Den brachialsten Death Rock, respektive Post Punk spielen dieser Tage vielleicht FINAL GASP. Das morbide „Mourning Moon“ war in der ersten Hälfte nach zwei Gift und Galle speienden EPs noch ein wenig zurückhaltend, „New Day Symptoms“ soll nun die Kür für die Bostoner werden. Und ja, eine halbe Stunde dauert dieses Album, in dem es kaum eine Verschnaufpause gibt. „New Day Symptoms“ zeigt eine Band, bei der Wut und Heaviness gleichberechtigt neben Schwermut steht. Das ist nicht wirklich neu, aber die Energie, mit der FINAL GASP in medias res gehen, ist schon beeindruckend.

Verflucht gutes Songwriting neben einem Sound, der dynamischer sein dürfte: FINAL GASP fahren auf „New Day Symptoms“ schwere Geschütze auf.
Dank ihres Hardcore-Gitarrensounds rückt die Düsternis ein wenig in den Hintergrund und Wut und Rock and Roll-Flair beherrschen das Album. „New Day Symptons“ wird so zu einem mitreißenden Album, das dem Genre eine Energie einhaucht, die ihm ansonsten abhandenkommt. Dennoch hätten ein paar leisere Momente dem Album gutgetan – die Gitarrengewalt in dem Arthur Rizk-Sound ist schon sehr intensiv und nimmt auf Dauer etwas die Dynamik. In Sachen Songwriting sind FINAL GASP aber ziemlich oft verflucht gut, und daher schälen sich einige besondere Songs heraus; meistens dann, wenn es catchy wird. Das ist bisweilen unwiderstehlich rabiat, mit donnernden Grooves, packenden Riffs und großartigen Leads versehen – zu hören in „Burials Of Birth“ und im Titelsong.

Sogar vor ganz alten Helden verneigen sich FINAL GASP: „No Hand To Lead“ erinnert ein wenig an BLUE ÖYSTER CULTs Evergreen „Don’t Fear The Reaper“ und überführt diesen Einfluss authentisch in den Bandsound, inklusive Uptempo-Steigerung in der zweiten Hälfte, Usus bei klassischen Hardrock-Songs der 1970er. Dieser Song zeigt auch, dass FINAL GASP, wenn sie die kreative Handbremse lösen, richtig viel zu bieten haben. Entsprechend dürften sie sich öfter trauen, Heavy Metal-Leads wie im DOOMRIDERSesken „Look Away“ oder Goth-Schwermut wie in „Pale Sun“ auszupielen. Auch Sänger Jake Murphy hat sich stimmlich deutlich weiter entwickelt. Wütend ist er noch oft genug, aber gerade, wenn er sich an Melodien traut, schärft sich dadurch das Profil für die gesamte Band.

FINAL GASP schärfen ihr Profil: Auf „New Day Symptoms“ stehen einige Songs mit Hitpotenzial.
„New Day Symptoms“ zeigt eine definiertere Version von FINAL GASP, die nun – provokativ vereinfacht – mehr sind, als eine Hardcore-Punk-Version von KILLING JOKE. Indes, am Ende ihrer Entwicklung sind FINAL GASP mit ihrem zweiten Album noch nicht. „The Apparition“ zeigt aber auch, dass FINAL GASP ihre Hits noch etwas offensiver schreiben dürften, ohne von ihrer Schärfe zu verlieren und auch das sollte aber niemanden davon abhalten, dieses Album zu hören. Denn die Bostoner haben die seltene Gabe, Genres zu bedienen, die zu oft für sich allein stehen: Post Punk, Hardcore und klassischer Heavy Metal gleichermaßen. Das verbunden erzeugt eine zwingende Mischung. Verzweiflung und Wut homogen verbunden – sehr passend für die unruhigen Zeiten, in denen wir leben.

Wertung: 8 von 10 Schizophreniesymptome

VÖ: 27. Februar 2026

Spielzeit: 31:53

Line-Up:
Jake Murphy – Vocals
Alex Consentino – Guitar/Synth
Sean Rose – Bass
Peter Micanovic – Guitar
Kevin Ordway – Drums

Label: Relapse Records

FINAL GASP „New Day Symptoms“ Tracklist:
01. Eternal Silence
02. Look Away
03. The Apparition (Video bei YouTube)
04. Gifted Shame
05. No Hand To Lead (Video bei YouTube) 
06. Prediction
07. Burials Of Birth (Video bei Youtube) 
08. Fractures
09. New Day Symptoms
10. Pale Sun

Mehr im Netz:
https://finalgasp.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/final_gasp/

Source: Vampster

Die Black Metal-Band BEZKRES hat mit „Naturalna nietolerancja“ ein neues Album angekündigt. Es ist das erste Album der Polen und wird am 10. April 2026 via Signal Rex erscheinen. Vorab gibt es den Titeltrack zu hören.

BEZKRES „Naturalna nietolerancja“ Tracklist
1. Majestat kamiennych monumentów
2. Ludzkie ścierwo
3. MarnośÄ� wiary plugawego krzyża
4. PrzełÄ�cz zatracenia
5. Siła woli
6. Naturalna nietolerancja (Audio bei YouTube)
7. Nieskończony szlak
8. Anihilacja
9. W poszukiwaniu samotności w skalnym labiryncie

Source: Vampster

Die Death Metal-Band HAUTAJAISYÖ hat mit dem Video zu „Kuusi Kantajaa“ eine zweite Single von ihrem kommenden Album „Surun paino“ veröffentlicht. Es ist das fünfte Album der Finnen und wurde von Gitarrist Sami Lustig produziert und von Janne Tuikkala gemastert. Das Cover-Artwork stammt von Minttu Koskinen.

„Surun paino“ wird am 20. März 2026 via Inverse Records erscheinen. Vorab gibt es mit „Maan nielemä“ einen weiteren Video-Clip. Der Song ist inspiriert vom Jahr 536, dem „Jahr der Dunkelheit“, als die Welt in Dunkelheit gehüllt war und fast die gesamte Menschheit umkam. Inmitten des Chaos arbeitet ein einsamer Totengräber unermüdlich.

HAUTAJAISYÖ Line-Up:
Janne Partanen: vocals
Sami Lustig: guitars
Simo Pesonen: bass
Teemu Roth: drums

HAUTAJAISYÖ „Surun paino“ Tracklist
01. Surun Paino
02. Maan Nielemä (Video bei YouTube)
03. Kuusi Kantajaa (Video bei YouTube)
04. Kasvoton Kuljettaja
05. Hetki Viimeinen
06. Lyhyt Matka Hautaan
07. Eloton
08. Haaskalinnut Minut Muistaa

Source: Vampster

Die Blackened Death Metal-Band MYLINGAR hat mit „Út“ ein neues Album angekündigt. Es ist das dritte Album der Schweden und folgt fünf Jahre auf das letzte Album „Döda själar“ (2019) nach. Zudem eröffne das neue Album eine weitere Trilogie.

„Út“ wird am 17. April 2026 via Amor Fati Productions erscheinen. Vorab gibt es den Track „rækta“ zu hören.

MYLINGAR „Út“ Tracklist
1. Megi
2. blóð
3. mitt
4. rækta (Audio bei YouTube)
5. jarðveginn
6. af
7. neðan

Source: Vampster

Die Melodic Death / Thrash Metal-Band LEGIONARY hat nach „If the Judges Became the Judged“ mit „Controllers of Perception“ eine zweite Single ihres kommenden Albums „Never-Ending Quest for Purpose“ veröffentlicht. Das neue Album der Band rund um Bandgründer und Komponist Frank D’Erasmo wurde von Mike Low gemixt und wird am 6. März 2026 erscheinen.

