On 1 October 2026, Nachtmahr chose Poland to open the longest and largest tour in the project’s history: three consecutive club dates in Wrocław, Poznań and Warsaw, with Cygnosic and Bagger 258 joining the opening run before IMPERIVM continues further across Europe. When Thomas Rainer and I spoke ahead of the tour, he admitted that beginning in Poland had originally been a logistical decision, but previous experience with Polish audiences made it an unexpectedly appropriate one. A new programme inevitably introduces a degree of uncertainty, and he expected the energy of the Polish crowd to remove it very quickly. Wrocław supplied a fairly emphatic confirmation.

Three bands approached electronic physicality from markedly different directions, yet there was no weak transition between them. Bagger 258 worked through blunt rhythmic force, aggressive vocals and a very direct relationship with the dancefloor; Cygnosic loosened that geometry into something darker, broader and more fluid; Nachtmahr then inherited a room already fully activated and pushed it into a much less orderly state. The evening did not feel like a headliner plus obligatory support. Its construction mattered.

And Wrocław really is being spoiled this autumn. The number of strong dark-electronic, industrial and gothic concerts passing through the city has reached the point where they are beginning to form a genuine season rather than a handful of unrelated bookings. This was another very persuasive addition.

Bagger 258

I should already have seen Bagger 258 at the NCN Warm-Up this year, but unfortunately missed them there, so Wrocław finally gave me the chance to catch up. It took very little time to understand what I had missed.

The Augsburg duo, Nico von der Eisenmühle and Tim “Hacke” Schmelzer, released their debut album “Aufwärts gehts bergab” in February 2026. Its language places them firmly inside EBM: Arbeiterwut, Funktion, Kontrolle!, Werkshalle 4, “Körperkommando“, Schicht im Schacht. Machinery, work, discipline and repetitive physical action are everywhere in the imagery, while Nachtmahr themselves contributed a remix of “Werkshalle 4” to the record.

Live, however, Bagger 258 were far more interesting than a catalogue of genre references might suggest. Their greatest strength was immediacy. The beats came down hard and square, the vocals had real abrasion to them, and yet the performance never became rigid. There was too much visible enjoyment onstage for that. The music was aggressive, but the aggression kept converting itself into movement.

There is a considerable difference between performing the visual grammar of old-school EBM and actually making a room respond to it. Bagger 258 did the latter. The pulse was almost mechanically regular, but the communication around it was human, animated and frequently playful. They were not protecting a historical form. They were using it.

For an opening band, they also did exactly what an opening band should do without ever seeming subordinate to what followed. The audience did not require a long negotiation before deciding whether it was ready to move. Bagger 258 established that physical vocabulary almost immediately, and by the end of the set the room had already shifted from people waiting for the main act into people actively participating in the evening.

Rainer had told me before the tour that the right support band changes the condition in which a headliner encounters its audience. If someone else has already brought the room to a certain level, you do not have to begin from zero. Bagger 258 made the point rather convincingly. Absolute knockout.

Cygnosic

Cygnosic changed the type of pressure rather than reducing it. The Athens project of Georgios Psaroudakis has a long history within dark electro, with Psaroudakis writing, performing and producing the material himself. “Demystify”, released in 2023, was Cygnosic’s seventh full-length album, while 2025’s “Theorem” reconstructed existing Cygnosic pieces through metal arrangements and showed how naturally heavier structures can sit inside the project’s electronic identity.

That breadth could be felt live. Compared with the harder edges of Bagger 258, Cygnosic sounded more fluid and spacious, but describing it simply as “gentler” would undersell what was happening. The force had merely changed direction. Instead of striking repeatedly at the centre, the arrangements seemed to spread across the room, gathering weight through layers, melody and continuity.

There was more air inside the music and more room for individual elements to develop. The rhythms still carried the performance, but the relationship between rhythm and atmosphere was different. Movement became less regimented, more continuous. The set could be forceful without constantly attacking.

That made Cygnosic particularly effective in the middle position. Bagger 258 had already established the body as the evening’s main point of communication; Cygnosic kept the body engaged while changing how it moved. The result was dynamic, dark and surprisingly graceful. It also prevented the three-band bill from becoming three variations on the same impact.

By the time Cygnosic finished, the audience was still physically engaged but had travelled through a noticeably different emotional texture, leaving Nachtmahr with exactly the kind of room Thomas Rainer had spoken about before the tour: warmed up, responsive and ready to be pushed considerably further.

Nachtmahr

When Thomas Rainer and I spoke for Side-Line in August, much of our conversation circled around a contradiction at the centre of Nachtmahr live. The project’s visual language is built from command, discipline, uniforms, hierarchy, severity and theatricalised authority. Producing that world requires enormous control: sound, lighting, costumes, movement, timing and musicianship all have to function together. Yet the result Nachtmahr seeks from the audience is almost the exact opposite. The crowd is invited to abandon restraint, surrender to rhythm and lose control inside something that has been very carefully controlled on its behalf.

For Rainer, the construction starts with the songs themselves. As he told me then, “The setlist is the script for the movie we present every night on tour.”

The first IMPERIVM show gave that sentence a much more concrete meaning. The album, released on 26 June 2026 through Trisol, develops methods Rainer had already begun testing on “Verboten!” rather than simply applying another layer of production to an established Nachtmahr template. In our interview, he described Verboten! not as the end point of an evolution but as the record that established the method for what followed. IMPERIVM takes that logic further while retaining the project’s unmistakable rhythmic and visual identity.

