Ships In The Night, “Protection Spells”

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Ships In The Night
Protection Spells
Metropolis Records

There’s a sense of warmth to the music on Ships In The Night’s Metropolis debut Protection Spells, and a pleasing familiarity in its song-driven electropop and witchy darkwave. While Alethea Leventhal’s project has existed for a decade at this point, Protection Spells represents a level-up in the Virginia native’s material; the reverie and the hopeful melancholy of the preceding records and assorted singles is still here, but the actual songcraft and production feels tighter and more considered, bringing out the strength of the material and of Leventhal’s own performance as a vocalist.

The change is apparent from lead-off track and single “Blood Harmony”, with its helixes of synth arppegios and simple drum programming, leaving the spotlight Leventhal’s understated vocals. The retiring confidence in her voice grabs the ear, making the most of small changes in tone and mood, never showy, but also never shy or obscure; when she lifts her voice to a slightly higher register during the bridge to the final chorus, the whole song blossoms into a new form without a need for dramatics or vamping. It’s a record full of those kinds of subtle but impactful moves, such as the shifts in phrasing that usher in the chorus of “Inside”, or the choice to perform the lush “Wells of Pain” in a matter-of-fact delivery that still manages sweetness and succor. The trick is in making those canny choices sound natural, which Leventhal does with admirable skill, tasteful and playful in equal measure.

The other obvious change is in the nature of the songs themselves, which feel more solid that any point in the project’s history. Ships In The Night’s preceding releases often suffered from an excess of atmosphere, where despite having some nice melodies, the instrumentation was either too sparse or too wet with reverb to latch onto. Protection Spells keeps it simple and present, adding to the record’s appealing coziness. It does feel a bit strange to call a record this dependent on soft-edged pads and multi-tracked vocals, but the economy of the arrangements and especially the presence of the drums have a grounding effect; “Some of Those Dreams” pulses where it could have laid fallow, and sleeper highlight “No One is Coming” makes a total meal of its opening bassline and kick-snare rhythm track, squeezing every ounce of life out of it before switching to a double time shuffle that brings the song home.

Protection Spells‘ strength is apparent even in one of its few missteps: the wholly unnecessary cover of Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence” isn’t unpleasant by any means, but feels like the move of a less confident, less complete artist and ends up highlighting how instantly familiar Ships In The Night’s own material is. It’s an imminently listenable record with a broad pop appeal, brimming with a likeable and unshowy charisma.

Buy it.

Protection Spells by Ships In The Night

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Lana Del Rabies, “Le Temps Viendra”

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Lana Del Rabies - Le Temps Viendra

Lana Del Rabies
Le Temps Viendra
self-released

An inscription in Anne Boleyn’s prayer book, and the figure of Boleyn herself, might sound like material suited for a meditative folk or neo-classical concept record rather than a blast of pure death industrial. But then again, Lana Del Rabies has never been a pro forma noise project. Building out from a pair of tracks released in the aftermath of 2023’s incredible Strega Beata, the Les Temps Viendra EP continues Sam An’s impressive exploration of gothic atmospheres and weighty themes of mortality which often reaches beyond the limits of familiar forms of noise.

Like the best LDR work, all five tracks here find equanimity between the sludging percussion and feedback which makes up the bulk of the instrumentation and Am’s vocals, with both halves of the equation expanding beyond the de facto extremity one might expect. “Anne Boleyn” begins things with a tremoring hesitancy, introducing the ambiguity of the queen consort as both innocent martyr and ambitious courtier. “Queen Of The Black Muses” swaddles a Swans-like machine beat in warm feedback and An’s circling vocals, praying to the deep for ascent. The wary but comparatively laidback “Incubus + Succubus” is as close as Am’s ever come to ’90s alt rock-cum-industrial territory, and acts as a breather before the slow sweep of “Tender Creatures”, which slowly builds from windswept drones to draw in churning dirges which sound as though they owe as much to the hurdy-gurdy as power electronics (not for the first time, the similarly historically minded noise of Menace Ruine seems one of the few accurate points of reference for LDR’s work). The titular closer finds Am seemingly occupying the roles of inquisitor and repentant confessor at once, with a shift from furnace blasts of noise to warm pads mirroring the resignation of one at peace with their own mortality, regardless of when the axe falls.