LEGIONARY Line-Up:
Frank D’Erasmo: Rhythm Guitars, Drums, Bass
Tony Barhoum: Lead Guitars
Chris Clancy: Vocals

LEGIONARY „Never-Ending Quest for Purpose“ Tracklist
1. Sentenced to a Life of Chronic Guilt
2. If the Judges Became the Judged (Lyric-Video bei YouTube)
3. Never-Ending Quest for Purpose
4. Controllers of Perception (Lyric-Video bei YouTube)
5. Story Without Closure

Source: Vampster

Mit „Veil of Ashes“ wird am 13. März 2026 via Firecum Records / Museu do Heavy Metal Açoriano das neue Album der Death / Thrash Metal-Band MORBID DEATH erscheinen. Es ist das fünfte Album der Band von den Azoren. Vorab gibt es mit „World of Lies“ einen Video-Clip.

MORBID DEATH Line-Up:
Ricardo Santos – vocals/bass
João Raposo – guitar
Helder Pinheiro – guitar
Pedro Sousa – drums

MORBID DEATH „Veil of Ashes“ Tracklist
01 Evil Remains
02 Veil of Ashes
03 Vanity
04 Hole Worm
05 Souls of Trauma
06 Fallen Future
07 World of Lies (Video bei YouTube)
08 Death Row

Source: Vampster

Die Death Metal-Band TERATOMA hat mit „Stertorous Whisper“ einen weiteren Track ihres kommenden Albums „Longing Voracity“ veröffentlicht. Es ist nach „Purulent Manifestations“ (2021) das zweite Album der Deutschen aus Berlin. Release-Termin ist der 25. März 2026 via Me Saco Un Ojo Records.

TERATOMA Line-Up:
Giacomo – Bass
Caue – Drums
Sandro – Guitars
Rolo – Guitars
Dani- Vocals

TERATOMA „Longing Voracity“ Tracklist
1. Exordium (Audio bei Bandcamp)
2. Longing Voracity (Audio bei Bandcamp)
3. Chaotic Bewilderment
4. Ravaged and Absorbed
5. Perpetual Anguish
6. Circle of Perdition
7. ⁠Interim
8. Festering Realm
9. Spewing Atrocities
10. ⁠Stertorous Whisper (Audio bei NoCleanSinging)

Source: Vampster

Die Progressive Technical Death Metal-Band BEYOND CREATION hat mit „Reverence“ eine neue Single mitsamt Video-Clip veröffentlicht.

„Unsere neue Single beschäftigt sich mit der fragilen Grenze zwischen Klarheit und Illusion, zwischen Selbstreflexion und Wahnsinn, wo die Suche nach Sinn uns entweder erheben oder verschlingen kann“, sagt Frontmann Simon Girard. „Aber die Wahrheit ist einfach und kraftvoll: In dem Moment, in dem man aufhört zu vergleichen und sich darauf konzentriert, wer man wirklich ist und was man wirklich ausdrücken möchte, geschieht etwas Wunderschönes. Man schafft etwas aus einem Ort der Ehrlichkeit heraus. Man wächst mit einem Ziel vor Augen. Was man erreicht, wird zu etwas, auf das man stolz sein kann, weil es einzigartig, echt und ganz und gar das eigene ist.“

Es ist der erste neue Song der Kanadier nach acht Jahren. Bislang hat die Band aus Montreal drei Alben veröffentlicht.

BEYOND CREATION Line-Up:
Simon Girard: Vocals & Guitars
Kevin Chartré: Guitars & Back Vocals
Hugo Doyon-Karout: Bass
Philippe Boucher: Drums

BEYOND CREATION „Reverence“ (Video bei YouTube)

Source: Vampster

Die Dark Rock-Band THE MUGSHOTS hat einen Labeldeal bei My Kingdom Music unterschrieben. Im Zuge dessen wird das von Mickey E. Vil betriebene Projekt sei neues Album „Gloomy, Eerie And Weird“ veröffentlichen, welches am 17. April 2026 zu erwarten sein wird. Als Produzent fungierte Gitarrist Priest, während für das Mastering DAN SWANÖ gewonnen werden konnte. Mit dem Lyric-Video zu „The Nameless“ gibt es nun die erste Vorab-Single.

THE MUGSHOTS „Gloomy, Eerie And Weird“ Tracklist
1. Cold Inside
2. The Nameless (Lyric-Video bei YouTube)
3. Empty Park
4. Nuclear Memento
5. Inter Ludus (An Embalmer’s Lullaby Part III)
6. Slow, My Tears
7. Have You Seen It Before
8. Acid Mantra
9. It’s My Time
10. Stalking Theme

Source: Vampster

Cloaked in the skin, of flesh and blood and bonesOf the one now buried deep down belowStand before this copy, move betweenTake me by the hand, take this life from me 

There are artists who move between mediums as though crossing from room to room in the same house. E.K. Wimmer wanders that corridor with a steady hand. Known widely for his work as a film composer (particularly his score for the 2018 documentary Scary Stories, which traces the uneasy folklore of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark), Wimmer has long understood how sound can press against an image until it breathes. In Albuquerque, under the name Blood Relations, that instinct turns inward and burns low.

Drain the Light carries the hush of a chapel before the service begins. A church organ opens and closes the record, tolling in slow arcs, as if marking time for the living and the gone. “Drain the Light has been the longest I’ve ever worked on a record, not just with Blood Relations, but with any solo project or band,” Wimmer says. The songs were written, set aside, returned to, and searched again for the right words. He speaks of shelving tracks, of resuming them after Ritual, of finding the thread at last: “I wanted the whole album to be tied together through this dark church organ, which opens and closes the record, almost like a funeral service. Death has always been a constant theme…however, Eulogy was an album mostly about the loss of my parents, whereas Drain the Light is album about the loss of friends and even the death of oneself to an extent.”

The record settles into a classic Deathrock cadence: lean guitars, graveyard rhythm, guided by the spirit of Specimen, Skeletal Family, Altar De Fey, 13th Chime, and kindred outsiders from Japan, Spain, and Switzerland. Wimmer once allowed Blood Relations to shapeshift freely; here, he chose focus. “It was really important for Drain the Light to not be too many sub-genres shoved together. I wanted a straightforward album that wasn’t too confusing to describe, and so I settled on a classic Deathrock sound.”

Ash recurs in the lyrics: fire’s remainder, cremation’s quiet. He considered naming the album Ashes, but reverence intervened. In Paris, wandering The Louvre, he found instead a sculpture from 1711—The Death of Dido by Claude-Augustin Cayot. Paired with the line drain the light from Crack the Sky, the vision fixed itself. Stone, song, and memory met. The title was waiting.

After the haunting organ instrumental opener All That Remains, Watch Them Fall is a meditation on survival’s burden, steeped in the ache of outliving those once held close. The gloomy musicality is immediate: a haunting deathrock guitar line circles overhead while the rhythm section moves with graveyard patience. Wimmer’s crooning feels like a lone figure howling at the moon, voice stretched between endurance and exhaustion. Each passing feels abrupt, unfinished; ash gathers at the song’s edges.

