Another month, more new music: and no less than twenty tracks this month, as we rush headlong into Spring and everything seems to be released at once.
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/Subject /Tracks of the Month
/Playlists 
/Spotify / 
/YouTube
/Related /624/Tracks/Feb-26 /Tuesday Ten/Index
/Details /Tracks this week/20 /Tracks on Spotify Playlist/18 /Duration/79:00
There’s pretty much everything this month: unexpected returns, bands reflecting on their past, side-projects, wild reinterpretations, polka-dot prog weirdness, lush doom, chaotic breakcore and much, much more.
Thanks for reading, contributing, commenting.
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
/Neurosis
/Mirror Deep
/An Undying Love for a Burning World
The greatest post-metal band of them all return out of the wilderness – and with no warning or prior announcement, with new member and longtime friend of the band Aaron Turner replacing Scott Kelly. In some ways, it sounds like they’ve never been away, in others they sound absolutely revitalised.
The lead track from the new album is the best of both worlds. An avalanche of classically Neurosis, molasses-thick riffage is underpinned by the electronics of Noah Landis (long the band’s secret weapon), with Steve Von Till’s vocals front and centre, almost as if this was intended as the continuity point to remind you that not too much has changed. But that relentless, overwhelming noise doesn’t last forever, the song seesawing between that and near-ambient sections that only make the noisy parts hit even harder.
This surprise album is the best Neurosis album in years, as it happens, and while the hour runtime means these eight tracks are A Lot, turn up the volume and bury yourself in it.
/Divider
/Artifacts
/Zero
There seems to have been a number of new-to-me but not-at-all new industrial acts of late, and Divider are another: they have roots in the 1990s, based around the work of Bryon Wilson, nowadays with Peter Beal having joined more recently to add vocals and programming. Lead single Artifacts, which opens the album, gives a clear pointer to the aims of the project: somewhere between icy EBM and classic electro-industrial, with punchy drum patterns and synths that snake around the mix like dry ice on a stage, and while vocals are clearly not the main feature, they retain enough hooks to make them an important element of the mix.
/LUXT
/You
One of the more unexpected reunions in recent times has been that of Sacramento-based “cyber voodoo rock” (industrial rock) band LUXT, who livestreamed their comeback show a few months back – which proved that they had lost none of their bulldozing force. More surprisingly, they debuted a handful of new songs too, and one of those has now been released. As a comeback single, it kinda covers most of their bases: chugging guitars, dual-vocals, melodic hooks and that ripping power that is unleashed sparingly for maximum effect. It’s fucking great to have them back.
/Angine de Poitrine
/Fabienk
/Vol. II
An unexpected viral sensation recently thanks to their remote KEXP session in Rennes, it appears that Angine de Poitrine are going to some lengths to preserve their anonymity. The dotty outfits and masks suggest a lighthearted feel, but the music by the duo – one on a double-necked guitar/bass and an arsenal of pedals, the other on drums – is darker and wilder. There’s something of the playful headfuck of Battles from their EP C/B era nearly twenty years ago, there’s prog rock gallops and guitar solos, there’s even a feeling of disco as the songs – and particularly the fabulous Fabienk – lock into their insane grooves, never mind the bass solos.
Some will doubtless dismiss this as pretentious prog wankery of the highest order. Their loss – this is surprisingly fun pretentious prog wankery.
/Chalk
/Tongue
/Crystalpunk
The first band I’ve seen in a while covered by both the NME and I Die: You Die within the same month, and perhaps helps to explain their broader potential and appeal. Then again, they haven’t exactly compromised for wider appeal, as even the first minute of opener Tongue shows. A nervous energy permeates their sound, one of jittery synths, punishing rhythms and furious breakdowns that never remotely shows a capability at settling down. This is thrilling, intriguing music that isn’t quite noise rock, isn’t quite industrial, and couldn’t give two fucks what you or I think about it.