The phrase scrawled by Boleyn in her prayer book which gives Les Temps Viendra its name has fascinated historians, and certainly from a modern perspective can be read as either foreshadowing her sudden fall from favour and trumped-up trial and execution, or the larger historical judgment of her husband and killer, or both. That sort of morbid triple entendre is the sort of tesseract Lana Del Rabies thrives within, modulating between levels of resonance both sonic and emotional. Recommended.

Buy it.

Le Temps Viendra by Lana Del Rabies

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Tracks: May 5th, 2025

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It’s Verboden Fest this weekend here in Vancouver, folks! As always we’re excited about seeing some festival fam we rarely get to hang out with on our home turf, see some familiar favourite acts, and to check out a few completely new to us acts, the latter of which are numerous on this year’s bill. As always, if you’re in town for Verboden, come and say hi to the two goofs introducing bands to the stage.

Our friend and yours, Caustic.

Camlann, “Worship Me”
Whoa, Camlann’s new one does the weird cross genre thing that the Indonesian darkwavers have had on lock for a while now, but this time it’s goth rock and like early 2000s pop-rock. It’s such an odd combination of sounds that aren’t actually totally disimilar (they both rely on big, broadly appealing hooks and fist pumping rhythms), done in the way that the duo only can, which is to say with a certain combination of deadpan sincerity and off-kilter weirdness. The band has had some real strong singles in the last six months or so, a new album in the not so distant future seems inevitable.
Worship Me by Camlann

Wicked Girls, “Big Dumb Banger”
A new collab between Louisahhh and kimifromtheinternet, Wicked Girls’ first teaser from their Good Dogs EP certainly does what it says on the tin in terms of offering up big doofy kicks and a slew of wormy acidic programming. But, as with all things Louisahhh has a hand in, there are certainly layers beneath the most obvious readings which we’re looking forward to gleaning once the full EP is out.
Good Dogs by Wicked Girls (Louisahhh & kimifromtheinternet)

Caustic, “Thirsty Dog”
It’s been a bunch of years since we had a new Caustic single, although Matt Fanale hasn’t ever been far from our speakers between his work as half of Klack, as Daddybear and various other musical endeavours. Enter “Thirsty Dog”, an unexpected Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds cover, remade as a manic electro body blowout, delivered in Caustic’s recognizable growl. And it’s frankly a cover that makes a lot of sense – setting aside the jump from bluesy garage howl to thudding industrial clamor, it’s the sort of self-excoriating screed that has informed some of both Cave and Fanale’s best work. With the B-side “Never Look At You Twice” going even further down the industrial punk road, it’s looking like July’s Fiend should be a real paint peeler.
Thirsty Dog by Caustic

SDH, “Lovers Wonder (Alen Skanner remix)”
Spain’s SDH team up with one of our favourite current remixers Alen Skanner for a new version of their December 2024 single “Lovers Wonder” and its absolutely tremendous. Now if you follow us, you know we’ve spent a lot of time talking about Alen Skanner’s capacity for high-speed Mortal Kombat style techno-body productions, but in this case the song is taken into a much slower, layered and triumphant direction, taking the lovely melancholy synthpop of the original and building it into an epic. For its bombast with the synth choral voices and thunderous drums, it shows a real subtle grasp of craft, ferreting out the melody of the original and recontextualizing it in big, bold, and imminently replayable fashion.
Lovers Wonder (Alen Skanner Remix) by SDH

WLDV, “Bewitched”
We mostly know Spanish producer WLDV for his uncanny ability for unlicensed remixes of dark classics which somehow dodge the jarring edits and levelling issues such projects usually fall prey to, but he’s just as adept at his own original productions. New EP Bewitched is effectively a sandwiching of this spiralling giallo number between an intro and outro, putting all the spotlight on its tightrope walking between classic, misty 70s analogue witchcraft and more modern Boy Harsher school styles.
WLDV – Bewitched EP by WLDV

