2025 sees /amodelofcontrol.com enter 21 years active, and this coming summer, I will mark thirty years since the first gig that I attended. Life has been busy of late, and a slightly longer Christmas break from writing was much-needed.
/Subject /Tracks of the Month
/Playlists 
/Spotify / 
/YouTube
/Related /Countdown/2024 /Tuesday Ten/Index
/Details /Tracks this week/10 /Tracks on Spotify Playlist/8 /Duration/32:43
I resume today, though, picking up the best ten tracks of the past month or so. All are related to new releases either coming or likely to come in 2025, and you may well hear some of them on the next Livestream from me, which will come in the next couple of weeks (whether I manage to fit that in before I go to Brussels next week is another question).
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).
/Track of the Month
/Ethel Cain
/Punish
/Perverts
When it comes to certain realms of new music, I’m not always on the pulse these days, and this artist – who is known as Hayden Anhedönia, and records as Ethel Cain – only came to my attention thanks to a recommendation by a friend whose musical opinion I trust. Reading up a bit, it appears that a glimpse of fame thanks to her music – and yet another case of unwanted intrusion for a female-presenting artist – might well have caused a drastic change of direction.
Whatever came before, this is going to be one almighty shock for most listeners. This is a ninety-minute, nine-track release – with four tracks well beyond ten minutes in length. There are nods towards Southern Gothic – indeed much of this is hints: as the music is drones, deconstructed songs, echoes of noise and field recordings, disguised and treated voices. And there is a sense that the horrors of a real and imagined past – I’ve no idea what’s real and what’s not, you float through this like a fever dream – echo through all of this album that is absolutely fucking remarkable. You think Emma Ruth Rundle is dark and full of foreboding? Her music is a walk in a spring meadow compared to this.
The lead single Punish is perhaps the one track that might be called approachable, and even that is a stretch. Seven minutes long, the unpleasant character Cain inhabits here laments being “punished by love” on a track the likes of Low might have considered sparse. It is, however, a pointer to what else is to come: the album feels like a dreadful warning of the misery that awaits if sex and lust in any form become taboo acts, and the only “acceptable” form is for procreation. In other words, if we all have to suffer anhedonia like Ethel Cain does, and a world without pleasure, as this album proves in spades, it is a pitch dark place.
/Clipping.
/Change the Channel
/Dead Channel Sky
The much-anticipated new album from Clipping. comes in March, and the recently unveiled track titles and promo description suggests a move away from horror themes to full-on cyberpunk. The latest single gives more credence to this, as Change The Channel is a ripping, fast-paced industrial-punk track that sees Daveed Diggs unleashing his trademark speed rapping and pulling the track with him. It’s visceral, thrilling and bodes very well indeed for one of the most forward-looking, inventive hip-hop acts that there is out there at the moment.
/Lauren Mayberry
/Punch Drunk
/Vicious Creature
The first solo album from CHVRCHES’ Lauren Mayberry – released in December, and buried a bit in the pre-Christmas period, it felt – sees her exploring slightly different territory to the main band, at least musically. There are electropop tracks, there is moody trip-hop, there’s even thumping industrial drum’n’bass (the rampaging Sorry, etc), there are nods to girl groups of the past, and a general feeling that Mayberry was bursting with ideas that just wouldn’t work in CHVRCHES. Lyrically, too, there is a focus on Mayberry’s continuing fight with sexism in the music industry, and generally being a woman in a world that is rather dangerously tilting towards outright misogyny and male bias in politics (again).
There’s already been a few singles from the album, and perhaps the quality and variety of the album – and it’s pop strength – explains why the standout track for me has mystifyingly not been a single yet. Punch Drunk leans into taut New Wave, before leaping into a gigantic, irresistible chorus that is an absolute fucking joy. Remember when Girls Aloud were releasing songs that felt like genre mashups? This feels like that kind of move, and it pays off in spades.
/Black Magnet
/Damage Device
The promising industrial metal artist Black Magnet is now a fully-fledged band, with album number three coming “early this year”, according to recent posts on social media. The first track from that album is Damage Device, as far as I can tell, and if this is a guide to what we can expect, we’re in for a treat. Chugging sheets of guitars bulldoze through the mix, with mechanised percussion and electronics seeping into every available space, with James Hammontree’s vocals part of that dense mix rather than dominating it. The best industrial metal band around at the moment, and they are compromising nothing of their sound as they become better known.