Onstage, however, theory disappears very quickly behind physical action.

Thomas Rainer commands a room in a way relatively few performers can. That is not simply another way of saying that he is charismatic. What impressed me was how actively he reads the response in front of him. A gesture produces a reaction; he catches that reaction and sends it back, larger. The next rhythmic hit strengthens it again. The relationship becomes circular rather than one-directional.

In Wrocław, that feedback loop escalated with remarkable speed. The entire live formation is central to why it works. Nachtmahr no longer reads as one central figure surrounded by secondary decoration. There are several simultaneous points of attention across the stage, and the movement between them gives the performance much of its tension. The musicians maintain the structural discipline, while the women in the production are integral to the stage language rather than simply ornamental additions.

Their choreography, posture and interaction reinforce Nachtmahr’s play with authority and submission. They contribute to the sense of order, but also to its deliberate instability. The more precisely the stage is arranged, the more excessive the activity in front of it can become.

And the audience went completely wild.

Not “wild” merely because people were dancing hard. What happened was cumulative. The room became denser at the front, hands were constantly raised, bodies moved forward, and the separation between active participants and passive spectators progressively disappeared. Every successful exchange with the stage seemed to authorise a larger response.

That is why “madness” is both tempting and slightly inadequate as a description. The apparent madness had an architecture. It was being built.

Rainer had explained in our interview that his band and crew remove much of the need for conscious control once he is onstage, allowing him to respond instinctively and become absorbed in the energy coming back from the room. He wanted the same for the audience: a framework reliable enough that people could safely lose themselves inside it. “I have a wonderful band and crew who take the need for control out of my hands, so I can completely let go onstage and simply become one with the energy of the crowd.”

Wrocław demonstrated exactly what he meant. Bagger 258 and Cygnosic had already brought the audience a considerable distance. Nachtmahr did not have to spend the opening part of the set manufacturing involvement. They could begin by directing something already in motion. From there, the room became increasingly feral.

One of the most striking aspects of a Nachtmahr show remains this gap between what the imagery appears to promise and what the live experience actually produces. Onstage there is hierarchy, command and discipline; in front of it, the effect is strangely collective. The imagery separates roles, while the music dissolves them. People move together. The stricter the construction onstage became, the less restrained the audience appeared.

And in the middle of all that force came one of the evening’s most delicate moments. Thomas Rainer took time to remember Witek Kopytko, our colleague and a deeply valued member of the scene, who passed away earlier this year. He distributed tiny toy horses among people in the audience in Witek’s memory. It was a small, personal gesture, but precisely because nothing about it was inflated into spectacle, it carried real emotional weight.

For those of us who knew Witek, worked alongside him or simply shared this scene with him over the years, the moment briefly changed the emotional temperature of the room. The concert had been built around movement, control and physical intensity; suddenly there was space for affection and remembrance. It was a genuinely beautiful tribute to a colleague who is very much missed.

It also said something important about what these scenes actually consist of. Bands, promoters, journalists, photographers and audiences may occupy different roles at an event, but over years those roles begin to overlap into a community. Remembering one of its people in the middle of such a large production was not a detour from the evening. It belonged there.

When the music resumed, the contrast only made the final part of the set more pronounced. The machinery returned, the crowd returned to movement, but the evening had briefly revealed something much softer underneath it.

The setlist

Rainer’s description of the setlist as dramaturgy becomes particularly interesting when looking at the stage sheet from Wrocław. New IMPERIVM material was not placed into an isolated promotional block; it sat among songs from different periods of Nachtmahr’s catalogue. With the clearly crossed-out alternatives on the photographed sheet omitted, the visible running order was: Wer Wind sät, Keine Lieder, Weil ich’s kann!, Liebst du mich?, Tanzdiktator, Stärker als ihr Hass, Sirenen, Heile mich, Die Straße, Kampfbereit, Beweg dich!, “Mädchen in Uniform“, Unterwerfung, Der Schlaf, Katharsis.

Ending on “Katharsis” was especially fitting. By that stage, the idea had already been enacted physically for well over an hour.

Wrocław, and what comes next

There was something especially satisfying about watching all of this happen here. Wrocław has been remarkably well served by dark music this autumn, and the concentration of good bookings is beginning to change the rhythm of the city’s scene. It matters that international industrial, EBM, darkwave and gothic artists are not simply appearing as occasional exceptions but arriving regularly enough for audiences to develop continuity between events.

That continuity is important because nights like this depend on difference as much as similarity. Bagger 258 took familiar EBM mechanics and made them feel immediate, aggressive and highly physical rather than nostalgic. Cygnosic widened that physicality into something more fluid, melodic and atmospheric. Nachtmahr then absorbed everything accumulated during the previous sets and used it as raw material for a performance based on reciprocal escalation.

The Polish IMPERIVM opening continues with Poznań at Pod Minogą on 2 October and Warsaw at VooDoo Club on 3 October, before the tour moves on internationally.

Audience in Wrocław

About Nachtmahr, Cygnosic and Bagger 258

Bagger 258 are an Augsburg-based German EBM duo formed by Nico von der Eisenmühle and Tim “Hacke” Schmelzer. Their debut album “Aufwärts gehts bergab” was released in February 2026 and includes remixes by Nachtmahr, NordarR and Menticide; Side-Line covered the album in a March 2024 interview with the duo.

