality extrapolates the shadows of its own arrogant beauty. With everlasting precipices of color surrounding the rhythmic fortunes of the songs, I must confess that I wasn’t particularly overwhelmed by this work. Nevertheless, Nostalgia has all the elements that are characteristic of a ColdWorld work, and, to a certain extent, has enough qualities to be deemed valuable for its sincere and splendid level of singularity.    

post rock / experimental

Return is a three tracks EP released on July 25, by a musician from India, who works under the nom de plume of Phet. With three marvelous songs – Return, Distance and Liberation – Phet works very distinctively the interior perception of the harmonies, to articulate an ascendant, protuberant and expansive, but at the same time discreet, lucid and introspective degree of sonorous exhilaration. With a pungent, incisive axis of conscious melodic devices, correctly assimilated by the lenient, but purposeful stability of its glorious symbiosis of organic dissonances, that seems lethargic at first, the intrinsic nature of the rhythmic serenity that grows within this musical horizon slowly works towards the digressive elements of the harmonies, revolving around a certain complexity that obliterates the cosmic volatility of its formidably eloquent style. With a futurist, colorful, modernist musical approach that made the external shape of the songs, indeed, to sound in an exceedingly beautiful and elegant fashion, Return can be positively described as a very gracious, audacious and original work of art. The last track, Liberation, I would certainly highlight as my favorite. If you want to listen to something very surprising, astute and genuine, I definitely recommend this marvelous and surreal EP. 

Wagner

industrial / metal

Time to put on our cybergoth outfit and drag ourselves to the dark dancefloors or stages. We're diving deep into a style that doesn't often appear on the top levels of the musical universe. Instead, this stuff usually hides away in concrete basements and abandoned factories.

There, this album will undoubtedly find several outrageous fans, stomping on those massive beats and banging their heads to the distorted guitars. It's time to unleash Ritual Aesthetic, the band that sounds like a lovechild between Die Krupps and Psyclon Nine.

The band was formed by Sean Von Helvete of Dawn Of Ashes. In 2014 they released a first effort, titled 'Decollect'. Now they return with 'Wound Garden', which is nothing less than a smasher. If you love heavy electronics mixed with gut ripping guitars, this is a definitely must have. Opening with the rather typical industrial intro 'Statis', 'Wound Garden' quickly lures the listener in, only to completely demolish him during the other eight tunes.

'Life Amnesia' comes up with the synths and punishing percussion that we know from bands like Hocico, Combichrist and Suicide Commando. On top of that they throw those grinding guitars, which obviously brings bands like Die Krupps and Oomph to mind. The vocals remind me most of the aforementioned Psyclon Nine. Industrial you say? Absolutely, I mean, there are few band who deserve the "industrial" tag more than this one.

Yet, there is a bit more going on. Remember The Covenant, the industrial black metal band later rebranded The Kovenant? Well, songs like 'The Analog Flesh' somewhat remind of them, just like early Ministry, when Al Jourgensen first discovered guitars. 'Divided' raises the tempo a bit and thus becomes one of my favorites on this album. This tune brings very few new acts to mind but nicely represents everything that Ritual Aesthetic stands for: "in-fucking-dustrial". 

The album rages on with sheer power until the strange 'Mechanism Of Desire (Electronic Substance Abuse Remix)' appears. This drum & bass meets Thunderdome remix seems to be recorded on a different, lower volume level but that could just be the press version. Nonetheless, you light just crank up the volume and get lost in the madness. By the end, true cybergoths will adore the pounding 'Amnesiac (Xentrifuge Remix)'.

So there you have it, "industrial" in all aspects of the music. That would make Ritual Aesthetic one of the most interesting acts in today's "Maschinenscene" or however you would like to name it. Fact remains that this album is loaded with electronic energy that just can't wait to pierce the darkest regions of your very soul. It's probably not difficult to find people to recommend this one to. Industrialists of all ages: check this one out.


​Serge

post-metal / doom / alternative rock

dark jazz / ambient / experimental / trip hop

hardcore

acoustic blues

dark ambient / noise

doom / occult metal

death metal

black metal / doom / death metal

post punk / synth pop

breakcore / industrial

alternative rock / blues

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style of Tool and quite a bit of grunge - vocals that remind of Cobain included. So go buy this one if you appreciate something that refuses to fit into one box.

ambient / experimental

Pany Rosas Discos

krautrock / psychedelic 

psychedelic rock / krautrock / neo folk

doom / blues

techno

electronic / darkwave

shoegaze

death metal

ambient / downtempo / post rock

death metal / power metal

americana / alternative rock / indie

bandcamp

stoner metal

drone / ambient / experimental / industrial

Sometimes people tell me that ambient music is boring and unimaginative. I usually don't really react to that, mostly because tastes differ but also because I found out that people who say such things are boring and unimaginative creatures themselves. They're usually the kind of people who drive their BMW to the next dance music festival, make asses out of themselves while trying to dance to 78 hours of "boom boom boom boom" and then pass out and cry because they forgot their teddy bear at home. Wait. Where was I? Oh yeah, boring and unimaginative. Well, ambient is exactly the opposite and Witxes once again proves that.

As some of our readers already know, Witxes is the experimental ambient brainchild of French artist Maxime Vavasseur. His previous releases were very well received among fans of everything Denovali has put out. So I guess it's no miracle that Belgian label Consouling Sounds picked him up for a brand new album. And that album is a stunner, a mesmerizing whirlpool of soundscapes, noise, drones and whatnot. My initial reaction was "Zoviet France on steroids", especially after listening to tracks like 'Disruptions' and 'Interventions', which pierce some harsh electronic noises through your eardrums.

The whole thing opens quite impending too. You can even call opener 'Distractions' an in-your-face ambient tune. This is not the quiet, gentle minimalism of your everyday ambient music. Nope, these are soundtracks to imaginary events and yet to be made science fiction movies, stubbornly following their own path. 'Incarnations' even delves into the world of industrial electronics with its repetitive and grainy percussion. Perhaps, because of that, this is my personal favorite. So yeah, I think it's clear by now that this is highly recommend piece of work, one that will definitely keep you entertained for a long time.


​Serge