On Crack the Sky, the tempo tightens, but the mood remains stark, channeling the passionate vocals of Curses here, especially. Restless and fevered, it moves through dust-choked memory and sacred violence. The gloomy musicality takes shape in churning minor-key riffs and tom-heavy percussion that thuds like distant artillery. Figures run across a barren landscape, wounded yet upright. The horizon splits open, light drained away, leaving isolation ringing through reverb and restraint.



Night Folds In leans into gothic unease. Identity loosens its grip as the living confront their own reflection. The gloomy musicality here is spectral and slow-burning: echo-laden guitars shimmer in cold arcs while the bass stalks beneath. Burial and doubling hover at the margins. The self recedes; what remains feels borrowed.

With The Waxing Moon, intimacy settles into still air. The gloomy musicality softens but does not brighten—clean guitar lines glisten under a patient drum pattern, as if suspended in silver light. Sensation fades into a dream. The track drifts without urgency, surrender arriving like a tide that never turns. Return Me sharpens the ache. A plea rises from emotional vacancy, framed by brittle guitar and a bassline that moves like a pulse under glass. The gloomy musicality underscores estrangement from one’s own flesh. Regret hangs thick; there is no refuge for restless bones.

On Crawl into the Flames, earth and fire converge. The gloomy musicality grows heavier: distorted chords grind forward while drums march with ritual insistence. Roots twist with veins; sorrow reshapes the body. Submission feels inevitable, transformation slow and absolute. Death Never expands the scope. The gloomy musicality here feels vast, almost liturgical, with sustained guitar tones and measured percussion echoing into open space. Love persists beyond the grave’s seal. Death stands patient and absolute; devotion presses onward into the void. Black Candle turns ritual inward. The gloomy musicality flickers in tight, circling riffs and a bassline that coils with intent. The act of lighting becomes reckoning. Ash and bone mark the aftermath; desire burns low and controlled.

Closing with I’ll Still Remember, the album exhales. The gloomy musicality remains steadfast: measured drums, restrained guitar, a voice worn but steady. Memory becomes a sanctuary. Acceptance arrives without spectacle. What lingers is recollection held close, as the final notes recede into quiet dusk.

Listen to Drain The Light below and order the album here.

Drain the Light by Blood Relations

Blood Relations:

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Spotify
Bandcamp

The post “How These Hands Have Gathered Dust” — New Mexico’s Blood Relations Shares “Drain the Light” LP appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Source: Post-Punk.com

Eric Angelo Bessel makes music like a man hunched over a workbench at 3 a.m., soldering starlight into old machinery. Double Helix, the new track from his upcoming 7” EP Mirror at Night B-Sides, hums low and patient, then slowly unfurls soft coils of tone looping back on themselves, rising in quiet spirals. It’s ambient, but not wallpaper…it breathes. It hovers. It circles the drain of memory and peers in the void.

Sonic layers stack up in gauzy tiers, chords held long enough to bend the clock. You can practically see the tape reels turning, even if the whole thing’s living inside a laptop. The track twirls and repeats, gentle but insistent, like DNA threading itself in slow motion. Artificial clouds part. Water glows with a strange interior light. You start thinking about your own cells, the little cosmic librarians filing away heartbreak and grocery lists with equal seriousness.

Bessel says, “Double Helix feels excavated from time itself – ancient and futuristic at once, drifting through memory like a half-remembered dream.” It’s a pretty clean description of the sensation: something unearthed, brushed off, set spinning again. There’s a whiff of Delia Derbyshire’s laboratory mischief and Daphne Oram’s tape-spliced wizardry in the architecture, and yes, the patient hush of Brian Eno hovers nearby, but Bessel is building a room and letting the air thicken inside it.

Listen below:

As a companion piece to 2025’s Mirror at Night, these instrumentals feel like secret corridors branching off the main hall. The track sits outside the usual grid. No chorus to chase, no beat to bully you forward. Just accumulation. Tone upon tone, like sediment settling at the bottom of a glass.

Maybe that comes from his eye as much as his ear. Bessel studied photography at Syracuse University and later at the School of Visual Arts, and you can hear the framing instinct. He knows where to place the horizon line. He understands exposure: how much light to let in, how much to withhold. His earlier books and exhibitions were about catching atmosphere before it slipped away. Double Helix does the same thing in sound: pins a fleeting feeling to the wall and lets it glow.

Listen to Double Helix below and order the single here. The Mirror at Night B-Sides EP comes out on Friday, March 27, 2026 via Lore City Music.

Mirror at Night B-Sides by Eric Angelo Bessel

Follow Eric Angelo Bessel:

Bandcamp

The post Eric Angelo Bessel Excavates a Half-Remembered Dream With “Double Helix” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Source: Post-Punk.com

There’s a moment, right before a remix takes flight, when you can feel the air shift. The lights dim a notch. The floor tightens. Someone, somewhere, leans closer to the speakers. On Traitrs’ reimagining of Toronto post-punk duo Modele’s You Are My Sin, originally on Pleasures Of The Holy, that shift happens almost immediately. A low throb rolls in, patient, predatory, and suddenly the chapel of the original becomes a midnight club with stained-glass windows rattling in the bass.

Traitrs always understand atmosphere the way some bands understand hooks. They don’t rush the ritual; the beat lands with intent: steady, stalking, edged in ice. Synth lines stretch longer here, darker in hue, turning the song’s devotional ache into something more dangerous. Where Modele’s version glowed with ceremony, Traitrs lace it with a more restrained tension. The space between notes feels charged, like a held breath shared by a roomful of strangers.

You Are My Sin is about the collision of faith and flesh; pleasure braided with guilt, desire dressed in incense. In this remix, that collision feels physical. The drums hit harder, the low end digs deeper, and the chorus rises like a confession whispered into a mic at 2 a.m. Huggett’s vocal floats above the mix with a new urgency, less sermon and more surrender. Each line lands like a vow made under red lights.

There’s something cinematic in the way Traitrs rebuild the track. They let it simmer, then slowly widen the frame. The bass swells, the synths gleam, sharp as chrome in a dark room. The sacred and the profane spin together under a mirror ball that feels just slightly cracked. Traitrs never overcrowd the arrangement. They carve space with care, letting the tension coil and release in measured waves. The altar has been carried onto the dancefloor, and the incense has mixed with dry ice. Somewhere between the kick drum and the last echo of that chorus, devotion becomes motion. You step back into the night air changed, pulse steady, the echo of that beat still ticking under your ribs.

Listen to You Are My Sin (Traitrs Remix) below and order the single here.

You Are My Sin (Traitrs Remix) by Modele

Follow Modele: 

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Follow TRAITRS:

Bandcamp
Facebook
Instagram
SoundCloud
YouTube
Spotify
Apple Music

The post Toronto Post-Punk Duo Modele Share Traitrs Remix of “You Are My Sin” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Source: Post-Punk.com

I was the wound — now I’m the blade

Built from the scars that you made
 

There is a moment, just before dusk, when the air shifts and everything feels fractionally charged, as though the day has exhaled and something older is preparing to speak. REBEL MUSE, the new album from Los Angeles artist MISS TREZZ, inhabits that charged threshold. And her latest single, Fade Into The Black, moves with ritual intent, drawing from industrial pop’s iron spine and dark electronic music’s nocturnal pulse, yet aiming squarely at something more elemental: self-possession wrestled from the wreckage.

