A baker’s dozen of new tracks this month. Release announcements for 2026 are now in full swing, which means it can be tough to keep up…
/amodelofcontrol.com now has a Patreon page, at this stage purely as a potential way of helping to cover the running costs of the site. There is absolutely no compulsion to do so: if you feel you can chuck a small amount to the site each month, that would be appreciated.
/Subject /Tracks of the Month
/Playlists 
/Spotify / 
/YouTube
/Related /620/Jan-26 /Tuesday Ten/Index
/Details /Tracks this week/13 /Tracks on Spotify Playlist/10 /Duration/36:20
But I’ve just about managed it, and here’s thirteen new songs worth hearing (as usual, over a variety of styles and sounds).
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
/Laibach
/Allgorhythm (feat. Wiyaala)
/MUSICK
Laibach are back with their first new album of original material since SPECTRE, amazingly, and it appears that this time around, they are aiming for the pop charts. No, really. They’ve brought in collaborators including electro-pop king Richard X, made it clear their influences this time are 90s Eurodance, J-Pop and K-Pop, and the lead single proves that they aren’t fucking kidding.
The song is pure, summery Eurodance – all big synth hooks, four-to-the-floor beats, and the spectacular vocal assistance of Ghanian pop artist Wiyaala (“The Lion of Africa”) – but as is usual with Laibach, there’s more going on here. Much, much more.
Sure, at first glance, this is Laibach going pop (with some style), but it’s also intriguingly insidious. The lyrics tackle the complex issues around algorithm use in music promotion, where your “tailored” playlists are slaves to algorithms that are used to “promote” music you may like, based on previous listening, but also that this can also be affected in other ways (promoting music services are paid to do, and suchlike). As a result, I can’t help but feel that Laibach have tailored this song to exactly work in this algorithmic world: with a guest vocalist that has a completely different reach to them, lyrics that tick certain boxes, and a sound that perhaps has a universal appeal.
Christ only knows what else Laibach have in store for us this year…
/Converter
/descent into hell
/the last four things
Who knew that in 2026, there would be more unreleased Converter material? Seemingly reworked and/or completed by Daniel Myer in his Architect guise (official description is “original songs by scott sturgis. dismantled, deformed, destroyed, constructed, inspired and built by daniel myer / architect”), this EP is unmistakably the core work of Scott Sturgis, that’s for sure, but perhaps with some of the more brutal edge of the Converter sound pared away.
Which, when you think about it, tracks with how the short period of original Converter activity went. Shock Front and Blast Furnace remain gold standards for sheer, visceral power in rhythmic noise music, and later releases Exit ritual and expansion pack 2.0 saw Sturgis investigating more thoughtful textures, not that they were any less forbidding.
Make no mistake, though, the last four things is still not going to convert those put off by his original work (my wife included, I’m sure). The pick of the release is descent into hell, perhaps the closest to the nastiness of old. The rhythm hits like machine-gun fire, strafing across the mix with distorted synths and FX making for a forbidding, overwhelming listen.
The title suggests a finality, a closing of the book on a musical career Scott Sturgis long left behind, but this also feels like a tip of the hat from ant-zen and Daniel Myer, to probably the greatest and most influential industrial-noise artist.
/Failure
/The Air’s on Fire
/Location Lost
Failure return with their fourth album since reforming – meaning they’ve now released more albums than they did in their original phase – and the lead single continues their more personal outlook, shorn of the space metaphors of old. Apparently inspired by Ken Andrews’ recovery from a back injury, the lyrics detail a time where he may not have been thinking entirely straight after awaking from surgery. The song itself still sounds like Failure, though: impeccably produced, richly detailed rock music that has their trademark soaring choruses and a muscular power. Now, if only they’d play the UK again…
/Black Magnet
/Damage Device
/Pressure Sessions EP
While the band’s brilliant third album Megamantra is only eight months old, James Hammontree is pushing forward already, and rather than being tethered to release cycles has decided to drop two more songs (with suggestions that more will come in time). Both songs interestingly are uptempo, guitar-heavy monsters – Room Full of Hammers feels like being in the middle of a bar brawl in real-time, such is the aggression on show, while Damage Device edges into groove metal territory, a relentless rhythm pushing forward like an unstoppable juggernaut, and vicious riffage that should come with a health warning. Black Magnet are unquestionably the best industrial metal band out there right now.
/Sys Machine
/Fading
/Parts Unknown
Perhaps not quite what I was expecting from this project within the Glitch Mode stable, the latest single from their upcoming album Parts Unknown (out in April) is a bleak, quasi trip-hop track that uses the downtempo beats and plaintive vocals from Kimberly Kornmeier of Bow Ever Down to great effect. A song for dark, miserable late nights.
/mclusky
/i know computer
/i sure am getting sick of this bowling alley
Fresh from their outstanding album last year – their first in two decades or so – there’s more songs coming on a new EP, and let’s be honest, there’s not a great deal of change. But why should there be? The taut, smart-assed hardcore of mclusky is brilliant as it is, and the relatively short i know computer is full of the things I love about mclusky: having to rewind just to confirm what Andy Falkous just said (again), oblique comment on the world today (this seemingly taking a swipe at “content creators” and the endless pipeline of drivel on the internet), and guitar-based music stretched to breaking point. It’s fucking great that they are back, isn’t it?