Cygnosic is the Athens-based dark-electro project of Georgios Psaroudakis. “Demystify” appeared in 2023 as the project’s seventh full-length album, while 2025’s “Theorem” revisited Cygnosic compositions through metal arrangements without abandoning the project’s electronic core. Side-Line first covered the Nachtmahr connection in 2019, when Cygnosic toured with Nachtmahr and labelmates C-lekktor behind the “Epiphany” LP.

Nachtmahr, founded by Austrian musician Thomas Rainer in 2007, has developed a distinctive language around hard electronic rhythm, theatrical authority, confrontation, discipline and increasingly broad stylistic freedom. IMPERIVM is the latest stage of that development, while the current tour is the largest and longest undertaken under the Nachtmahr name.

The Wrocław opening showed how carefully the three-band construction worked: Bagger 258 established the body, Cygnosic changed the way it moved, and Nachtmahr took control of what had already been set in motion. By the end, the contradiction Thomas Rainer and I had discussed before the tour, extreme control on one side of the stage and deliberate surrender on the other, no longer needed explaining. It was visible everywhere in the room.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

There was a useful logic to the running order of Friday night’s show at Klub Łącznik. Antibody, Agonoize and System Noire all make music designed to work physically, but they approach that physicality from quite different directions. Antibody built movement through rhythm and the almost compulsive momentum of hard electronic dance music. Agonoize converted it into confrontation, theatrical violence and direct exchange between performer and crowd. System Noire then expanded the same basic principle into something broader and increasingly combustible, combining electronic force with the dynamics of a full band. The evening became an accumulation of different ways of controlling a room.

The concert was part of the 2026 run pairing Agonoize with System Noire, with Antibody as special guest; for System Noire, the tour also marks the Hanover band’s 10th anniversary. The Wrocław date was officially scheduled at Klub Łącznik, the concert space within Czasoprzestrzeń at the former Dąbie tram depot.

Antibody

Photos: Karo Kratochwil

Antibody opened the evening, and first a small correction worth making because the name is easily mangled: the project is the work of Jan Laustroer. Laustroer began Antibody in 2013, when he was only twelve, and over the following years developed a sound drawing on industrial, power noise, dark electro and the harder end of rave and hardcore. The debut album Opera of Death appeared in 2017, while the more recent Never Quite Right was released in 2024. In January this year Antibody also collaborated with Grendel on “The Ranidae.”

What worked especially well in Wrocław was that none of this required the opening slot to pretend it was already the climax of the night. Antibody’s set was extremely danceable, rhythmically insistent and immediately mobile. The tracks worked through repetition, sharp changes of pressure and bass strong enough to make the body respond before there was much reason to analyse what was happening. It was energetic without becoming shapeless; Jan understands that hard electronic music needs more than volume and speed if it is supposed to sustain movement.

The visual presentation supported that. Against a star-filled background, the recurring frogs added a deliberately absurd signature to a set otherwise built around hard, mechanical momentum. They have become an immediately recognisable part of Antibody’s visual vocabulary, and after this year’s Grendel collaboration The Ranidae, their presence felt even more appropriate. There was something rather charming about the collision: pounding industrial rhythm underneath, a small amphibian mythology unfolding behind it.

As an opener, Antibody did exactly what was needed. The set did not simply “warm up” the audience in the conventional sense; it established movement as the evening’s basic mode of communication. By the time it ended, the room was no longer waiting for the main acts.

Agonoize

Photos: Karo Kratochwil

The change was immediately visible when Agonoize came on. The space in front of the stage became noticeably denser, bodies moved closer together, and the kind of dancing established during Antibody’s set turned into something more collective and more aggressive.

Agonoize were formed in Berlin in 2002 and have spent more than two decades making the relationship between harsh electronic music and extreme stage performance central to their identity. Their current touring page explicitly designated the Wrocław concert as a “Blutshow”, continuing the use of theatrical blood that has long been part of the band’s live language. Their most recent full studio album remains Revelation Six Six Sick, released through RepoRecords in April 2021.

Calling what happened at Łącznik simply “brutal” would miss why the set worked. The force was carefully organised. The electronics were dense, abrasive and extremely physical, but they also retained enough rhythmic definition for the material to still work as dance music. Chris L.’s performance depends heavily on this ambiguity: he confronts the audience while simultaneously demanding its participation. And participate they did.

The stage blood is obviously theatrical, but the reaction it produces is real. Chris repeatedly showered the front of the audience with it, leaving faces and clothes streaked red, and the people closest to the stage seemed delighted to become part of the spectacle. The distinction is important. Agonoize’s blood show does not function particularly well when treated as something happening to a passive crowd. In Wrocław it became reciprocal. People moved forward knowing very well what was coming. They danced harder, reached towards the stage and quite visibly enjoyed being pulled inside the performance.

That made the visual violence feel less like decoration attached to the songs and more like an extension of their physical logic. Chris’s gestures were large and confrontational because the music required a body capable of matching its exaggeration. The show continually crossed the line between concert and grotesque theatre without allowing the theatrical element to weaken the musical one.

The encore shifted the visual vocabulary again. Chris returned wearing wings, and after so much aggression, blood and pressure, the image had a surprisingly different weight. It was beautiful precisely because the evening had not prepared us for beauty in any conventional form. The wings did not suddenly turn the performance sentimental; they introduced another register into a stage language that had spent most of the set emphasising impact and provocation.