Built on a bed of low-slung synths and deliberate percussion, the track unfolds with patient control. Producer Travis Bacon keeps the arrangement taut and spacious, allowing each element to breathe. The electronics hum and the rhythm stalks as her vocal steadies itself – cool at first, then gradually edged with steel. You can hear the recalibration happening in real time;  a consciousness shifting from containment to command.

The accompanying video, self-directed and shot by cinematographer Steven Anthony Roe, deepens that transformation. Set against open meadowland and elemental imagery, MISS TREZZ appears as a warrior queen in motion, symbolic of reclamation. What begins as a confrontation evolves into a ceremony. Nature becomes both witness and instrument of metamorphosis. The past is summoned, faced, and finally offered up, lending the song a sense of composure that suggests hard-won authority.

Across REBEL MUSE, MISS TREZZ inhabits sovereignty without spectacle. The record stands, steady and deliberate, insisting that autonomy can be both tender and unyielding…and that power, once reclaimed, need not shout to be felt.

Watch Fade Into The Black below:

MISS TREZZ frames her latest LP in stark terms: “The Rebel Muse is the rebel who creates art through defiance and a refusal to conform, and the muse who inspires the transmutation of pain into power. Together, the Rebel Muse awakens the courage to create from your unapologetic, authentic self.” There’s a clarity to that statement that courses through the record. These songs feel lived-in rather than theorised, as though each line has been tested against experience before being set loose.

Her stated intent cuts cleanly through the production: “This album is about rebelling against anything that doesn’t resonate with authenticity,” she explains. “It’s about not apologizing for who you are, not conforming to the patriarchy, and not allowing the past to govern who you become.” In lesser hands, such rhetoric might curdle into a slogan, but here it feels embodied. The mantra “REBEL. REVOLT. RESIST.” functions less as branding and more as practice; a rhythm that underpins the album’s emotional architecture.

Listen to Fade Into The Black below and order REBEL MUSE, out now via Re:Mission Entertainment, here.

REBEL MUSE by MISS TREZZ

Follow MISS TREZZ:

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The post Industrial Pop Muse MISS TREZZ Explores Love, Loss, and Liberation in Video for “Fade Into The Black” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Source: Post-Punk.com

This spring, Trevor Tanner and Paul Clark — longtime collaborators and principal members of The Bolshoi — reunite onstage as The Bolshoi Brothers for a run of West Coast dates. The shows mark their first extended outing together in years and will see the pair revisiting material from The Bolshoi’s catalogue alongside newer songs. Joining them on the co-headline bill are UK post-punk veterans Theatre of Hate.

Formed in the early 1980s, The Bolshoi carved out a distinctive place in British post-punk with taut guitar lines, melodic bass work, and literate, socially observant lyrics. Tanner’s measured yet expressive vocal style became a defining element of the band’s sound, moving fluidly between restraint and urgency. Tracks such as A Way remain staples of alternative radio, while Sunday Morning captures the band’s ability to translate introspection into atmosphere. Their 1987 album Lindy’s Party stands as a cult touchstone of the era, balancing sharp songwriting with understated intensity.

For this tour, Tanner and Clark return to that material with the benefit of decades of experience, reinterpreting songs that have endured well beyond their original release cycle. The performances are expected to blend classic selections with newer compositions, highlighting both continuity and evolution in their songwriting partnership.

Sharing the stage, Theatre of Hate brings their own formidable legacy. Fronted by Kirk Brandon, the band emerged from the UK post-punk scene with a driving, percussive sound and anthemic choruses that have sustained a loyal following for over four decades. Their live shows remain known for their intensity and communal energy.

Together, the two acts offer a co-headline package that bridges generations of British alternative music, presenting songs that helped define the post-punk era alongside material shaped by time and perspective.

Supporting the west coast run are special guests Some Days Are Darker. The tour begins March 31 in San Diego at Music Box before moving north to Fresno’s Strummer’s on April 1 and Sacramento’s Harlow’s on April 2. The following night finds the lineup in Eureka at Richard’s Goat Tavern, with Portland’s Star Theater hosting on April 5. The tour continues on April 7 in Bellingham at The Shakedown, followed by April 8 in Seattle at El Corazón. The final California stretch includes April 10 at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall and concludes April 11 in Los Angeles at The Regent.

West Coast Dates

Tue, March 31 – San Diego, CA – Music Box — Tickets Here
Wed, April 1 – Fresno, CA – Strummer’s — Tickets Here
Thu, April 2 – Sacramento, CA – Harlow’s — Tickets Here
Fri, April 3 – Eureka, CA – Richard’s Goat Tavern — Tickets Here
Sun, April 5 – Portland, OR – Star Theater — Tickets Here
Tue, April 7 – Bellingham, WA – The Shakedown — Tickets Here
Wed, April 8 – Seattle, WA – El Corazón — Tickets Here

Fri, April 10 – San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall — Tickets Here

Sat, April 11 – Los Angeles, CA – The Regent — Tickets Here

Follow The Bolshoi:

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Website

Follow Theatre of Hate:

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The post The Bolshoi Brothers and Theatre of Hate to Embark on West Coast Tour this Spring appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Source: Post-Punk.com

German synth duo Felsmann + Tiley have released the – excellent – “Always You” video,...

Source: Side Line

The German future pop band Solitary Experiments are issuing their archive bonus EPs “Past Perfect”...

Source: Side Line

New York gothic rock group Requiem in White return with their first new studio album...

Source: Side Line

Bremen, Germany based drone ambient duo Troum will release the new full-length album “EmphasYs” on...

Source: Side Line

February 14, 2026, Hamburg, MarkthalleSupport: Thomas Schernikau, M/A/T When synthpop gets quieter – and stronger There are bands that accompany a scene. And there are bands that have helped shape it. Since the late eighties, De/Vision have been one of the names that have charged German synthpop with melody and emotional openness. Never cool for […]

Source: Orkus

Das Ambient- / Drone-Projekt AMULETS stellt seine EP „Rem(a)inders“ mit einer ersten Single vor: „Black Sheep“ kann man sich u.a. via bandcamp anhören.

Hinter AMULETS steckt Randall Taylor, dessen neuestes Werk am 10. April 2026 via Pelagic Records erscheinen wird. Zur Platte äußert sich der Künstler:

„Rema(i)nders begann als eine fragmentarische Sammlung von Songs, Erinnerungen, Ideen und Gefühlen, die ich miteinander vermischen und bis zur Unkenntlichkeit verzerren wollte. Das Ergebnis war ein wunderschönes Mosaik aus Textur und Licht in dieser immer dunkler werdenden Welt. Verbleiben heißt erinnern. Erinnern heißt verbleiben.“

AMULETS „Rem(a)inders“ Tracklist
1. Paths of Acceptance
2. Former Shells
3. Coiled (ft. Patrick Shiroishi)
4. Black Sheep (Audio bei bandcamp)
5. Slow Motion_Somnia
6. RemainRemind

Source: Vampster

TROY THE BAND präsentieren ihr neues, noch unbetiteltes Album mit der Single „Adoration of Ill Luck„. Die Nummer enthält eigentlich einen Gastbeitrag von Ana-Maria Terr Bordei, die nun sogleich als permanentes Bandmitglied vorgestellt wurde.

Das Stück folgt „The Moment“ nach; es ist die dritte Auskopplung aus der Platte, die im Sommer 2026 erscheinen soll. Zuvor gab es bereits den Preview-Track „Nothing„.

Außerdem ist „Porous“ verfügbar. Bei dem Stück handelt es sich um eine Kollaboration mit Sängerin Soozi Chameleone. Die Single markierte das erste neue Material seit dem Album „Cataclysm“ (2024).