Laughing Chance, “Champion’s Tear”
Uneremitting, circular, and entirely pure industrial noise. With that sort of description it should come as no surprise that new project Laughing Chance is the work of Chrondritic Sound honcho and all-around noise impresario Greh Holger. Somewhat different from his main noise project Pure Ground in terms of its use of whirring, monomaniacal loops, pieces like this are a reminder of the ear for detail Holger has in sampling and layering clattering field recordings like these (we’re also choosing to interpret the name as a reference to Ric Flair’s immortal 1992 Royal Rumble performance).
Dead Weight by Laughing Chance

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Observer: Lahorka & Anatoly Grinberg and Mark Spybey

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Lahorka
Demo
self-released
Oakland/Puerto Rico synthpunk duo Lahorka certainly don’t skimp on the punk in their 5-track 2025 demo, the liner notes of which indicate that all songs were recorded live. That matches up to the rough and ready sound of the songs, which jump between mid-tempo stompers, gabber speed rave-ups and trudging analogue industrial, keeping the arrangements lean and the vocals shouted. “Silencio + Suicidio” is a hyper-speed bit of manic electro, all hissing snares and rapidly rising and ascending 16th note sequences of beeps, a contrast to “Movimientos” which uses a slowed down version of the sound to more sinister effect thanks to its echoing vox and fuzzy synth bass. There’s certainly a sense of arch attitude in the delivery of “Diversión”, where the warbling synths match up to the sarcastically intoned verses, punctuated with yelps and glitches to the kick-snare drum patterns. The band’s wildest moment comes from “Desorden”, where an 18-wheeler’s worth of hardcore kicks eventually build to a buzzing crescendo, burning out seconds before it feels like the track is about to shake itself to pieces. If this is truly a record of what the band is like live, they’ll be one you’ll want to make a point of seeing.
Demo by LAHORKA

Anatoly Grinberg and Mark Spybey
Anatoly Grinberg and Mark Spybey
crop-dusting
Ant-Zen
It’d be tempting to say that Mark Spybey has too many irons in the fire given the plethora of collaborations he’s involved with, not to mention mainline Dead Voices On Air material both new and archival, were it not for how handily the veteran experimentalist has been able to maintain the care and quality associated with his work both classic and recent. His latest record with frequent collaborator Anatoly Grinberg touches upon a range of the ambient moods and styles one associates with their preceding works, with an added focus on topography and landscape. The tropical jungle ambiance of “them-again” slowly and beautifully shifts into uplifting, near trance-like pads as the sun filters through canopies of trees, while the otherworldly, wildly pitched vocals (?) which wind through “echoes-sri” feel like a call to prayer on Mars. Dreamy and soupy yet earthy and grounded, these are the sort of moves that seem from the outside to come easily to Grinberg and Spybey yet also reflect mastery of the details of sound design.
crop-dusting by anatoly grinberg and mark spybey

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We Have A Technical 556: Taking Mushrooms

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Bruce & Alex at Kinetik 2.0

The Senior Staff: coming up on 20 years of yukking it up at North American festivals.

We love two things here at ID:UD – dark music festivals, and arbitrary competition. We’re combining those two passions with a mock draft of our own non-existent music fests, drawing from the line-ups of a handful of this year’s real-world parties. Which of our two line-ups seems the most tempting to you? Let us know here or on socials, or give us your own line-up from the same pool. As always, you can rate and subscribe on iTunes, download directly, or listen through the widget down below.

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Crush Of Souls, “Lézire”

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Crush Of Souls - Lézire

Crush Of Souls
Lézire
Avant! Records

Post-hardcore refugee Charles Rowell, previously of outfits ranging from The Plot To Blow Up The Eiffel Tower to Crocodiles, traded New York for Paris a few years back and was soon releasing work under the Crush Of Souls handle. Showing off an interest in classic synthpop and darkwave (and a healthy splash of saxgoth), Crush Of Souls’ second LP carries on with the mission of preceding release (A)Void Love in its testing of those styles to varying results.