/deux furieuses
/Human Animals
/Human Animals EP
A taster for what is intended to be a fourth album (when they can fund it, apparently) sees deux furieuses back at their scorching best. The title track is particular is the duo in perfect lockstep, guitar and drums providing a powerful backdrop to Ros Cairney’s raging vocal (the chorus is the surprisingly, uncomfortably catchy “I set myself on fire“) as the song appears to despair at the rise of fascism and fucking idiots running the world. One of the most vital bands around right now need your help to survive, though: go buy their music, you won’t regret it.
/Scott McCloud
/Moonlight Stage Dive
/Make It To Forever
While Girls Against Boys are still an active band – they recently played a few Australian dates, and word is they played some new songs – Scott McCloud struck out alone recently with his first solo album proper (alongside the various other projects he’s been part of over the years). But rather than the two-bass, down-and-dirty alternative rock that GVSB have long specialised in, this is Scott McCloud stripping back, and recording mostly just him with an acoustic guitar (and a few guests along the way). The results are striking, with McCloud’s distinctive voice cutting through it all. My favourite track is Moonlight Stage Dive, a song that is still acoustic-based but has bass and drums too, and even a jazzy saxophone elbowing its way in. Not quite as a radical departure as I had initially expected, but it certainly reminds that McCloud’s musical influences are pretty broad.
/Rohn-Lederman
/Paper Plane
/Volcano
Keeping up a remarkable release schedule – this is their sixth album in as many years – the transatlantic duo of Emileigh Rohn (Chiasm) and Jean-Marc Lederman (Fad Gadget, The Weathermen, Ghost & Writer and a hell of a lot more besides) continue their high quality releases with their latest single. Paper Planes has a punchy, powerful rhythm that is pulled back from the brink by Rohn’s breathy vocals, adding a lightness that the track would otherwise sorely lack. Other artists have suggested they make “industrial pop”, Rohn-Lederman here make a point to suggest they can too.
/Ayria
/Vicious World
The first taste of Ayria’s upcoming album (her first in four years) doesn’t pull any punches. A dancefloor stomper that Jennifer Parkin has long been expert at creating, this one’s ominous, bass-heavy synths and hard-hitting beats have obvious origins in classic EBM, and the lyrics take us to darker places around submission and domination (the Nitzer Ebb influences mentioned in the promo blurb, in all ways!), but with Ayria’s poppy edge for the catchy chorus in full effect. My favourite Ayria track in some years, this.
/Tori Amos
/Stronger Together
/In The Time of Dragons
The upcoming Tori Amos album was first announced a few months ago, making it clear that it was going to be a political, angry album (I quote: “In Times of Dragons is a metaphorical story about the fight for Democracy over Tyranny, reflecting the current abhorrent non accidental burning down of democracy in real time by the ‘Dictator believing Lizard Demons’ in their usurpation of America“). The first single from it features Amos and her daughter Natashya Hawley (now 26!), as they assess their position in a world rolling back the rights of women and minorities, and realising that they are stronger working together than individually. Musically there is an unexpected return to more electronic textures, which sounds to these ears to nod to the underappreciated to venus and back, one of my favourite Tori Amos albums.
/Anna Calvi
/God’s Lonely Man (feat. Iggy Pop)
/Is This All There Is EP
The first new music in some time from Anna Calvi – aside from the Tommy EP that was part of Peaky Blinders in 2022 (as well as scoring the last two seasons of the show), Calvi’s last album was the excellent Hunter in 2018 – and it has been introduced as the first part of a trilogy of releases to come. The first single is an electrifying duet between Calvi and Iggy Pop, underpinned by an unmistakable Glitter Beat and crackles with the energy of two artists determined to continue pushing forward (“I wanna do more than just survive“).
The other song released from the EP so far, by the way, is a lovely cover of I See A Darkness featuring Perfume Genius.
/In Strict Confidence
/Blasphemous Rumours
/Blasphemous Rumours EP
Talking of covers….
It has been an age since the last new ISC material – 2018’s HATE2LOVE, which I must admit did absolutely nothing for me – although they’ve not been idle in the meantime, with the lush, orchestral reworkings on Mechanical Symphony offering a new spin on old favourites. But with a new single at last, perhaps that long-promised new album might finally be coming.
There are two interesting things first off, too: one is the return to the “classic” imagery of the band (highly stylised images, the old font, a striking video that looks a whole lot like it was filmed in Southern Iceland), the second being that the new single is another Depeche Mode cover, thirty years after the first, which was a nine-minute reworking of Stripped (and you’ll either love or hate that). This take on one of DM’s greatest songs doesn’t fuck around with perfection too much: there are heavy guitars, sure, but Dennis Ostermann’s growling vocals suit the song well, and it’s a pleasant tribute. Now about that new (original) material…