It has been a really busy few weeks of music round here, with no less than seven gigs in two weeks taking up a lot of my time – and some of them were a bit of a struggle in the intense heat in the south of England in the past week or so.
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/Subject /Tracks of the Month
/Playlists 
/Deezer / 
/YouTube
/Related /633/Tracks/Apr-26 /Tuesday Ten/Index
/Details /Tracks this week/10 /Tracks on Deezer Playlist/10 /Duration/44:00
But they were all enjoyable gigs, it has to be said, with some new discoveries along the way too.
Anyway, onto the new month, and here’s the best tracks of May.
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 above).
/Track of the Month
/NAUT
/Liberation
NAUT were seemingly careful not to let themselves be pigeonholed as a goth band originally, but this marvellous new single makes it absolutely fucking clear that they are Goth as Fuck. Chiming guitars: check. The kind of bassline to get you crimping your hair and making a beeline for the dancefloor: check. Then there’s the chorus hook: “The night will transform you“. Oh, yes. A tribute to the goth clubs of their formative years, those important places we all attended and found our style and musical tastes – and in many cases, our lifelong friends – this is an absolutely brilliant song. Lightbulb changing hand movements at the ready, folks…
/Loathe
/Revenant
/A Stranger To You
Perhaps it was the seemingly eternal wait for it – it has now been six years since I Let It In And It Took Everything blew our minds – but somehow I completely missed the announcement at last of the new Loathe album. Remarkably, they appear to have got even more intense and even heavier, at least if Revenant is anything to go by. There’s almost everything I love about this band here: chugging beatdowns, clever, atmospheric synth work, and that ferocious, dense sound that switches tempos and approach with dizzying speed, as if they get bored doing even remotely the same thing for thirty seconds. The one thing missing here is their trademark melodic touches, here Kadeem France (and guest vocalist Jami Morgan of Code Orange) is just full on fury, the lyrics suggesting frustration with how the band are seen and interpreted. What a return.
/Arab Strap
/You You You
/Half-Told Tales
How is it that Arab Strap remain so brilliantly relevant? A song initially about the uncertainty of ageing, as our body begins to betray us and nothing seems quite as easy as it was, but the one rock being your partner/lover/friend that is still there despite everything, and still loves you for what you are, whatever that might be. But then the song takes a darker turn, as Aidan Moffat comments on the state of the world, and the irony that even the simple act of streaming their music might well be funding AI weaponry development – but without it, they may not reach anyone.
That said, this is, as ever, what I love about Arab Strap: a deep-rooted sense of justice is just as important as tenderness and brutal honesty, as they examine the modern world through cynical, but realistic, eyes.
/Don Broco
/True Believers
/Nightmare Tripping
Featuring Sam Carter of Architects, this rampaging track – even if it doesn’t seem like it to begin with! – is a seething riposte to the ever-increasing acceptance of the far-right views of Reform and others. No punches are pulled here: taking on those that take their views from “influencers” online, those that burn down migrant hotels, overt white supremacism… A furious and sadly very necessary track: one song won’t change the world, but more people speaking up will.
/Choke Chain
/Decomposition
/Decomposition
Mark Trueman’s solo EBM project has turned a number of heads in recent years, most notably gaining attention for his ferocious, bracing live shows. The first single from his upcoming release, the first since Mortality nearly three years ago, shows a notable raising of the production level and a distinct feeling of the calm before the storm. Decomposition rumbles along atop a strict tempo and dirty basslines, with surprisingly bright synths providing a neat counterpoint to Trueman’s barked vocals.
/Omen Code
/Seizure
/Seizure
The excellent album Alpha State from Omen Code made it to #11 in /Countdown /Albums /2025 last year, and while much of that album was the kind of brooding industrial cyberpunk you listen to while away from the clubs, Seizure ups the tempo to aim for some neon-lit club in a dingy basement. It is cut from the same cloth, that’s for sure – an electro-industrial thump coupled with intricate, precise synth work – but with an aggressive energy that is new to them. A bruising Portion Control mix finishes off the EP, too.
/Belly Hatcher
/No Body
Perhaps the recent attention on the Cabs (as they tour one more time) has inspired a new generation of bands (again) – as the latest Belly Hatcher single, with grateful thanks to my friends at I Die:You Die for tipping me to them, proves. The spectre of the 80s industrial funk era Cabs looms large over this great track, which sounds in the best way like it was recorded in a steel forge, such is the preponderance of metallic percussion clanging through the mix.
/Witch of the Vale
/What’s Left of Me
/Lovesongs for the Damned
Apparently originally intended to be a companion to 100 Ways To Leave (which was originally subtitled Part One), this turned out to be something different, and was released without fanfare earlier in May. There are a few alternate versions, a striking cover (Hurt, that they’ve played at shows for some time), a few remixes, and a few new songs too. What’s Left of Me is one of the latter, and strips away the often-dense instrumentation on their songs with impressive results. Synths bubble away like a frothing stream, while the drums are pushed deep into the background, to allow Erin’s extraordinary voice to take centre stage in a song where little seems resolved (by design). This remarkable duo continue to impress.
/The Foreign Resort
/Everything Is A Lie
/Endurance
Danish post-punk band The Foreign Resort have never been the most prolific band, but they make up for that somewhat by the high quality of their work, and after a handful of recent singles, their first album in seven years comes next month. The latest single is Everything Is A Lie is underpinned by an appropriately gloomy bassline, as Mikkel Borbjerg Jakobsen struggles to make sense of a world that seems keener to accept and perpetuate untruth than search for the truth, and his vocals get more and more strained as he examines the idea further.
/Din of Celestial Birds
/Takeoffs & Landings
/Takeoffs & Landings
Somehow, I’d missed this band until I saw them at Damnation last November, and it then clicked that one of the guitarists is someone I knew way back when in Huddersfield, and I hadn’t seen in many years. The band were great at Damnation, too, and their new single is the kind of post-rock that I like, where the whole song is urgent and in your face, no build up, instead the riffs and melodies hit you from the first second. I’m really rather looking forward to the new album, even more so now I’d heard this.