Lollipop Music Streams

Three years since their last release, and seeing as HIM and Entwine don't have new ones at the moment, there's this slab of somber, driving, deep-voiced Gothic rock. "Red" isn't their best song, nor (I hear) the best on the album, but it's the single presented. It's catchy yet simple and repetitive, and reminds me of the many filler songs HIM has released over the years. Makes me miss Dark Tranquillity's Goth metal dalliance, and perhaps Poisonblack when the singer isn't flat.

The Orb (featuring Lee Scratch Perry

Synopsis: Well-respected UK electro/dance duo team up with wacko Reggae legend. Cool songs like "Hold Me Upsetter" ensue.

"No Reflection" is one of the more pedestrian songs on an otherwise "yup, he's still got it" album. But then again, even a decent Manson track is a fist-pumping-your-girlfiend's-mom experience. Nasty guitars, smart lyrics to whisper while fucking all your little sister's friends, snarl that'd make a lion tuck tail - yeah, it's good to have this villain back in pure form.

Stray
Letting Go (Alfa Matrix Records)
release date: 5/4/2012

Second release by Erica Dunham of Unter Null's side project. One can perceive hope and light at the end of this trancey tunnel of melancholy melodies carrying clear sequences, bittersweet words, and mesmerising atmospheres. "Remember Me" reminds of '80s new wave greats, while swelling the heart in the now.

Freakangel is a mixture of aggrotech, industrial, and dark electro. "It's an album about all of us... how brain-dead we act in this dying world of ours, how we have lost faith in ourselves and how we prefer to believe in television nonsense and pseudo-Gods." Contort on the dancefloor or piss off your neighbors to "Used."

Alien Vampires
Clubbers Die Younger EP (Alfa Matrix Records)
release date: 5/4/2012

Nine track mini-CD from the band's forthcoming studio album. Louder, faster, harder: Upfront industrial dance full of distorted noise, vibrating bass-drums, hypnotic turbo beats, and provocative, harsh vocals. Sexy and bloody visuals, guest vocals by Sonya Scarlet (Theatres Des Vampires) and killer remixes by Amduscia, C-Lekktor, Chainreactor, and Waste. Check out "Acid Orgy," and then go wash up.

"Suicide Inside stands for an eclectic blend of aggressive electronic music and furious industrial rock, with heavy breakbeats, rhythmic noise, and Natasha's razor-sharp provocative female vocals. An exploding cocktail of acid-house styled synths, distorted bass-lines, dramatic sound fx, and loud, powerful vox." Yeah, sometimes bios say it best. A side project of Natasha and Alexey Protasov from Ambassador21. I can't understand a word of it, "Homicide," but it's hot, it's aggressive, and you can move to it.

Schwarzblut
Maschinenwesen (Alfa Matrix Records)
release date: 4/27/2012

A five-piece band from the Netherlands that blends romantic, melancholic Weimar poetry with danceable dark electronic music. Mixing pounding electro rhythms, harmonic choirs, distorted vocals, cutting leads, grandiloquent orchestras, dark romanticism, and German lyrical poetry, "Der Schwarze Tod" is representative of the harder side on the band's first full-length, but don't miss out on the more atmospheric, film-scorish tracks.

Industrial stalwarts Skinny Puppy are as wild and weird as ever on their 14th album HanDover. The big beats of "Village" stand well on their own, but, as always, they're just one of many puzzle pieces that make up another eclectic effort.

Mentallo & The Fixer
A Collection of Rare, Unreleased & Remastered (Alfa Matrix Records)
release date: 4/27/12

Texan electro-industrial act Mentallo & The Fixer has been at it for a while, and that knowledge shows on the lean, effective "decomposed (spent)." Taken from an upcoming collection of odds and ends spanning their career.

There's really no way you're not gonna wanna check out this mini-mix of tracks from Caustic's new album The Golden Vagina of Fame and Profit. As if that title wasn't inspiration enough, this is the artist that brought you "Love That Taint," "Another Fist in the Ass" and "Digital Mangina," so c'mon people.

Lords of Acid have been at this game for too long to whiff on a track called "Pop That Tooshie," so, of course, they deliver with this "Fuck The Pain Away" meets 2 Live Crew bass-bouncin' bliss. Stick around after the feature for some remixes of songs from the Belgians' new album Deep Chills.

Wisconsin's Stromkern mixes minimalist beats with hip-hop, filling the empty spaces of their Kraftwerk-style framework with fast, catchy wordplay. "Intuit" is from their new five-track Dead Letters release, their first in seven years.

Spanish five piece Diabolus in Musica mix anthemic female-fronted metal with some keyboard wizardry on "Sceneries of Hope." Of course, as you would expect from this musical niche, the layers don't end there: Keep your ears peeled for a chorus of backup singers as well as symphonic flourishes.

Los Angeles' industrial dance-rockers Inure go for the jugular on this cut from their third album. "This Is The Life" is what was playing at that warehouse party that you walked past in the wrong part of town last night and were too afraid to go in.

Toxic Coma is a project from Velvet Acid Christ mastermind Bryan Erickson. Unlike the more structured approach to VAC, Toxic Coma allows for a more experimental, fun, psychedelic, and downright weird approach to industrial techno music. Maybe I Killed Babbies

Stiff Valentine brings a lighthearted vibe to their raucous electronic attack, and "Somebody to Hate" is a thrashing rallying call to the likeminded. This track is off the remix companion to their album America Bleeding.

Uplifting electric eclectics (can't take credit for that one, it's in their bio) Psy'aviah chart some interesting territory on "SOS Overdose." These genre-blending progressives consist of Emélie Nicolaï, Kristof De Clerck, and Yves Schelpe.

The product of a chance meeting at a Valentine's Day event at a New York City Goth club, Neikka RPM is the baby of Dominique and Richard. "Warped" features the haunting vocals of the former alongside the driving beats of the latter.