Much ofLézire aims at a general middle ground between Crush Of Souls’ influences, and does a reasonable job thereof. Fragments of easy going new wave like lead single “Cult Of Two” coast by on bounce and affability, though its hooks and chorus never really elevate things beyond the interplay between rubbery synth bass and chiming pads. “Touch From A Heartbeat” similarly adorns its core beat with some crystalline ambience that’s certainly pretty enough, but doesn’t move the needle in a marketplace rife with Drab Majesty imitation.

The more rewarding moments on the record are ones which are perhaps more understated, but stake out positions rarely taken in today’s general post-punk landscape. Take a listen to the hushed, dramatic acoustic strum which threads through the atmospheric “Souls Apart”, with Rowell’s hushed vocal perfectly underscoring the drama. Sitting smack between any number of classic Echo and Mission singles, it’s the sort of move it’s hard to imagine many recent acts opting for, let alone pulling off. Not all of these forays pay dividends – the robotic reprogramming of a mid-period Simple Minds template on “The Pure Weapon” starts promisingly but hits diminishing returns – but they’re still distinct. The less-is-more neofolk of “You Rose Up” has just enough lilt and restraint to work, with veteran Harry Howard (These Immortal Souls, Crime & The City Solution) on tap for vocals.

Lézire isn’t a masterpiece, far from it. A number of tracks never really coalesce into anything memorable beyond their run time, and some of the leering excess common to Rowell’s original milieu (there’s a track named “Call Your Dealer” for god’s sake) can be off-putting. But, if you find yourself let down from time to time by the conservatism of a large number of current bands tapping into the mid-80s vein, you’ll find charm in some of Lézire‘s left-field manoeuvres.

Buy it.

Lézire by CRUSH OF SOULS

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V▲LH▲LL, “Skymningsdjur”

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V▲LH▲LL
Skymningsdjur
Artoffact Records

Swedish duo V▲LH▲LL originally emerged as part of a wave of post-witchhouse bands in the early 2010’s, taking the esoteric and atmospheric elements of that genre and crossing it with broader industrial and darkwave sounds. In the years since they’ve distinguished their aesthetic, leaning hard on the Nordic pagan motifs suggested by their name, becoming more graspable and earthy, rooting their ghostly textures into more solid and developed songs. Their latest LP Skymningsdjur finds them revisiting some of their earliest motifs and ideas, and integrating still more new sounds into the mix.

One of V▲LH▲LL’s great strengths has always been in finding the balance between their electronic palette and their occult and fantastical subject matter. A song like “Hunger” shows how canny they are in doing so; violins and paired folky vocals floating in and around chiming synth-bells, flowing pads and fluttering hi-hat programming, sounding both traditional and modern, proximal and ghostly. It’s a vibe they can port through different styles, as with the synthwave adjacent “En Tid Om Ett Tag”, where pulsing bass and a jagged lead cut through the fog of reverb and delays, or the pounding “Calling for Storms”, whose melody and arrangement could port over easily into dark electro.

Still, for the band’s expertise in executing their sound, Skymningsdjur doesn’t have many truly standout cuts. To their credit everything on the record is at a minimum good, and expertly produced and performed, but its hard not to compare these cuts to earlier V▲LH▲LL songs in a similar vein. “Yuki-Onna” revisits the creepy faerie tale feel of songs like “Down in the Woods”, tossing in some tasteful gated guitar-sounds and some modular synth warbles, nicely done but less novel in this iteration. Closer “Devoured” revisits their earliest incarnation, thick with analogue bass and voices both distant and eerily close, lacking only a fresh hook to really put it over the top.

Thus Skymningsdjur falls into the territory of those catalogue albums that bring some new things to the longtable, but nothing that makes it particularly standout against their preceding LPs. It’s a band with a very defined sense of identity doing what they do, and doing it well, and to that end it can be a fine and enjoyable listen. Those seeking more of V▲LH▲LL’s brand of pagan electronics should be well pleased by it.

Buy it.

Skymningsdjur by V▲LH▲LL

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Tracks: April 28th, 2025

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It’s very difficult to know what to say in this post, as we are still reeling from the awful events that transpired in Vancouver this weekend. It’s a tragedy, and comes in a year that has not been short of those, and we are greatly saddened for our friends and neighbours in the Filipino community. Aside from making direct contributions to organizations that are providing aid to the community and those directly affected, we would encourage everyone in the city reading this to donate blood, as there are many injured people still undergoing treatment for serious injuries.