TROY THE BAND Line-up 2025
Sean Durbin – Bass
Sean Burn – Guitar
Jack Revans – Drums

Source: Vampster

Die Folk-Punk-Band SAINT CITY ORCHESTRA hat ihr neues Album „This Ain’t Quiet“ für 13. März 2026 angekündigt. Die Wartezeit verkürzt jetzt der Titelsong im Stream.

Zuvor gab es bereits eine Reihe von Auskopplungen: „Drink About It„, „Boys In Green„, „Louder Than Regret“ und „Middle Finger Song“ stehen im Stream bereit.

SAINT CITY ORCHESTRA „This Ain’t Quiet“ Tracklist
1 Middle Finger Song (Video bei YouTube)
2 Louder Than Regret (Video bei YouTube)
3 Back in Town
4 Drink About It (Audio bei YouTube)
5 Heavy Heart
6 No Shelter
7 This Ain’t Quiet (Audio bei YouTube)
8 Hell Bash
9 Boys in Green (Audio bei YouTube)
10 My Own Basic Rules
11 Roana
12 Hero

Source: Vampster

Alter Schlachthof, Dresden, Germany24th February 2026Brothers Of Metal - “Tour... Another” - Support Moonlight HazeOn February 24, 2026, BROTHERS OF METAL stopped at the Alter Schlachthof in Dresden and delivered an energetic show as part of their “Tour... Another”, leaving nothing to be desired. With a mix of epic anthems, captivating stage presence, and palpable joy in playing, the Swedes enthralled the audience from the very first minute.

Source: Reflections of Darkness

Ihr wollt Sonic Seducer bequem nach Hause geliefert bekommen, aber nicht gleich ein Abo abschließen? Wie wäre es mit dem Sonic Seducer Probe-Abo? Zum Vorzugspreis von 14,99 Euro erhaltet Ihr zwei Ausgaben und Prämien zu Depeche Mode, Subway To Sally und Placebo!

Source: Sonic Seducer

All things come and all things go

The early bird gets to take things slow

I can’t complain, I can’t complain

Took me years to get used to the rain 

There’s something quietly beautiful about a father, son, and daughter deciding to make a record together: three people who share blood, history, arguments, inside jokes, and a deep affection for analogue synths, gathering in a room full of vintage gear in Augsburg and letting fate take its course. Social Station (Paul Todd, Jake Blake, and Natalie Simona) approach their latest offering, Dissolve, like caretakers of a shared language, one built from classic post-punk basslines, hypnotic guitar figures, and voices that carry both youth and memory.

Written and performed by Social Station, with mixing and mastering by Charlie Vela, Daniel Hallhuber, and Rob Early, Dissolve carries the careful touch of collaborators who understand both weight and space.

Dissolve opens with field recordings of protests and parades in Lima, Peru – real voices, real unrest – before sliding into Familysong. “It’s essentially a family jam session,” they explain, and you can hear it: Simona’s drum programming skitters and snaps while Todd’s guitar circles, Blake’s bass prowls with classic post-punk poise. It’s communal, slightly chaotic, and absolutely committed.

Good to Me, written in New York by Blake, kicks the door in. That bass is pure post-punk backbone, the guitars smeared in minor-key mood, the vocal  a plea wrapped in pride, tenderness requested with teeth still showing. The influence of Interpol and Joy Division hovers, but this thing breathes on its own. It aches for care while bracing for betrayal. The Divide stretches its arms toward the sun and finds static in the sky. Lovely guitar flourishes glide over a steady, insistent bassline that could have slipped out of a Modest Mouse daydream before crashing a Horrors gig. It’s about weight: personal, planetary; and the thin line between endurance and exhaustion. The groove keeps you upright even as the lyrics stare down the undertow.

Pink Turns Blue swivels its hips. A livelier bassline, a hint of Duran Duran funk, sing-song delivery sliding into fixation. Roses rot in the brain. Memory loops like a scratched single. It’s hypnotic without hypnosis, sweet without sugar. Love decays in real time, and the band lets it. If You Want, engineered by Charlie Vela, is brisk, bright, and restless. Echoing guitar lines arc overhead with a whiff of Arcade Fire lift, while the rhythm section barrels forward. Conditional love becomes choreography; devotion becomes dare.

The title track, Dissolve, dives into Buffalo’s Continental Club after midnight. Funked-up bass in the tradition of A Certain Ratio anchors eerie guitar lines that hover like smoke above a dance floor. Romance and decay mingle. Identities blur. It’s intimate and a little dangerous. My Shadow finds Blake in reflective mode, melody clear and earnest, recalling mid-2000s bands like Arcade Fire, We Are Scientists, and Bishop Allen. Regret hangs in the air, but the song moves effortlessly. Alone by Design bangs out on Simona’s TR-8S, Blake’s walking bass strutting with a Pixies twitch by way of Bauhaus. Isolation becomes architecture, built brick by beat.

The Divide Part II reframes an earlier idea with newfound resolve. Perspective before panic…feet on the ground, eyes forward. Then The Exploding Dress closes the curtain. Minimal, mirrored, intimate…a nod to the Alan Parsons Project and the experimental work of Carl Stephenson. Simona leads, Todd answers. Identity pares down to essentials.

And finally, Dancing Plague crashes in as Social Station presents us with a hard-hitting remix of My Baltimore. The family hands the keys to the club and lets it burn bright. Social Station steps aside just long enough to let the beat take over, handing over the keys and watching the room ignite.

Listen to Dissolve below and order the album here.

Dissolve by Social Station

Having shared stages with Lathe of Heaven, Dancing Plague, and Carrellee, Social Station sounds like a band fully at home in that lineage: communal, committed, and ready to keep building.

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The post “All Our Dreams Are Buried” — DC Darkwavers Social Station Channel Their Bloodline on “Dissolve” LP appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Source: Post-Punk.com

I’m waiting for you

Till the dawn is coming

While the night is still here

Isolation is a rented room with thin walls and a louder mind. You pace. You bargain with doubt. You count cracks in the ceiling and call it philosophy. Night stretches, elastic and merciless, until the first thin blade of morning cuts through the curtains. Clarity never arrives like a parade; it seeps in, practical and pale. You make do, you endure, and you wait for restored meaning in the morning light.

That suspended hour before sunrise — when thought grows louder than traffic, and longing outlasts logic — is precisely the terrain The Beauty of Gemina has long claimed as their own. The band’s allure resides in their music’s “dark elegance,” primarily embodied by songwriter and vocalist Michael Sele. He approaches the microphone with an air of acceptance of gravity, as if at peace with it. His voice evokes approaching fronts and pressure systems, and on the hypnotic new single “Endless Ever,” this climate turns intimate.

Endless Ever lands as a teaser for the Veil Of Rain Tour 2026, the first new cut since Songs Of Homecoming 2024. It’s an intense meditation on waiting, longing, and timeless connection. The guitars circle in minor chord arcs, then tilt toward a brief lift — that old exchange between dusk and daybreak. A repetitive beat ticks like a clock you can’t shut off. Sele stands at the center, steady, letting the tension breathe.

In the song, a voice lingers through the night, waiting for a loved one as dawn approaches. In stillness and silence, they call out, holding onto hope like a fading light against darkness. Time stretches painfully, each second heavy with longing. The repeated sense of eternity underscores devotion, isolation, and the ache of waiting without certainty of return. It’s the kind of theme that could drown in its own perfume; here, it walks a straight line.