/HIDE
/I LICK THE BLADE CLEAN
Viciously uncompromising in a very different way are the Chicago duo HIDE. Their experiments in industrial power over the past decade or so have seen them drifting further and further from the mainstream of the genre, not that they ever appeared to care a jot about how they were perceived. Heather Hannoura and Seth Sher are continuing this with their latest singles, and I LICK THE BLADE CLEAN is a searing piece. Heather’s vocals are clearly audible but subtly treated and distorted to make them sound really unsettling, as she speaks to someone who is beyond forgiveness in every way. The looped, clattering industrial rhythm that backs her is full of ominous warning, too.
/TAYNE
/Down
/LOVE
An interesting new-ish London band that I was pointed towards this past week is “Industrial Noise Pop” band TAYNE. They are the first band I’ve heard that are clearly using HEALTH as their primary influence to work from (while they reference Nine Inch Nails and Lady Gaga, among others, those fragile vocals, distinct synth sounds and blasts of industrial rock all bear the hallmarks of HEALTH). That said, they’ve distilled the sound down to all killer, no filler, apparently uninterested in the instrumental, electronic noise experimentation and going for the hooks instead. Thus, Down is an exciting rush of three minutes that stutters and rumbles before letting a powerful, rolling chorus off the leash and then explodes into a thrashing coda. They launch the album at a show in London in February, which may well be worth seeing.
/THE NONE
/On Automatic
/CARE
The support at the fantastic Jesus Lizard show in London this weekend was Birmingham/London noise-rock band THE NONE. Led by firebrand vocalist Kaila Whyte (and also featuring Gordon Moakes, who has played in Bloc Party), they play the kind of stripped-down, loud and very punchy rock that once upon a time, you’d expect to see “recorded by Steve Albini” in the credits. But it’s not all crashing guitars. Moakes provides the kind of basslines that bring to mind a funk influence and get your feet shuffling, while guitarist Jim Beck is constantly battling with his guitar onstage, and providing savage, screeching riffs. The lead track from upcoming second EP CARE takes us on a tour of their sound in four minutes. A threat of what’s to come in that steady intro, and things build to about five separate crescendos as the band take unexpected turns along the way. Their sound is impressive enough on record, but live they are another force entirely (although I suspect a smaller venue may suit them better, hence why I’m planning to make it to Margate for their gig in February).
/Dead Blood Cells
/Neon Demon Queen
/Medwave
I’ve featured Medway (Kent) based artist Dead Blood Cells before – who are involved with putting on regular nights in Chatham, too – and with a new album imminent, the first single from it is worth attention. Neon Demon Queen feels like a track that takes influence from the rhythmic experiments in industrial music in the 1980s, putting a punishing rhythm up-and-front that wouldn’t be out of place in a sweaty basement club. Production from Dean Clarke (Brutalist Architecture In the Sun) gives a shiny, punchy edge to the sound, too.
/Slighter
/Brute Force (Vox Mix)
/Brute Force
Colin Cameron Allrich has long worked in the shadows – a producer fascinating with darker electronic music of the past and present, and who has been adept at getting their music into TV shows, and becoming well known as an intelligent, thoughtful remixer too. But it should also be remembered that their own project Slighter has released fascinating music over the years too, and recent single Brute Force is yet another quality addition to the canon. This is music circling a void, woozy synths pulling us in before blasts of speaker-punishing breakbeats burst into the mix to keep us out. Best appreciated at window-rattling volume.
/Bitter Ruin
/Criticise
It’s been eleven years since Waves, and that point where it felt like Bitter Ruin were teetering on the brink of wider success. For various reasons it didn’t quite work out, and while there has been the odd track a few years back, and Georgia has released solo material, this time around it feels like the “proper” Bitter Ruin has returned, with a new album apparently in the can for 2025.
The first single, Criticise is a bit of a shock to the system for those of us that have been following the duo for some time. Rather than the usual acoustic, twin-vocal sound, Criticise brings in a full band and a dramatic, electric guitar-led bluesy stomp that sounds fantastic. It’s a hell of a way to reintroduce a much-missed band.