The senior staff were quite the night owls over the past few days, getting out to and enjoying shows by those unhinged LA synth maniacs Tearist and beloved black/folk metal act Agalloch. Both shows were great, and we also got introduced to a couple of cool opening acts: Seattle minimal synth newcomers Nightmare Fortress and Portland drone metal two-piece Taurus. It’s always super-tempting to chill at home before a show and save a few bucks by cracking a brew there instead of at the venue (and I’m writing this more as a pep talk to us rather than pointing fingers), but you never know what cool new bands you might miss in the opening slot. It might be their first time through yr town and they’re usually super keen to sell you some merch on the cheap, so support yr non-local opening band. And support yr local ones, too – I’m just making a cheesy inversion of the usual…bah, fuck it: here’s yr new tracks for Monday.

Cult Of Youth

Cult Of Youth: "O you youths, Western youths, / So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship"

Cowards, “Entry Level Cult”
Speaking of opening acts, I’ve been trying to keep an eye on Vancouver act Cowards since they landed the curtain-jerking spot at a Killing Joke show a while back. Rocking an ugly no wave/deathrock type feel, apparently they’ve switched lead vocalists since then and have dropped a cassette I keep meaning to track down. They’ve also recently put some tracks up on Bandcamp, so those outside of Van can chew on ornery bits of nastiness like this.

Dead Can Dance, “Amnesia”
Is the senior staff excited about seeing Dead Can Dance in just under a month? Damn skippy, especially after hearing just how well Brendan Perry’s vocals have held up at a co-headlining gig with Robin Guthrie a year back (and MY GOD seeing the two of them do “Song To The Siren” together GAAAH). Unlike their 2005 reunion tour, this one’s coming on the heels of a new record, Anastasis, arriving in a month. If you missed out on streaming the first new album from these otherworldly gods in sixteen years, don’t despair: lead single “Amnesia” can now be downloaded for free. Enjoy, and keep an eye open for two scruffy dudes in Ghostface shirts weeping uncontrollably if yr at the Vancouver show.

Cargo Cult, “Aqua Regia (∆AIMON Remix)”
God-freakin’-dammit, ∆AIMON, quit knocking remixes out of the park. We’re a hair away from having to rename the site “The Adorable Kitten And ∆AIMON Appreciation Society”, and TAKA∆AS just isn’t as punchy as ID:UD. Anyway, taking a nicely dynamic head-nodder from newly arrived cipher Cargo Cult as their source material, our favourite San Diegan gnostics dollop on the candelabra piano and smokey grind which has beguiled us for so much of this year. Say, did anyone catch their show in LA two nights ago? How was it?

Kevorkian Death Cycle, “S†ar Chaser”
Wow. After reforming for some shows a year and a half back, the SoCal electro-industrial legends are set to start releasing their first new material in well over a decade. The cross in the name and the reverbing pads suggest that we might be looking at yet another classic act being reinvigorated by all this witchy biz, but there’s a pretty clear connection being drawn between those sounds and the band’s roots in 90s dark steez. Promising. Also, this reminds me that the senior staff have to embark on our “drink lots of Cascadian IPA and listen to all four discs of There Is No Time project sometime soon…

Cult Of Youth, “Man And Man’s Ruin”
I was going to write about how with this track the hotly tipped Brooklyn act seem to be moving out of the shadow of the Death In June comparisons (complimentary or otherwise) which accompanied their breakout self-titled 2011 LP, but Lenny Bogatch of Cenotype rightly pointed out that there were plenty of rawer alt-folk influences on that record, like The Pogues and New Model Army. In any case, this does feel like a move in a much sunnier direction. New album Love Will Prevail drops on September 4th.

Laibach, “Under The Iron Sky”
The crowd-sourced production and distribution of Iron Sky (or Space Nazis Must Die as I call it) has been slowly moving forward for over half a decade, and no bit of news, not even Udo Kier’s attachment to the project, piqued my interest as much as Laibach’s scoring of the film. There was some talk that there’d be no actual new Laibach music in the flick, but this video puts the lie to that. Is it Cabaret-type indulgence to pen a torch song for an exploitation movie? Hells yes, but I’d expect nothing less from our beloved purveyors of Neue Slowenische Kunst. For those wondering what happened to Milan Fras’ beard, word is it moved to Belgrade and is starting a power electronics band.

Laibach – Under The Iron Sky from MUTE UK on Vimeo.