Sele spells it out: “Endless Ever is about waiting as a state of being – about a love or hope that is greater than time. Night represents doubt, dawn represents the promise that everything will eventually resolve itself. I wanted to capture that feeling when seconds hurt because you miss someone, time loses its meaning, and in the end all that remains is the endless clinging to hope.” He’s talking about the long haul, about faith without fireworks.

The video, realized by Spanish artist Ruben Nox and produced by TBOG Moving Pictures, keeps its distance. A woman wanders city streets late at night, pensive, alone in a crowd that might as well be mannequins. Subways pass. Faces blur. She watches life move and never quite steps into it. That’s the hook: isolation in public, doubt under streetlights, hope held like a match cupped in both hands. By the time dawn breaks, Endless Ever hasn’t solved anything. It has endured — and sometimes that’s the only clarity you get.

Watch below:

Founded in 2006 after the end of Nuuk, the band has logged 250 shows across 25 countries, supporting The Smashing Pumpkins and appearing at Wave-Gotik-Treffen and M’era Luna. That mileage shows. The arrangements move with purpose. Electronic rock, metal hues, even a classical tint — Mozart by way of midnight — slide into place without ceremony.

Listen to Endless Ever below and order the single here.

Endless ever by The Beauty of Gemina

The Beauty of Gemina – Veil Of Rain Tour

26 February – Augsburg, DE – Spectrum
27 February – Köln, DE – Groove Bar
28 February – Frankfurt, DE – Das Bett
6 March – Stuttgart, DE – Im Wizemann Studio
7 March – Oberhausen, DE – Kulttempel
20 March – Hannover, DE – LUX
21 March – Hamburg, DE – Bahnhof Pauli
22 March – Berlin, DE – Badehaus
27 March – Leipzig, DE – Moritzbastei
28 March – Tuttlingen, DE – Stadthalle Tuttlingen
18 April – Mels, CH – Altes Kino (Trio+)
3 May – Hamburg, DE – St. Pauli Theater (w/ Katharina Thalbach)
25 May – Leipzig, DE – WGT Festival (Trio+)
5 July – Basel, CH – Festival Augusta Raurica
19 September – Saarbrücken, DE – Theater (w/ Katharina Thalbach)
27 September – Herford, DE – Theater (w/ Katharina Thalbach)
31 October – Fürth, DE – Theater (w/ Katharina Thalbach)
6 November – Wolfenbüttel, DE – Lessing Theater (w/ Katharina Thalbach)
7 November – Wolfenbüttel, DE – Lessing Theater (w/ Katharina Thalbach)
18 December – Zürich, CH – Sihlfeld (Trio+)
19 December – Zürich, CH – Sihlfeld (Trio+)

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The post “Till the Dawn is Coming” — Swiss Darkwavers The Beauty of Gemina Share Video for Liminal Nocturne “Endless Ever” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Source: Post-Punk.com

There’s no “real world”

That’s a contradiction in terms

There’s just a skadenfreude ployed Hall of mirrors

Charm School have returned with Schadenfreude Ploy, the follow-up to 2025’s Debt Forever, and if you were hoping they’d mellow out, maybe brew a cuppa herbal tea, for you have badly misjudged the situation. Andrew Sellers and his Louisville-to-LA cadre: Matt Filip, Drew English, Brian Vega – are still operating like men who found the control panel and immediately started pressing every red button.

The EP chews on humanity’s collective cracked psyche and spits out a grin full of broken enamel. AI hovers over everything like an unpaid intern with godlike powers. Manipulation traps snap shut in every direction—financial, romantic, algorithmic. Sellers’ manic delivery paces the room, waving a printout of your browsing history and laughing at the absurdity of it all.

The title track, Schadenfreude Ploy, barrels forward with a No Wave twitch, guitars scraping against each other. It skewers the myth of the “real world,” calls the whole enterprise a hall of mirrors that hands you a bill for the privilege of existence. There’s a sense that ownership itself has been outlawed—everything leased, licensed, or floating somewhere in the cloud—while corporations hover like digital landlords, extracting rent from data, memory, even your own reflection. You don’t hold anything anymore; you stream it, sync it, subscribe to it. Nobody remembers agreeing to the terms, yet the charges keep arriving, neat and automatic. The band leans into that discomfort, tightening the screws with clipped riffs and a rhythm section that feels wired and faintly volatile, like it might repossess your hard drive mid-chorus.

Scene Queen takes a more personal tactic, unloading on a social climber who treats friendship like a stock portfolio. The lyrics bite. Backstabbing, shapeshifting, Faustian bargains, influence peddling…it’s all there, delivered with the kind of relish that suggests Sellers has the receipts. The groove struts in jagged steps, part art-school brawl, part basement sermon. You can practically see the eye roll.

Disgrace revs like a motorcycle idling outside a condemned building, channeling the swagger of Suicide and the detachment of Thurston Moore. The beat churns, manic and motorik, while spoken-word passages slide across the top with a wiry tension. It feels reckless in a controlled way, the band grinning as they lean into the skid.

Then Prime Mover Unmoved pulls the curtain back and reveals the philosopher under the hood. Aristotelian references in a punk record? Sure, why not. Love becomes the engine of existence, the first cause and final effect. Sellers lists the world as he channels his best Mark E Smith: rings, rivers, frost, debt, roses, until the self dissolves into the inventory. It’s grand, a little ridiculous, and somehow sincere.

Charm School’s job is to infiltrate, radiate, negate and fascinate. With this ferocious EP they torch the place and leave the smoke alarm ringing. Hope and joy may be out there somewhere. Charm School are busy poking the bear -all the while cackling at the bear’s lawyer.

Listen to Schadenfreude Ploy below and order the single here. You can purchase the EP on cassette here.

Schadenfreude Ploy by Charm School

TOUR DATES:

2/22 LA – The Offbeat w/ The Hazards & Noir Dalis
2/28 LA – The Monty Bar w/ Duderella & Spooky Marvin

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The post “It’s all a Masquerade” — Charm School Skewers Our Shared Unreality With “Schadenfreude Ploy” EP appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Source: Post-Punk.com

Cabaret Voltaire have expanded their Final USA + Canada Tour, confirming a second wave of North American dates for September 2026. Following the announcement last month of their West Coast farewell scheduled in May, the tour now stretches across the continent, forming a two-part closing chapter that will bring the group’s five-decade live legacy to its final North American conclusion.

Originally formed in Sheffield in the early 1970s by Stephen ‘Mal’ Mallinder, Chris Watson, and Richard H. Kirk, Cabaret Voltaire dismantled rock convention and rebuilt it from tape loops, found sound, surveillance aesthetics, and machine rhythm. Their early experiments helped shape industrial music, post-punk, electronic body music, and the DNA of contemporary electronic culture itself.

Following the previously announced May run — covering Seattle, Vancouver, Portland, Denver, Los Angeles, and San Francisco — the band will return in September for dates across Texas, the Midwest, the Northeast, and Eastern Canada. I Speak Machine remains confirmed as special guest throughout the North American leg.

Alongside the tour expansion, Cabaret Voltaire has announced an official live album titled “But What Time Is It Really?” featuring iconic tracks like “Nag Nag Nag,” “Crackdown,” and “Do Right.” The album was recorded live in 2025 during their farewell performances at various UK shows, capturing the intense, immersive atmosphere of their final concerts. Following Richard H. Kirk’s death in 2021, Mallinder and Watson confirmed that no new studio recordings will be released under the Cabaret Voltaire name.