My conversation with Chris afterwards changed how I thought about the performance even further. We had previously discussed his long absence following a very serious illness, but hearing him describe the extent of the recovery in person gave that history a different scale. He spoke about having to rebuild abilities that most people never consciously think about, including basic everyday tasks and forms of recognition, through an exhausting rehabilitation process.

I would not want to turn illness into an inspirational narrative imposed on the concert, because that would reduce both the person and the performance. But it does change the meaning of what one has just witnessed. Returning to a stage is one thing. Returning to this kind of stage presence, where the performance demands constant physical engagement, vocal force, timing, theatrical control and the ability to command a densely packed room, is something else. The striking thing was not simply that Chris was back. It was the absence of caution in the performance.

In our recent interview, he told me that he has nothing to prove to anyone except himself and that what he wants, fundamentally, is simply to continue making music. Watching this set, that statement became much less abstract. The stamina was visible, certainly, but more important was the appetite behind it. This did not look like someone tentatively reclaiming an old position. It looked like someone fully inhabiting it again.

System Noire

Photos: Karo Kratochwil

If Agonoize generated the evening’s most theatrical violence, System Noire converted the accumulated energy into something broader and, by the end, almost unruly.

The Hanover project was founded in 2016 and is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. Its current formation has grown beyond the original electronic core, and the band’s recent material increasingly allows guitars and a harder industrial-metal edge to interfere with its dark-electro and EBM foundations. Their 2024 album Aftermath includes ten tracks and was followed in February 2025 by Lost Control, whose single version the band themselves describe as harder and more guitar-driven, while a separate club edit strips it back towards electronics.

That tension between programmed precision and a more volatile live-band attack was exactly what made the final set work.

By this stage the audience no longer needed persuading. Smoke filled the stage, the lighting became much more aggressive, and the room that Antibody had initially taught to move and Agonoize had pushed into increasingly physical participation now had very little reserve left. System Noire used that.

Their music has enough melodic architecture to keep the songs readable even when the performance becomes extremely dense. That mattered here. The combination of electronics, forceful vocals, percussion and the heavier edges of the current sound could easily have collapsed into undifferentiated volume; instead, the rhythmic centre remained very clear. People could dance to it.

The lighting and smoke also worked unusually well with that construction. They were not merely there to make the stage appear “dark”. Smoke repeatedly altered what could actually be seen: musicians emerged, disappeared and reappeared as the lights cut through it, creating a visual equivalent of the music’s own alternation between defined melodic lines and heavier blocks of sound.

And gradually the whole thing became wonderfully disorderly.

By the final part of the set, the dancefloor was no longer behaving like a room of individuals politely occupying their allotted space. Movement propagated through it. People were dancing hard, responding to the band and to one another, and the distinction between observing the show and physically participating in it had largely disappeared. Calling it carnage is not much of an exaggeration, although it was an exceptionally friendly form of carnage.

System Noire therefore made sense as the final band, even though Agonoize might initially appear the more obvious dramatic climax. Their set did not need to out-provoke what had come before it. Instead, it took the accumulated kinetic energy of the entire evening and gave it somewhere to go.

Klub Łącznik

Photos: Karo Kratochwil

Klub Łącznik itself deserves some credit for why the evening felt so comfortable despite the intensity inside. The venue sits within Czasoprzestrzeń at the former Dąbie tram depot, and its layout provides something particularly useful for this kind of scene event: a clear separation between the physical density of the concert hall and the open area outside.

Inside, there is a proper concrete-floored club space where a hard-electronic show can become as loud, smoky and physically crowded as it needs to be. Outside, the yard changes the social rhythm completely. Between sets people could step out, cool down, talk, meet friends and, importantly, encounter the musicians without the strange separation that larger venues often create between audience and performers.

That mattered more than it might sound. A night involving three relentlessly physical electronic sets can become exhausting when there is nowhere for the intensity to dissipate. At Łącznik, it could. The outside conversations, pauses and meetings with the bands gave the evening breathing space, while every return indoors felt like deliberately re-entering the pressure.

Three approaches, one increasingly crowded dancefloor

What I liked most was that the evening had progression without needing an artificial concept imposed on it afterwards. Antibody made the body move through rhythmic precision and rave-derived momentum. Agonoize turned the same physical response into confrontation, participation and grotesque theatre. System Noire then took an audience already pushed far beyond passive listening and drove that energy through the dynamics of a full, forceful live set.

The crowd grew thicker, sweatier and considerably bloodier as the night progressed, but the atmosphere never became hostile. Quite the opposite. There was a great deal of warmth underneath the noise: people dancing, talking outside, meeting musicians, returning inside and throwing themselves back into it.

And perhaps that is the detail worth keeping. With music this aggressive, the obvious vocabulary is always brutality, darkness, violence and impact. All of those things were present. What made the Wrocław show successful, however, was how much pleasure there was inside that aggression. Antibody looked playful behind the pounding rhythms and wandering frogs. Agonoize turned theatrical bloodshed into something the front rows actively wanted to share. System Noire finished with smoke, light and enough accumulated movement to make the floor feel barely contained.

By the end, Klub Łącznik looked appropriately wrecked, and the people inside it looked extremely happy.