/fakeyourdeath
/Shapeshifter
/(NON)ENTITY
This duo’s name has been bouncing around for a little while now, and their new EP is an impressively chaotic listen: and there’s a lot going on for a duo. Shapeshifter is the pick of the bunch: propulsive electro-rock that takes in Big Beat, industrial, hardcore and glitchy electronics, and somehow manages to make it a cohesive whole in ways that many such bands utterly fail at doing. The long breakdown that precedes the final coda is a great kiss-off, too.
/BLACKBOOK
/I am not a Robot
/Different
Now, I know this single was released last year, but it, along with the many other singles released over the past year, is on their marvellous new album Different that was released on Friday last. This punchy, oh-so-short synthpop banger was one of the shining highlights of their Infest set last year: one that wastes little time with building atmosphere, and instead building straight towards that mighty, irresistible chorus. The song also seems to have a few comments to make about the modern workforce being treated like robots, too…
/PIG
/Tosca’s Kiss
/Hurt People Hurt
It really is difficult keeping up with Raymond Watts these days, such is the relentless nature of their release schedule. Another new album is on the way, and the first single from it is the heaviest
/DEAFKIDS
/CICATRIZES
/CICATRIZES DO FUTURO
Signed for their new album to Neurot Recordings, the Brazilian duo DEAFKIDS have conjured up a wild, overwhelming sound. An 808 drum pattern keeps time at the base, but that is buried under walls of distorted guitars and various other rhythms that result in a track that is like experiencing a panic attack, under flashing lights, in real time. It’s an amazing piece of work, but perhaps not something I’m going to be able to listen to many times each week…
/Draconian
/Cold Heavens
/In Somnolent Ruin
The Swedish Doom Metallers return with their first new album in six years, and unexpectedly vocalist Lisa Johansson – long the best foil to Anders Jacobsson’s gruff vocals – has returned and thus, their new songs soar again. Cold Heavens rolls and rocks with the tumult of a winter storm, while giving Johansson full freedom to unleash her formidable voice and add the more romantic edge to their sound once again that always made Draconian stand apart from their peers.
/Gout
/I Am A Beacon of Health and Wellbeing
/Actual Bastard
A nasty bit of sludgy hardcore from Glasgow – the EP Actual Bastard is out in a couple of weeks – that is actually hugely entertaining. The first track is this monster of a track, that reminds me a bit of Nirvana at their harshest, interestingly (as well as a much more modern influence in the form of Chat Pile): a song that lives and dies by the chugging riffs that propel it forward, while vocalist Ally Scott reflects on the troubles of masculinity and its fragility: putting out there a solid, clean image where the reality is anything fucking but.
/A.A. Williams
/Just A Shadow
/Solstice
It feels like it’s been a while, but in reality just four years have passed since second album As The Moon Rests. The world, though, is still a gloomy, melancholic one to A. A. Williams, and perhaps it’s because the sound palette that she’s crafted suits her voice so well. Apparently a song about her inability to ever fully shed that black cloud that follows her, there is a new clarity to her sound with this song, maybe letting a bit of that light in after all. Don’t expect a blast of sunshine here, but as Leonard Cohen famously noted: “There is a crack, a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in“. Just that crack of light and Williams sounds transformed.
/16Pad Noise Terrorist
/Maintance Rytm
/Unmute
I’m not an obsessive listener of (industrial) noise music these days, but some releases still catch my ear. One such is from the upcoming fifth album by HANDS staple 16Pad Noise Terrorist, whose music leans heavily into industrial atmospherics and, in the main, breakcore. Maintance Rytm has an interesting structure, with those synths providing air in the mix and a sense of respite from the brutal breakdown that dominates the middle of the track. It is still absolutely full-on, though, and with the album comprised of no less than sixteen songs, buckle up.
/Shooting Daggers
/Glow feat. Dennis Lyxzen
/The Real Life Thing
I first featured the excellent feminist hardcore punk trio Shooting Daggers a couple of years back, and their next release, a mini-album The Real Life Thing, is out in June. Thanks to supporting Refused on some of their final shows last year, they’ve managed to get vocalist Dennis Lyxzen joining them on this great new single, a melodic and thoughtful track that addresses the idea of gender identity and reminds – as if few readers of this need reminding, hopefully – that things are never as clear cut as some people would have you believe. And why yes, to say it again, this site fully supports trans rights.
