We alluded to feeling as though we were letting the industrial and EBM side of things down a bit on the podcast between some goth navel gazing and Joy Division/New Order reflection of late; we’re hoping that this past weekend’s Portion Control commentary and this (purely accidentally!) heavy hitting suite of new tracks tides people over ’til we have a rivethead-friendly podcast later this week.

Potochkine being so continental

ESA, “Rats Come Together”
Jamie Blacker don’t miss. The ESA mastermind has been exploring further musical boundaries in his contemporary material, and done a crack-up job in combining genres, ideas and production styles into noisy new forms. Check out this new joint “Rats Come Together” – you’ve got some rhyhtmic noise, big gothic organs, snatches of jazzy bass and drums, processed guitar riffs and a wild-ass melodic breakdown that you won’t hear coming. Never predictable, always boundary pushing stuff from one of the most consistent acts we’ve covered since the site’s inception.

Dancing Plague, “Days Of Heaven”
While the vocals and lyrics on the latest from Portland’s Dancing Plague are in keeping with the absolutely grim ethos Conor Knowles has built up around the project, it’s hard not to latch onto the brighter threads in this new number and tap your toes at the very least. Club-focused darkwave has been part of Dancing Plague’s pitch since the project came across our radar, but this borders on the sort of euphoric linking of trance and synthpop which we’ve heard the likes of Body Of Light mine for the last few years.

Swærm, “Worm”
The title of this new cut from Scottish producer Swærm is instructive – the squirm of its bassline and the grimy percussion and pads which smother it connote a subterranean squirming which doesn’t detract from its flood-ready immediacy. Coming to us via Up North Records, it’s bracketed by similarly sickly body music from the likes of Meshes and Spinal who’ve carved out similarly uncompromising reps with us; Up North’s Northern Nightmares comps are always fantastically curated and should be on the radar of anyone looking to flesh out EBM sets.

Potochkine, “BI”
Always nice to have something new from French darkwave/synthpop act Potochkine, who were a staple of our DJ sets a few years back with their debut LP Sortil​è​ges. Where that album felt very much like an update of classic European darkwave sounds, the vibe we’re getting from “BI” is closer to the modern electro take on the sound. It’s also a more harried and insistent than we expected, a change-up that has us intrigued as to where the duo are headed musically in releases to come.

Ottoman Grüw, “Under My Skin, I Carry Your Bones (Feat. Prophän)”
Here’s some pitch black yet precise and satisfying (dare we use the term “functional”?) TBM from Brussels’ Ottoman Grüw and delivered to us by (who else?) X-IMG. The smokey atmospheres that swaddle just about every moment on the Womb tape are the real distinguishing characteristics of cuts like this one, aided in its evocative aims by Moroccan artist Prophän.

XTR Human, “Abgrund”
Another banger from Germany’s XTR Human, hot on the heels of the excellent SCHRANK, one of our fave releases of the year to date. We caught Johannes Stabel doing vocals for INHALT this past summer, and were duly impressed by his presence and energy on stage, something that immediately came to mind while listening to “Abgrund”; the track’s speed and aggression are easy to latch onto, but the personality that Stabel brings to the table as a vocalist gives the track a lot of its personality.