About Agonoize, System Noire and Antibody

Agonoize formed in Berlin in 2002 around vocalist Chris L. and have built more than two decades of work around harsh electronic music paired with extreme, theatrically violent stage shows. Their most recent full studio album, “Revelation Six Six Sick,” was released through RepoRecords in April 2021; Side-Line marked that release with a streaming concert announcement at the time. Earlier releases include the 2019 EP “Blutgruppe Jesus (-) / Schmerzpervers 2.0” and the album “Midget Vampire Porn.” Ahead of the Wrocław date, Side-Line interviewed Chris L. about returning to the stage after a serious illness and new material.

System Noire, from Hanover, were founded in 2016 and marked their tenth anniversary in 2026. Side-Line first profiled the project in a 2017 Face The Beat feature. The band’s sound has expanded from its original electronic base to include guitars and a heavier industrial-metal edge, documented on the 2024 album “Aftermath” and the February 2025 single “Lost Control.”

Antibody is the project of Jan Laustroer, who began releasing music under the name in 2013 at the age of twelve. Side-Line introduced Antibody in a 2016 Face The Beat profile and later featured the track “Secrets” as a 2019 free download. Laustroer’s debut album, “Opera of Death,” followed in 2017, with “Never Quite Right” arriving in 2024. In January 2026, Antibody collaborated with Grendel on “The Ranidae.”

Agonoize, System Noire and Antibody played Klub Łącznik, the concert venue inside the Czasoprzestrzeń cultural centre at Wrocław’s former Dąbie tram depot, on September 25, 2026.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Then Comes Silence have reached a point where the more interesting question is no longer whether they have an identifiable sound, but what they are prepared to do with an identity that has become so clearly their own. Formed in Stockholm in 2012 and operating since 2022 as the trio of Alex Svenson, Hugo Zombie and Jonas Fransson, the band are now approaching their eighth album, “Requiem Ballroom,” due on 20 November 2026 via Metropolis Records. Conceived as a diptych, the record divides itself between Requiem and Ballroom, darkness and light, while recent singles “Judgement Day” and “Remaker Redeemer” have already begun to expose the contrast between those two halves.

When I spoke with the band in 2024, our conversation touched on originality, conformity and the peculiar conservatism that can develop inside a scene supposedly built around difference. Two years later, those questions have become even more relevant. Rather than discussing “Requiem Ballroom” track by track, we returned to the larger tensions around it: how a band changes without performing reinvention for its own sake, when identity becomes formula, whether nostalgia can disguise itself as tradition, what happens when a trio becomes more focused by becoming smaller, and why sustaining a life in music may now be a harder problem than sustaining an artistic identity.

Then Comes Silence interview

Karo: When we spoke in 2024, Alex, you said the dark scene develops slowly and needs more originality. Two years later, Then Comes Silence are still immediately recognisable. How do you distinguish a strong identity from a language that has simply become comfortable?

Alex: I still think the dark scene is developing very slowly. Can you honestly hear much of a difference between 2019 and 2026? The sound is basically the same, and most of the melodies still follow the same structures.

I don’t know what others say about us, but I do think we distinguish ourselves from much of the scene by focusing more on the songs than on the sound. In that sense, we work in a rather traditional way: intro, verse, bridge and chorus. But who am I to judge? If people want to hear the same snare drum, synth pads and chorus-soaked guitars over and over again, maybe that’s what makes them feel good.

I just know that we, Then Comes Silence, don’t really think that way.

Karo: Your music has never depended on radical stylistic reinvention. Do you think artistic development can happen through changes in proportion, tension and emphasis rather than through introducing obviously new genres or sounds?

Hugo: I think it can be a bit of everything you mention. We mix elements of different genres, such as that euro disco synth on “Judgement Day,” and this time we even tried new, exotic instruments in the recording. Both act as new ingredients in the Then Comes Silence sound. But just like a pizza, you can add different toppings and it will still be a pizza.

Karo: “Requiem Ballroom” is built around opposites: darkness and light, ending and renewal. Yet Then Comes Silence have often been most interesting in the spaces between opposites: melody and severity, electronics and physical rock instrumentation, melancholy and momentum. Is the album’s binary structure something you actually believe in, or something you wanted to test and complicate?

Alex: We believe in everything we do. There’s no theatre. This album is an experiment and a game. Team this vs team that.

Karo: The two halves were mixed separately, by Tom van Heesch and Jon Bordon, but still have to exist as one Then Comes Silence record. Where does the identity of the band ultimately reside if the same material can be viewed through two different sonic perspectives?

Hugo: The two halves were mixed separately, and recorded differently: different drums, amps, guitars. We wanted them both to have a distinct sound, but at the same time we didn’t want the album to feel like a compilation, so there’s still a sense of coherence between them. The identity of the band is there because it’s the same band using different approaches.

Karo: Since becoming a trio, the band has sounded increasingly focused rather than reduced. Has having fewer people in the room actually widened the musical possibilities because the core identity became clearer?

Hugo: It’s easier to work with a smaller team of totally focused people than a bigger team that includes distracted people with other priorities. That will only slow you down. Our roles in the band are totally clear; we are all focused on what we are doing, and that allows us to be more effective.

Karo: You have now reached your eighth album. At this stage, is reinvention still a useful ambition, or does it become more interesting to understand more precisely what Then Comes Silence should never lose?

Alex: We have been constantly active for years and haven’t really taken a break from each other or from music. The soul of Then Comes Silence will always stay the same, no matter how many times we reinvent ourselves.

Karo: In our previous conversation, you spoke very positively about the Goth and Post-Punk community but also criticised its tendency towards conformity. Now that Then Comes Silence themselves are an established part of that scene, is it harder to criticise its conventions from the inside?

