First of the month, /Tracks of the Month time.

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A baker’s dozen of tracks this month, covering metal, goth, industrial, post-rock and some interesting other things too. As ever, it’s a mix of new and established artists, from both sides of the Atlantic too. I’m also now deep into looking at the best music of the year, as that’s only two months away too (!).

Oh, and look out for a return of /TheKindaMzkYouLike livestream in the next couple of weeks.

A quick explanation for new readers (hi there!): my Tuesday Ten series has been running since March 2007, and each month features at least ten new songs you should hear – and in between those monthly posts, I feature songs on a variety of subjects, with some of the songs featured coming from suggestion threads on Facebook.

Feel free to get involved with these – the more the merrier, and the breadth of suggestions that I get continues to astound me. Otherwise, as usual, if you’ve got something you want me to hear, something I should be writing about, or even a gig I should be attending, e-mail me or drop me a line on Facebook (details below).

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/Track of the Month

/Gavin Friday
/Ecce Homo
/Ecce Homo

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Thirteen years since his last solo album, Irish legend Gavin Friday returns at last, and the pulsing electronics of the lead single and title track makes more sense when you realise Dave Ball (Soft Cell) is involved in the production. The title, for a start, is an interesting one: it comes from John 19:5, where Pilate introduces Christ (“Behold, the man!“). The song then takes us in unexpected directions, a thumping industrial-tinged track, with Gavin Friday in ecstatic mode, like some furious preacher tearing down the realms of the powerful and corrupted, and it’s fucking amazing.

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/The Body
/End of Line
/The Crying Out of Things

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The Body never stop: that’s long been clear. Constantly working on new material of their own, or collaborating with a dizzying array of artists, the key element to their work has always been the crushing intensity, and on a couple of recent collaborations, they’ve allowed the noise to take a back seat. Not here, though, as End of Line is a slow march to oblivion, with fuzzy guitars, treated and brutally heavy drums and percussion, and the desperate howls of Chip King buried deep in the mix. Every bit as maximalist as they apparently intended, I think it’s fair to say that the upcoming album is going to be a testing experience.

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/EXIT ELECTRONICS
/SICK OF IT
/BODY BUILDER

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If you’ve ever wanted Justin Broadrick to tear down his sound to pure, industrial noise, EXIT ELECTRONICS should be on your radar. There are no drum machines in earshot, just waves of electronic noise, dubby bass that could demolish buildings and a general feeling of violent release that outstrips even the nastiest Godflesh tracks. The titles are almost worth the admission alone (“SHITHEADS GALORE“, “ALL BASTARDS“, “PUTRID BEINGS“, etc), and give a clue to what’s coming if you press play. One of the heaviest releases of 2024, that’s for sure.

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/SØLVE
/BLEAK HEARTS
/BLEAK HEARTS BURN

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Brant Showers has never allowed the projects he’s part of to stand still, and that is perhaps especially the case with his solo work in SØLVE. The ritualistic industrial music he’s released previously, though, isn’t quite what you get here, as more evidence of that evolution. On this excellent single, he’s added guitars to the sound to excellent effect, making it sound all the rawer and nastier: kinda taking it down the route of industrial-stoner-rock, or perhaps more accurately industrial-doom – by way of early Swans. Either way, if this is evidence of a new direction he’s taking, I want to hear more of this, as it suits him well.

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/ESA
/Rats Come Together
/Rats Come Together

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Another industrial veteran with roots in metal is Jamie Blacker, who has long been adept at weaving in metallic touches – or the feel thereof – within his punishing industrial sounds, and the new single makes this all the more overt. Rats Come Together is absolutely relentless, with a BPM that must be close to 150-160 at points and uses what sounds like chopped up guitar samples to add a jagged texture. That is, before we enter a mid-section that has clean singing and a dark melody, before the rug is pulled and *bam* we’re back to that vicious rhythm. One of the best ESA tracks in some time.

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/Tides from Nebula
/Burned To The Ground
/Instant Reward

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After a period where I feared there may not be a new album, just occasional singles, this Polish post-rock band’s next album – five years on from the brilliant From Voodoo To Zen – is finally coming next month. The latest single, and opening track from the album, is this seven-minute bruiser, that takes a while to get going. Like a machine cranking into life, in fact, as gentle synths guide us into a crushing rhythm section, but even that is pulled away as mellowed piano provides a lengthy, near-ambient interlude. The crashing squall of a climax isn’t as intense as you might expect from the way it builds, but maybe that’s a good thing: wrongfooting us from the off.