But What Time Is It Really?
1 24-24
2 Animation
3 Why Kill Time (When You Can Kill Yourself)
4 Tinsley Viaduct
5 The Set-Up
6 Landslide
7 Crackdown
8 Spies In The Wires
9 Just Fascination
10 Taxi Music
11 Yashar
12 Sex Money Freaks
13 Easy Life
14 Do Right
15 Nag Nag Nag
16 Sensoria

Listen to “Nag Nag Nag” live below:

Nag Nag Nag (Live 2025 Single Edit) by Cabaret Voltaire

Tickets for the newly announced September dates are on sale now.

Final USA + Canada Tour — May 2026:

May 4, 2026 – Seattle, WA – Moore Theatre
May 6, 2026 – Vancouver, BC – Commodore Ballroom
May 8, 2026 – Portland, OR – Roseland Theater
May 10, 2026 – Denver, CO – Summit
May 12, 2026 – Los Angeles, CA – The Bellwether
May 15, 2026 – San Francisco, CA – The Warfield

Final USA + Canada Tour — September 2026:

September 11, 2026 – Dallas, TX – Granada Theater
September 15, 2026 – Chicago, IL – Metro
September 16, 2026 – Chicago, IL – Metro
September 18, 2026 – Toronto, ON – Phoenix Concert Theatre
September 19, 2026 – Montreal, QC – SAT
September 21, 2026 – Boston, MA – The Wilbur
September 23, 2026 – Washington, DC – The Howard Theatre
September 25, 2026 – New York, NY – Knockdown Center
September 26, 2026 – Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts

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The post Cabaret Voltaire Announce Live Album and More Dates for North American Farewell Tour appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Source: Post-Punk.com

The things he never told you about

Free floating secrets he couldn’t get out

If you want he can tell you these dreams and what they mean

Some inheritances aren’t objects or stories but patterns: habits absorbed quietly, almost by accident. A child grows up watching a parent move through sorrow with a drink in hand, noticing what is said and, more powerfully, what isn’t. The silence becomes its own language. Questions linger in the corners of rooms; explanations never quite arrive. Over time, the unspoken settles into muscle memory, shaping reactions, fears, even desire. The child doesn’t mean to mirror the father, yet finds familiar impulses rising anyway, as if the past were a current running steadily beneath the present.

Spain-based darkwave/post-punk duo Newborn Ghost have joined forces with producer Nightcrawler for a new collaboration about this particular generational curse, a stomper of a number called Incubator. It feels like a calculated collision – two projects fluent in tension, deciding to test the tensile strength of steel.

Incubator thrives on that shared discipline. Mechanical rhythm locks in, synths sweep wide like a camera pan across concrete, landing somewhere between Siouxsie, Suzi Sabotage, Boan and Front Line Assembly. There’s club energy, but also a chill that lingers at the base of the spine.  Drawing from horror and sci-fi atmospheres, EBM, darkwave, and post-punk minimalism, the collaboration blurs the line between club energy and dystopian soundscapes.

Lyrically, the track circles inherited damage. A father’s alcoholism. Secrets sealed too long. A child watching, absorbing, repeating. The song treats trauma like a living organism fed in silence, passed through blood, reborn in the next generation. The beat becomes the pulse of that repetition, steady and relentless.

You can dance to it. You can dissect it. Either way, Incubator makes its case with cold clarity: history always mutates.

Out now via From Hell to Disco, listen to Incubator below and order the single here.

Incubator by Nightcrawler & Newborn Ghost

Nightcrawler has been building his electronic world since 2011, pulling inspiration from horror reels and sci-fi soundtracks, shaping it into a body of work that stretches from Metropolis and Beware Of The Humans to more recent releases like Dynamics of a Crash. He was even featured in the synthwave documentary The Rise Of The Synths, narrated by John Carpenter – no small badge of credibility. His productions move between industrial drive, EBM severity, and darkwave cool, and his live shows turn venues into fevered film sets.

Newborn Ghost began in Philadelphia in 2017, formed by BelaFern and Everrett Thompson, later relocating to Barcelona and adding bassist Fluggel Josh. Their 2021 release To Make a Flower as Sharp as a Knife earned serious underground praise, and 2024’s DEVASTATION/divinity sharpened their edge further. Along the way they’ve shared stages with Xeno & Oaklander, Suzi Sabotage, and Ductape, building a reputation for precision and pressure rather than spectacle.

Follow Nightcrawler:

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Follow Newborn Ghost:

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The post Barcelona-based Post-Punk Outfit Newborn Ghost Collaborates with Nightcrawler on New Single “Incubator” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Source: Post-Punk.com

What was I supposed to do?

Never any calm before the rain comes

Don’t check the mailbox

I couldn’t find the message and I made a big mistake

Julian Ash once trafficked in sleek, sleaze-laced synth shadows with his former project Harsh Symmetry, but under his latest guise, Omnihell, he kicks open a different door and lets in the cruel daylight — the kind that reveals stains in the carpet and lipstick on the collar. The project’s debut LP, Extreme Suffering, carries a title poised between anguish and a straight-faced joke delivered without a blink. Here, Ash steps forward, voice high in the mix, posture squared, the songs draped in analogue threads that hum and wobble as if they’ve been living hard since 1979.

He’s rummaging through proto-punk bones and 70s/80s alternative attic boxes, pulling out jangling guitars, brittle drum machines, and organs that sigh like old theater curtains. It’s not gothic in the cape-and-candles sense; it feels more like a late-night confession, spoken softly and wiped away by morning. The presentation has a wink, a little conceptual theatre, but the pulse here is flesh-and-blood songwriting. Sophisticated, sure. Elegant, even. Still beating.

Reminded opens the wound politely. A man circling the memory of a strong-willed woman, replaying half-remembered scenes like a film with missing reels. He swears he never hid, but he’s pinned to the past like a butterfly under glass. The post-punk guitar snaps into place, jangly bassline skipping under his croon, and suddenly you’re in The Smiths territory: heart on sleeve, collar up, chin trembling in the rain. Ash sings like he’s holding the photograph too close to his face.

Then comes Omniscium, devotion turned devotional hazard. He offers up soul, time, life itself for one more night. Sleepless, bargaining beneath metaphorical knives, intimacy equated with sacrifice. The hook climbs high and clean, the synths hovering with that 80s ache, and the song strides straight into Echo and the Bunnymen and The Colourfield country. It’s romantic theatre with a cracked mirror backstage.

Kurushimi, the oblique title track—its name translating to “pain,” “suffering,” “anguish,” or “hardship”—anchors the album as its uneasy centerpiece, revealing a subtly altered musical posture. Crisis paralysis. Overlooked warnings. Unopened messages. “Never any calm before the rain.” An ominous forecast from Omnihell, issued in a David Sylvian-caliber croon. The piano-and-bass-driven groove wears a jaunty, almost breezy mask, its wistful tone recalling rainfall against a windowsill. It could also slip comfortably into a Terry Hall set without raising an eyebrow. Regardless, Ash leans into the song’s melodic beauty with composure and control—poised, precise, quietly devastating.

On the next track, “Like Cathedrals,” love buckles beneath the burden of what goes unsaid. Devotion burns low. Time borrowed, then squandered. A marching, clockwork beat presses the song forward, drums crisp and declarative. The bridge opens like a sudden clearing, and the vocals stretch upward in a way that recalls Dead Can Dance: solemn, spacious, reaching for something holy even as it falls apart.