Hugo: We all love the Goth and Post-Punk community. It’s our home. But I don’t think it matters how established you are; conformity will always be the enemy of creativity, which is meant to be at the core of this scene.

For me, there are a lot of bands using the same formula, and it feels boring. But then again, others could think that we are doing the same, so in the end it doesn’t really matter. It’s just about what you enjoy listening to and what you don’t.

Karo: You also mentioned then that younger audiences in the US gave you hope for the future of the scene. Two years and a great deal of touring later, do you still see a generational difference in how people approach Goth and Post-Punk, or has that picture become more complicated?

Hugo: We are starting to notice more youngsters in the audience in Europe too. And that’s amazing. Precisely here in Stockholm we have a really nice and growing scene of young people making music, DJing, going to shows, and that’s great to see.

Karo: A band with a long catalogue eventually develops an unwritten contract with its audience: there are sounds, songs and emotional qualities people expect. Do those expectations ever become creatively restrictive, or can they provide a useful resistance to work against?

Alex: We’re always prepared to get caked by disappointed fans. We still get comments from people who miss a fourth member to fill the void of a second guitar. Thankfully, we’re in good company. The large majority of our followers are right there with us. Wherever we go, they follow. And wherever they point, we go.

Karo: Then Comes Silence have always drawn from older Goth and Post-Punk traditions without sounding like a historical reconstruction. As that original musical history moves further into the past, what makes the difference between inheritance and nostalgia for you?

Hugo: I think that we’re definitely not a nostalgia band. We don’t try to sound retro. But we listen to a lot of different genres, and most of the music we listen to is old. I mean, we are not trying to sound like Sisters of Mercy, The Mission or Lords of the New Church, but we probably have the same influences they had back then.

Karo: The imagery surrounding “Requiem Ballroom” revolves around symbolic death, transformation and renewal. After more than a decade as a band, does the idea of renewal mean something different now than it would have when Then Comes Silence began in 2012?

Alex: No, the only differences would be practical ones. A new instrument, new effects pedals, or a new producer behind the mix. The artistic renewal will always come from within.

Karo: Looking beyond this album, what question about Then Comes Silence remains unresolved for you? What are you still trying to understand about this band that eight albums have not answered yet?

Alex: Artistically, I have no comments and no expectations about what’s to come. I feel no anxiety about the music, and I don’t really care what other people say. But on the other hand, I’m trying to understand why we can’t make a living from what we do, and why it’s so difficult to reach a wider audience.

The inflation affecting everyone on this planet doesn’t seem to apply to artists. People still don’t want to pay more for a show ticket, while they seem willing to pay twice as much for gas, milk or eggs in the store.

Touring artists are facing higher and higher expenses, and many of them would probably need to cancel shows just to make ends meet. But they don’t, because there simply aren’t any realistic alternatives for live music. It must be even harder for the new young generation of musicians. I can’t see why it wouldn’t be.

I’m trying to understand it, but I still haven’t found a good answer.

About Then Comes Silence

Then Comes Silence were formed in Stockholm in 2012 by vocalist, bassist and keyboard player Alex Svenson. Drummer Jonas Fransson joined in 2015, followed by guitarist Hugo Zombie in 2018; since 2022, the band have operated as a three-piece. Their discography has moved through labels including Novoton, Nuclear Blast, SPV and Metropolis Records, while extensive touring has taken them across Europe, North America and, in 2026, Latin America.

Their eighth studio album, “Requiem Ballroom,” will be released on 20 November 2026 via Metropolis Records. Structured as two contrasting halves, Requiem and Ballroom, the album uses darkness and light not simply as visual motifs but as different approaches to arrangement and production. The current singles are “Judgement Day” and “Remaker Redeemer,” with the latter introducing the Ballroom side and its themes of rebirth, cleansing and beginning again.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Strikkland are easy to misread if you mistake humour for distance. Henrik Johansson can deliver brutal lyrics while smiling, appear in a red feather boa, play with national flags or deliberately puncture the visual severity traditionally associated with EBM, but none of that suggests embarrassment about the genre. Quite the opposite. The joke works because the attachment underneath it is genuine. They are not standing outside EBM making fun of its conventions; they know those conventions intimately enough to interfere with them.

I first saw the Gothenburg duo at E-Only in 2024 and again this year on the much larger Waldbühne at Nocturnal Culture Night. At NCN, something became particularly clear: humour had stopped feeling like something happening around the songs and had become part of Strikkland’s performance language itself. Hard electronic structures, Henrik’s forceful delivery and the physical directness of EBM remained intact, while gestures, costumes and irony continually destabilised the expectation that seriousness must look solemn.

Their second album, “Hommage”, makes that tension especially interesting. It openly acknowledges the music that formed Henrik and Henric, while its production deliberately returns to hardware, physical studio equipment and recording practices associated with an earlier era. Yet Strikkland have little interest in turning EBM into heritage preservation. For them, tradition is useful precisely when it can still be disturbed. We spoke about growing into a band after fifty, refusing genre uniforms, why limitation can generate creativity, the ethics of AI, the strange authority of old symbols, and what happens when two people who take EBM very seriously refuse to behave as though seriousness requires a permanent scowl.