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/Witch of the Vale
/100 Ways To Leave
/100 Ways To Leave, Vol. I

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Two years since the excellent Love of a Father EP have passed in a flash, and this latest EP from Witch of the Vale is the first we’ve heard of them since, aside from a small number of live shows. The duo have hinted at the time of the release of this new EP of a difficult time away from music in the meantime, and the subdued, minimalist sound of this new release perhaps reflects that. Pick of the tracks for me is the title track, where Erin’s dramatic vocals get their best showing amid a song apparently wracked with doubt and fear, with Ryan’s backing mostly restricted to strafing bass synths and precise twinkling electronics. Interestingly, the same track is also remixed by Kontravoid on the EP, who continues his recent turn into (quite brilliant) melodic electro – or quasi-futurepop, if you will – with a take here that compliments Witch of the Vale’s sound without ever burying it.

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/Tindersticks
/Turned My Back
/Soft Tissue

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tindersticks continued to plow their own, lonely furrow this year with their fourteenth album: and as has been the way with the second phase of the band, they continue to lean into gentle, emotional soul music. The highlight of the new album is the glorious Turned My Back, where Stuart Staples – with sensational vocal backing – takes the role of a ne’er do well upping and leaving from a questionable situation (it’s potentially criminal, they’ve potentially served time), without any care of what comes next. They just have to leave, and the quiet satisfaction of escape bubbles away across six wonderful minutes.

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/Warm Gadget
/The Masses
/Sorrows

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An intriguing band to reach my ears recently are Warm Gadget, who appear to mix industrial-rock and noise-rock in ways I’ve not heard before, or in a long, long time (even more interesting is that Page Hamilton of Helmet features on the album, too). Opening track The Masses is mechanised beats, omninous synths, looping guitars and snarling vocals that suit the dry, savage mix well. The one thing it does remind me of is All The Rage, by long-forgotten nineties band Engines of Aggression. I know very little about this band, but I’ll certainly be giving the album a listen when it drops.

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/MODEBIONICS
/DIVIIDE DIVISION
/VIIXIIV (DIVIIDE DIVISION)

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I was a big fan of the last MB release PRECISE CONTROL, and this new one is just as good, an intelligent mix of punchy EBM beats and electro-industrial atmospheres. So, swirling synths and ghostly vocal samples are present and correct amid dancefloor-friendly rhythms, and there is an appropriately dark-edged anonymity to it which feels entirely appropriate. Elsewhere on this short EP, there’s a demo of Final Replica Enters The Void that sounds straight out of mid-80s, primitive EBM, while Sin Full of Gestures has the feel of an interlude on a lengthy industrial album.

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/Beborn Beton
/American Girls
/To The Stars

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The resurgence of German synthpop veterans Beborn Beton continues with a new EP – something of a companion to last year’s excellent Darkness Falls Again, with three new songs and a bunch of impressive remixes, and announced just before they go on their first US tour in over two decades.. The first released track from it is American Girls, which initially appears to be a slow-paced ballad, but explodes into life with a glorious, melodic chorus – very much a Beborn Beton trademark, and hidden away in the closing coda is a lovely, unexpected Beach Boys nod.

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/The Indelicates
/Avenue QAnon (Morität)
/Avenue QAnon

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Formed nearly twenty years ago, The Indelicates are a band that I’ve only ever dipped into: they are very much more my wife’s kind of band, and she’s a regular attendee at their live shows. Her report back from their recent album launch show – their first new album in seven years – was at least in part one of astonishment, mainly how far the band had gone with the album, taking on the American far right. It’s a continuation, too, of the band’s sometimes morbid fascination with the US and events within that country. The opening track – and apparent lead single – is jaw-dropping in it’s scope, and by use of AI and Deepfakes, it’s frankly terrifying as a piece of satire, and even more worryingly, for those that aren’t in on the joke…

I can only hope that the US Election doesn’t go this way, I can tell you.

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/The Cure
/Alone
/Songs of A Lost World

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If you’re of the alternative persuasion, it will have been impossible for you to have avoided the release of the first new Cure single in sixteen years – from an album that seems to have been teased for two or three years now. Judging on the reaction, it’s been worth the wait: as the band seem to have returned to Disintegration-era bleakness. Oh yes: seven minutes, give or take a few seconds, of funereal-paced, doom-laden gothic rock – and I’ve got entire EPs that last less time than it takes for Robert Smith’s vocals to finally arrive, nearly four minutes in – and to add to the atmosphere that bit more, the lyrics appear inspired by Dregs by Ernest Dowson, a Decadent-era poet who died young in penury.

So anyway, it’s Goth as fuck, it sounds like prime Cure, and if this is the beginning of what feels like the last Cure album, they are going to be going out on a gloomy high (low?).