Back to regular programming, then, now that this year’s Infest coverage is done and dusted.

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/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.

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Which means, first up, looking at the best new music of the past month. We’re now charging into the autumn release schedules, and I’m already beginning to consider the best music of the year, with /Countdown /2026 already looming for December.

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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).

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/Track of the Month

/VL7NYZ
/In Slow Motion
/VL7NYZ_001

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More quality electro-industrial from the Pacific North-West, this time from the mysteriously named VL7NYZ. There’s some familiar themes here – decline of humanity, capitalism and tech destroying us – but the lyrics are at least in part either whispered or treated to all hell anyway, but the key thing here is that monster of a rhythm pattern. The drums kick through the layers of synths, that bass synth hook is one FLA would be proud of – this is cyber-industrial of the highest order.

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/Godflesh
/Living / Ending
/Decay

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The end of Godflesh is nigh. We already knew that Justin Broadrick had major surgery earlier in the year, that meant he was now unable to push himself to the physically punishing vocals that Godflesh required. But one more album had already been recorded, and like the last album that harked back to the Pure era, there’s a distinct feeling that this album may be reaching even further back in the band’s history. Living / Ending is a typically uncompromising song, rolling forward with unstoppable force and the distinct feeling that Broadrick is roaring his vocals through considerable pain and with no little effort. The end of Godflesh is something to salute – there is no band like them – and their work is incalculably important in the development of industrial-metal and post-metal.

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/Prong
/The Banner
/Prong

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Groove metal pioneers Prong mark forty years since formation this year, and the self-titled album coming in November will be their fourteenth. The lead single from the album absolutely roars out of the traps, with a full-on thrash intro that does eventually slow down. Indeed, this is a surprisingly varied song, with a melodic chorus and groovier elements too, as if Tommy Victor wants to remind us that Prong were never a one-trick pony. An impressive return.

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/PIG
/An American Ideal of Beauty
/Dirt Box EP

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A bit of a throwback on the latest PIG release (as I’ve asked before, does Raymond Watts ever stop?), with Marc Heal dropping in to provide vocals and synth work, and old KMFDM/PIG bandmate Günter Schulz joining Jim Davies on guitar too. The song is a heavy, slower grind, complete with the glam flourishes I might expect, and is one of the best PIG songs I’ve heard in aeons. Regular visual collaborator to both Raymond and Marc, as it happens, E Gabriel Edvy, has produced a great-looking video for this too.

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/Then Comes Silence
/Judgement Day
/Requiem Ballroom

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Sure, there is perhaps a bit of a formula to what Then Comes Silence do – big, polished goth-rock production, soaring choruses, repeat to fade – but why fuck with a formula that works so well? The first single from their upcoming album (their fourth since the exceptional Machine in 2020, with an album every two years since like clockwork) feels brief at just three minutes, wrongfooting us with a bleepy intro before charging into that sound they do so well, as they lament those on the wrong side of history that will likely be the first to face judgement, at least if there’s any justice.

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/Saul Williams
/Conspiracy
/Leap Life

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Veteran poet, writer, musician, actor and rapper Saul Williams trusts in the moment on his sprawling new album, letting ideas flow into an album that is, to say the least, a varied beast over sixty minutes. First single Conspiracy is a striking place to start, as Williams offers a salve of thoughts in these current times over an urgent, West African-inspired rhythm pattern. It asks for reason, for thought before action, for consideration of how to retort and make the world a better place in a time where everything seems to be conspiring against those who might want to make this broken world better. Saul Williams remains a vital and fascinating voice.

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/Desperate Journalist
/Terrible Years
/Gilding The Lily

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Continuing the sense that this is another DJ song that is perhaps about people we might know (we’ve been friends with members of the band for many, many years – indeed before they were formed), this soaring, dense song is apparently about someone who moved somewhere “more exotic” and lords it over their one-time friends. And like most of Jo Bevan’s best vocal deliveries for this band, here she is caustic and dripping with disdain, while wrapping it in a fantastic song that leaves you marvelling once again.

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/Lustmord Lombardo
/Paleomagnetic Resonance
/The Pulse of Atoms

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A collaboration between dark ambient maestro Brian Williams and metal drumming legend Dave Lombardo was not one I was expecting this year, that’s for sure. The first track released is black as pitch, as might be expected from Lustmord, a forbidding drone piece that threatens all kinds of horrors, and when Lombardo’s drums eventually crash in, it’s like the ceiling has fallen in around you as you listen. I suspect the album is going to be quite the listen.

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/The Body & Cel Genesis
/Candy Crush
/Whole Wide World

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Also no strangers to collaboration are The Body, whose latest such work is with relatively new industrial group Cel Genesis. It would appear that we’re going to be taken on a fucking wild ride on the upcoming album, as Candy Crush is full of jump scares and house of horrors moments that I genuinely wasn’t expecting. There are screams from the void and ominous, downtuned synths, and then (literally) all hell breaks loose as two drummers unleash all that they have out of fucking nowhere, before the track unexpectedly unleashes distorted industrial techno. When I saw Cel Genesis in Chicago, they were lit only by a strobe light: this track feels like I’m repeating that experience, and unexpectedly, it is exhilarating.

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/Fear Factory
/Roboticist

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A little while back, the tense relationship within Fear Factory finally snapped, and vocalist Burton C Bell left the band. They debuted a new vocalist last year, Milo Silvestro, and just this past week the first recorded song by the new lineup was released, complete with a video that is never going to get an Oscar for acting, that’s for sure.

We’re still on familiar ground, mind: lyrics about the links between human and machines, Dino’s choppy, mechanized riffs are still present and correct, Tony Campos’ bass is only occasionally audible in the mix, and Pete Webber’s drumming is precise and taut. The production – by power metal producer Damien Rainaud – is still “more is more”, and what about Milo Silvestro? Well, frankly, he sounds an awful lot like Burton C Bell on this track, particularly on the clean vocal chorus, but then, this song sounds something of a throwback to the Fear Factory heyday of the nineties – not to mention the deliberate release at 02:14 EDT on 29-August…