Strikkland interview

Karo: I first saw you at E-Only in 2024 and then again on the much larger Waldbühne at NCN this year. What struck me at NCN was how much more clearly humour had become part of the performance language itself. When did you realise that humour could be structural to Strikkland rather than merely something happening between songs?

Henrik: We have always had humour as an important element of what Strikkland is all about. We started the band on impulse and as a fun thing to do. The lyrics are often conjured up at the same time as we are in the studio creating new songs. My texts often tend to drift towards dark stories about space, death, fantasy and the absurd. The humour you get from seeing the band live is something we have developed throughout all the time we have been on stage. We have fun, and that creates what we deliver.

Henric: We realised early on that two old geezers would only look ridiculous if we tried to act tougher or darker than we actually are. Besides, there are plenty of bands already biting heads off chickens or dressing up in full combat gear on stage. It has all been done before, and it really didn’t seem like an option for us.

Our appearance and the way we behave also evolved from criticism in Sweden after our first live shows in the early days: “Their music is half-decent, but they aren’t a real EBM band because they don’t look or behave like one.” We kind of turned that against the critics, embraced it even more and made it our thing.

Karo: At NCN you told me that when you started the band, already approaching your fifties, you briefly considered becoming the “gothiest” band possible before deciding that pretending to be something you were not would be ridiculous. Did starting Strikkland later in life actually give you a kind of freedom younger bands sometimes lack, because you had less need to prove that you belonged?

Henrik: Absolutely! Also, later in life you have so many more musical influences to choose from and try to implement into your own songs. Starting a band later in life also means you can afford to have a band and go places to play live without starving and sleeping in the car on the way there. We are doing something today that you thought impossible when you were young.

Henric: Being close to 50 when you start a band certainly provides more freedom. Our ambition was never to release records or perform live, but when possibilities opened up, we jumped for it. Speaking for myself, I got a chance to do what I wanted to do in my teens but never got the chance to do. At 50, you aren’t as afraid of criticism or about what others might think as you are at 16 or 17. That helped a lot.

Karo: EBM has accumulated a very strict visual and behavioural vocabulary: severity, discipline, confrontation, often a certain cultivated lack of humour. You clearly love the genre, but you also interfere with those conventions constantly. Which parts of EBM do you take completely seriously, and which parts do you think deserve to be laughed at?

Henrik: We never laugh at EBM, but we think we can involve irony and humour in the genre and have a laugh at certain aspects of life. Humour and art are always found in the contrasts. I mostly write quite dark lyrics, but we present them with a lot of smiles, humour and dance.

Henric: EBM has been a huge part of my life since the 1980s, so it is something I take very seriously. I do laugh at some of the rigidity coming from certain corners of the fanbase, though. Come on, loosen up and dance while you still can. Have fun. At least laugh a little. There are enough bitter middle-aged men in the world, and I don’t want to become one of them.

Karo: That is also why “Hommage” interests me. It is explicitly a tribute to the music that formed you, but homage can easily become imitation. How do you honour an artistic language without treating it as something that should remain frozen in the period when you first discovered it?

Henrik: The tribute to the EBM bands we grew up with is always there when we make music. In “Hommage”, it is in the basslines, the sounds, the technology and the artwork. I am a curious person, so I constantly look for new music and new bands to listen to. The EBM genre, and Strikkland, keep finding new ways without letting go of the legacy of the bands of the 80s.

Henric: Apart from a handful of gems from bands like Kraftwerk, DAF, Nitzer Ebb, Front 242 and a few others which can’t be topped, EBM and electronic music have evolved a lot. In my playlists there are rarely any songs older than two or three years. You can still hear where it is coming from, but it has evolved. If we stick to what we grew up with, there would be stagnation and the genre would surely die out. But thanks to artists like SIIE, Emmon, Plastikstrom and many others, it is still interesting. So I would rather risk going outside the standard formula and at least try to contribute to keeping EBM alive, both musically and visually.

Karo: You made “Hommage” deliberately with classic studio equipment, hardware synthesizers and drum machines, and you were very explicit about not using AI. Is that primarily an ethical position, an aesthetic one, or did you simply want the limitations of those tools to become part of the composition?

Henric: AI has no place in art. Full stop. For both creative and ethical reasons. When it comes to using hardware versus working “in the box”, it is purely a workflow decision. The tactility of turning knobs and pushing buttons works better for me than using plugins. We are also privileged enough to get to work together with Hans Olsson at Svenska Grammofonstudion in Gothenburg, which is both a studio and a “synthesizer museum”. It would be stupid not to use all of those classic machines if you can. Our first album, “Bodypop”, was mixed there on an SSL 4000E console, so when we got the chance to mix “Hommage” at Hansa in Berlin on their SSL console, of course we took the plunge. And of course we did some additional recordings there as well. I mean, who could resist playing the very same Steinway grand piano that Martin Gore posed in his jocks next to?

Karo: There is an interesting contradiction there: Strikkland describe themselves as expanding the borders of EBM, yet “Hommage” deliberately looks backwards in terms of production practice. Can technological limitation actually be more progressive than unlimited technological possibility?

Henrik: Well, maybe in a way every EBM band today is expanding the borders of EBM? To stay in the genre, you have to remain within the frame agreed upon, regardless of what technology you use. But it gets more interesting if you drift away towards the border and sometimes cross it, bringing in other influences and expressions. That’s the way music has always evolved.