Aurat

Aurat

Rhys Fulber, “The Abyss (feat. Qual)”
An absolute stormer from Rhys Fulber, who has been exercising his brutalist techno chops for a bunch of recent releases, but heads back towards more song-oriented composition on this collab with William Maybelline. It’s a solid match, as the latter’s solo work has always had a strong current of the kind of electro-industrial that Fulber helped pioneer, with Maybelline’s grave vocal delivery fitting in nicely with the thudding concrete kicks and the 16th note synthlines that wend their way through the song. A great taste of things to come in the hopefully near future.
The Abyss (feat. Qual) by Rhys Fulber

Aurat, “Kismet”
It’s been nearly four years since we had new music from California’s Aurat, but the cacaphonic and haunting post-punk/goth act’s stock has risen drastically in that interim with a slew of well received shows. If we’re to take this new track as a statement of things to come, they’re beginning to work a lot more industrial clatter into their already dense sound, while still keeping Azeka Kamal’s fantastic vocals at the centre.
KISMET by Aurat

House of Harm, “Fight the Feeling”
Bostonian post-punk act House of Harm have always had a knack for sad, dreamy melodies, and for positioning them within rock solid arrangements that display a lot of songwriting saavy. New cut “Fight the Feeling” shows the same maturity and compulsive listenability of their last full record Playground from 2023, and with still more smooth production, especially on the vocals of Michael Rocheford which have really become something special and distinctive. A really nice cut from a band who rarely deliver anything other than really nice cuts.
Can't Fight the Feeling by House of Harm

Invalid User, “Cyber Baiting”
We’ve long been touting the releases of Bogotá’s Pildoras Tapes for the label’s presentation of grimy yet utterly modern body music with a South American focus, offering a valuable aesthetic counterpoint to the near stranglehold on modern dancefloor focused EBM Berlin seemed to be tightening for several years. This track, from their recent comp celebrating five years of work, allows label honcho Jose Marulanda to show off a thudding but pleasantly dense and nuanced club smasher under his longstanding Invalid User handle.
Anatomía del Control I by Invalid User

Empusae, “Invocation (The Fractured Self)”
Boy howdy but Nicolas Van Meirhaeghe of Empusae’s been on a tear. Factoring in the forthcoming The Alchemist’s Rift LP on Arcane Dirge, we’re counting at least six LPs, collabs, and EPs released by Empusae since the beginning of last year, and we’re likely missing a couple of oddities here and there. Thankfully that release schedule hasn’t led to a drop in quality, and the massive, bombastically cinematic take on neo-classical and dark ambient we’ve come to associate with his latter era work is on full display on this sweeping album opener.
The Alchemist's Rift by Empusae

Pain Magazine, “Violent God”
Pain Magazine is a new band from some familiar names; the project is made up of Louisahhh and frequent collaborator Maelstrom, and French hardcore act Birds in a Row. Apparently the principles decided to randomly try to do something together, and then ended up recording a whole-ass record of some pretty gnarly industrialized electro, with some real nice lush guitars, are used much differently than you might be expecting given the harsh nature of the synths and drum programing. “Violent God” also features one of Louisahhh’s most tortured vocal performances to date, a match for the tormented sound of the instrumental for sure. The forthcoming LP is now right at the top of our hotly anticipated releases for 2025.
Violent God by Pain Magazine

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We Have A Commentary: Pouppée Fabrikk, “Rage”

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Pouppée Fabrikk, "Rage"

A landmark for minimal, aggressive EBM for decades to come, the debut LP from Swedish legends Pouppée Fabrikk is the subject of this month’s commentary podcast. A deceptively varied listen, Rage infused EBM with a unique punk ethos, and as we discuss here, hinted at the voluminous discography frontman Henrik Nordvargr Björkk was to embark upon. As always, you can rate and subscribe on iTunes, download directly, or listen through the widget down below.

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