Leeches slinks in on a darker bassline, dependency and resentment locked in a clinch. He clings, he accuses, he pleads. Pride tangles with need. The track dips into deathrock hues before exploding into a wide chorus that feels almost triumphant in its bitterness. The Chameleons hover over this one, that sense of emotional altitude riding above the fray.

With War, heartbreak becomes enlistment. He pledges life and death to a cause already lost. The organ synths glow softly against a waltz backbeat, giving the whole thing a strange carousel sway. Jeff Buckley by way of The Smiths, with a carnival haze that tilts the room. Ash’s singing here is open, exposed, every syllable placed with care.

Six Legs is the party crasher. Social climbers skittering like insects, all money and mouth. He spits the satire with relish, guitars snapping in Chameleons/Gang of Four formation. There’s even a flash of Suicide in the mechanical undercurrent. It’s sharp, pointed, and just a little mean.

Freeze slows the blood. Grief was locking him in place after  terrible news. Love as damage, guilt as frostbite. The production bends and warps, sound bending inward on itself. It brings Aztec Camera to mind, that sense of heartbreak wrapped in melody. Ash sounds stunned, like he’s just opened the letter.

Then the curtain jerks open for Burn, Heretic! – military march at the outset, all rigid rhythm, before the chorus flips into pure 1950s doo-wop drama. Roy Orbison hovers in the rafters. There’s even a whisper of Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch in the air, something cinematic and slightly unhinged. A visionary condemned by the mob, pride crumbling into panic. It’s theatrical, bold, and it works.

I’m Unsalvageable drifts in on a bassline that nods to MGMT, riding a late-70s–early-80s yacht rock glide. Alienation, financial strain, self-loathing dressed up as self-knowledge. Rat, opossum, vermin. He watches everyone else reinvent themselves while he treads water. The groove is deceptively smooth, the self-assessment brutal.

And finally, “Stings (Suffering)” circles the ache of unresolved attachment. Daydreams reopen wounds; absence equates with erasure. “Cold steel” between the eyes. The melody loops back on itself like a question never answered. Ash lets it hang there, no grand finale, just the quiet persistence of feeling.

Extreme Suffering feels like a man rifling through his own archive and finding songs where others might find excuses. Julian Ash steps out from the sleek silhouette of Harsh Symmetry and plants himself in full view. There’s style, and a sense of play, but also a willingness to stand still and sing the thing straight. Pain dressed in pop clothing; regret set to rhythm…a debut that walks tall in worn boots and knows exactly where it’s been.

Bravo.

Listen to Extreme Suffering below and order the album here.

Extreme Suffering by Omnihell

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The post “Never Any Calm Before the Rain” — Julian Ash Descends into Omnihell and Finds Beauty in “Extreme Suffering” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Source: Post-Punk.com

In the cold of the night

In the dark of your life

You can dance or you can die 

History hums in straight lines. A bassline. A drum pattern. A voice placed slightly forward in the mix, as if stepping out of a still-developing photograph. Undertheskin, the long-running project of Warsaw’s Mariusz [Void] Łuniewski, has spent a decade refining that hum into something disciplined and deliberate, music that feels engineered for late hours and lucid thoughts.

Now comes the third full-length: N E V E R R E T U R N, released via Young & Cold Records. The album unfolds like a sequence of emotional coordinates: isolation, fracture, endurance, aftermath,  each song separated by that vertical bar in the titles, a graphic scar. Across N E V E R R E T U R N, Undertheskin maintains a strict economy. Massive basslines anchor the songs; vintage synths provide glacial sheen; drum machines mark the minutes with mechanical calm; guitars constrict rather than expand. Łuniewski’s voice remains the focal point: expressive, controlled, deeply invested in the emotional terrain it surveys.

Freezing Lights opens with a bass motif that feels locked into repetition by design, moving with the austere elegance associated with Clan of Xymox and the early electronic drama of Ultravox. The lyrics probe permanence and certainty, circling the idea that what glows may also confine. Guitars close in, clipped and contained, while the vocal rides above with measured intensity. There is clarity in the coldness. End This Summer shifts toward rupture. A friendship dissolves as seasons change; proximity gives way to absence. Echoed vocals widen the space between two once-aligned figures. The guitar lines stretch and recede, underscoring regret. Chords arc upward, echo gathering at their edges. Repetition here functions as memory replayed until meaning thins.

On the standout Dance Die, motion is the argument and the answer. The beat draws in tight, urgent yet exact, every kick and synth line aligned with purpose. The lyric frames a clear ultimatum: surrender to the weight, or move through it. Here, the dancefloor becomes a survival zone, a place where the body bargains with despair and wins by staying in motion. Feeling runs high, but it is ordered, shaped, given form. You can hear the disciplined propulsion associated with Covenant in the rhythm’s forward drive — electronic devotion rendered in clean lines.

The black-and-white video, directed by Rytis Titas, extends that thesis into image. Gorgeously shot, it follows a woman alone at home as she prepares food with ritual precision. Her gestures are careful, almost ceremonial. She sits at the table as if in prayer, eyes fixed somewhere beyond the room. In her mind, another space opens: the darkened club, the press of bodies, the release of dancing without restraint. Domestic stillness gives way to imagined movement. What she longs for is simple and profound — companionship, connection, the shared pulse of presence.

Watch below:

Beyond the video, N E V E R R E T U R N continues its careful sequencing. Dance Die may crystallize the album’s thesis in motion, but it sits within a larger design — one where intimacy, rupture, and endurance are arranged with deliberate restraint.

Always Never offers a gentler contour. Longing sits at the centre, shaped by a wish for someone else’s safety and return. Synth tones lift with restraint, almost luminous. Hope appears as a quiet constant, sustained by recollection rather than spectacle. With Exit Wounds, the album confronts betrayal and mutual damage. The past is acknowledged, almost ritualistically. Harm is shared, not simplified. The arrangement remains disciplined, allowing the vocal to articulate loss without ornament.

The title track, Never Return, pares everything back further. Wasted youth, emotional numbness, irreversible distance — these themes repeat like a mantra etched into the track’s backbone. The absence of flourish becomes its own statement. Time feels spent; the path once taken is now closed. There is a starkness here that again gestures toward Joy Division, though filtered through Undertheskin’s own contemporary minimalism.

Closing piece End This Winter extends the seasonal metaphor into something harder, harsher. Words unsaid weigh heavily. Accusations linger. Yet within the insistence on ending lies a glimmer of forward motion; the possibility that a cycle can be named and then broken. There is an echo here of Pornography-era Cure in the emotional temperature, of Ultravox in the structural sweep.

Overall N E V E R R E T U R N is a record that stands upright, pared back and purposeful, in the long conversation of post-punk’s modern mutations.

Order the album here

N E V E R R E T U R N by Undertheskin

Founded in 2015, Undertheskin began as a solitary operation: Łuniewski writing, producing, performing, calibrating each element himself. Two albums, U N D E R T H E S K I N and N E G A T I V E, and the internationally embraced End This Summer EP positioned him as a figure within the modern coldwave continuum. Stages followed, shared with The Soft Moon, She Past Away, Clan of Xymox, Drab Majesty, and Lebanon Hanover.

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The post “You Can Dance or You Can Die” — Warsaw Post-Punk Project Undertheskin Releases Third LP “N E V E R R E T U R N” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

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