/Manuskript
/Doomscrolling
/
While they’ve occasionally broken cover in recent years to play the odd show here and there, it appears that 2026 is seeing something of a full reactivation of Manuskript, with a number of live shows coming up and the first new song in a very long time. Doomscrolling is a big, brash goth-pop song in the classic Manuskript mould, that is darker than the bright production suggests: a treatise on the addictive nature of social media and the way that it fucks with our perception of reality and the world around us.
/Cyanotic
/Nothing Changes
/Nothing Changes EP
There’s new material on the horizon, as has been noted a few times by Sean Payne online in the last year or so, but in the meantime, a track from last album The After Effect has had a retooling, alongside a remix from Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu, etc, and one of Sean Payne’s important influences). Indeed, I suspect the remix is the reason for this release, but the new version of the track itself is certainly worth a go: heavier, weightier and sharper – and, of course, the subtext of the track, that nothing fucking changes no matter what you do at an individual level, feels all the more real now.
Justin Broadrick’s take on the track slows it down, as if the cyber-humanoid that represents Cyanotic has been caught in tar, and it is now malfunctioning. The core of the song is still there, but glitched and fucked up.
/BIG|BRAVE
/the ineptitude for mutual discernment
/in grief or in hope
BIG|BRAVE continue to have little interest in staying in one place thematically, and with touring member Liam Andrews (AICHER) now joining the band fully, they seem to have gained even more intensity. the ineptitude for mutual discernment is a track mostly comprised of multi-tracked, droning guitars and bass, drenched in feedback and with Robin Wattie’s voice fighting for supremacy within the murk as they consider a sense of self that may not be succeeding. BIG|BRAVE remain a fascinating band that demand your full attention, no matter the song.
/Nerdy Sanchez
/Indoors Outer Space
It’s Tuesday, so it must be time for another side-project from Matt Fanale and Eric Oehler. This time, it is a nod back to the noisy electro-riot of Big Beat in the late-nineties, a scene I was part of back then at Uni (I spent a good amount of time at various of the clubs of the era, not to mention picking up most of the music along the way), and it is a fun tribute to the scene: as they note, though, this is less nostalgia and more an attempt at making music in the same style. The result is a fun, funky blast of a track that should sound great in the clubs: and interestingly, is a very different take on the similar idea that is Nevada Hardware‘s Split Scene (who apparently blew up Resistanz at the weekend).
/Shane Parish
/Slip
/Autechre Guitar
A really, really different nod to electronic music of the past comes from guitarist Shane Parish: who has recorded an entire album reinterpreting various Autechre songs into solo (acoustic) guitar pieces. The very idea of this is utterly bizarre: the most alien-sounding of electronic artists, possibly the furthest removed from classic norms of music and particularly the use of a guitar. Somehow, though, it works, as his interpretations are elegant, almost beautiful pieces. Particularly his take on the sublime Slip, which in the original form is less human than pastoral, electronic music that seems to be shining in the sunlight of a day at its end. Maybe this one works best because of the repeated melodic refrain at the heart of it, but maybe it is just a lovely piece of music. Either way, this is an astonishingly brave concept, and one that shows off a virtuoso guitarist who has found a way to understand music that few of us ever have.
/Placebo
/Bruise Pristine (RE:CREATED Version)
/RE:CREATED
The first Placebo album, and their early singles, have always had a special place in my heart. They were a band I discovered early, indeed I first saw them live (supporting Whale) in November 1995, when they only had a single or two out. One of those singles was Bruise Pristine, and the fierce power of the track feels like the right place to start with the recently announced RE:CREATED project that is seeing Placebo reflect on their debut album for the first time in a long time, with re-recorded and “updated” versions of those songs.
In all honesty, there wasn’t much that needed to be done with this track, and most of the discernable changes come during the later part of the track, particularly in the breakdown where Brian Molko’s multi-tracked, echoed vocals are now fully audible at last. It will be interesting to see what they do with the rest of the album, that’s for sure.