Henric: For me, limitation sparks creativity. There is a certain number of available channels on a physical mixing console. On a computer, you can have hundreds. There are also limitations to hardware synthesizers and effects, and all of this forces me to be creative. As mentioned before, this is a workflow that suits me. With that said, most of our songs start out “in the box” because it is convenient.

Karo: Henric writes the music and programming while Henrik handles vocals and lyrics. With such a clear division, where does the personality of a Strikkland song emerge? Does the music arrive with a character already inside it, or can the vocal idea fundamentally alter what Henric thought he had written?

Henrik: Often we start with a bassline that Henric has created and then build it together from that point. I get inspiration for the lyrics and write them at the same time as Henric starts to develop the music. When both of us feel ready, we fuse it all together. This is a fast process, so we are very much in line with what kind of music we want to produce.

Henric: Let’s put it this way: when Henrik enters the studio, I might have 20 loops that I have worked on for six months, with basslines, drums and maybe a melody ready. If Henrik says, “Great! But can we change this or that?”, that loop goes into the bin. But if he stops, shuts up and starts to write text immediately, I know it is a keeper. Then we combine that idea into a draft by making a rough arrangement, tweaking the text, tweaking the music and finally recording it. When we have enough tracks for an album, we take it to Hans and re-record everything. So, to answer your question, the music inspires the vocals and the vocals give direction to the final piece of music. Neither would be the same without the other.

Karo: At NCN, Henrik changed clothes, exaggerated gestures and played with Swedish and German symbols and declarations of friendship. In a genre that has historically borrowed heavily from militarised imagery, does humour give you a way to use those symbols without allowing them to retain all of their old authority?

Henrik: When I go to see a band live, I want to be entertained. When I am on stage, I want to entertain and have a good time! To joke around and interact with the audience and get a warm response elates me. I love the contrast of delivering hard-hitting music and brutal lyrics with a smile on my face and prancing around with a red feather boa. So yes, it is absolutely a way to deflate the power of symbols of power.

Henric: Personally, I think it is important to reclaim symbols like national flags from fascists and extremists and use them in a positive way. We don’t hide behind humour and irony, but instead use them as tools for communication. Our message is clear. We don’t accept fascists, Nazis or totalitarian regimes, we support Ukraine’s fight for freedom and we advocate free speech. But maybe we have chosen a “lighter approach” to convey this than other bands, mainly because the darker image doesn’t suit us on a personal level.

Karo: What I particularly liked was that none of this reduced the concert to parody because the musical foundation remained genuinely hard. Do you consciously protect that balance, making sure the joke never becomes an excuse for musical weakness?

Henrik: When we make our music, we never implement humour to start with. Okay, some lyrics are rather absurd and some sound effects we add for fun, but we want our music to be serious and taken seriously. It is mostly when we play live that we joke around.

Henric: Some people have clearly written us off as a parody act. No question about that! But either they haven’t seen us perform live or they haven’t understood what we are doing. Irony is a tough nut to crack for some, and others lack humour. One thing is certain, though. We would never release or perform anything that we ourselves thought was weak, and we put a lot of work into our music.

Karo: You worked with Hans Olsson at Svenska Grammofonstudion and Hansa Studios on “Hommage”. Did working in spaces carrying so much recording history make you more conscious of tradition, or was the important thing precisely to forget the mythology once you were actually inside the studio?

Henric: It took a while for it to sink in once we were at Hansa. We were actually sitting at the same mixing console that was used to make some of the greatest albums of my youth?! Insane! But once that feeling disappeared, it was just another day in the studio and we did our thing together with Hans.

Henrik: Hans Olsson suggested mixing the album at Hansa, and I honestly was totally unaware of the history of this studio. Henric was jumping up and down with excitement. We were there for three days and it finally dawned on me how cool it was! There we could use the same machines and instruments that our heroes used.

Karo: The larger stage at NCN seemed to suit you surprisingly well. Some electronic acts compensate for space by simply making every gesture bigger; with Strikkland, the additional room seemed to expose more of the interaction between you. Has playing larger stages changed the way you understand what the visual side of the band can do?

Henric: We are not that used to playing larger stages. Apart from Subkultfestivalen in Sweden and WGT, most of our shows prior to NCN have been in front of a maximum of 200 to 300 people. I think there is a lot of room for visual improvement when playing the larger stages. We are just two guys and a couple of machines, so in order to put on even better shows we probably need some additional features on stage to make an impact. But we also don’t want to hide behind video walls, smoke and lasers. Guess it’s time to put on our thinking caps and find a Strikkland solution to the problem. But yeah, visuals are important to us, from album covers to how we appear on stage.

Henrik: What Henric said.

Karo: “Hommage” looked deliberately towards the music that made you. Looking ahead, what would be the opposite gesture? Is there something in the EBM tradition, perhaps even something you personally love, that Strikkland now need to leave behind in order to find out what the band can become next?

Henrik: I can’t think of a thing in the EBM tradition that we want to leave behind. When we create new songs, all kinds of new influences colour the final result. Last time we met, the song rotated towards techno music, so who knows? I always get new ideas every time I listen to metal music. There you find my inspiration and trigger to do new stuff for Strikkland. But with that said, there will never be a guitar on stage with us. Body music forever!

Henric: I don’t know, to be honest. There are most certainly no holy cows as far as Strikkland is concerned. What we would love to happen is to do even more shows in mainland Europe, and if that means we will have to tweak things one way or another, so be it. If it turns out we have to bite heads off chickens or perform in Pickelhauben in order to get booked, it might be worth a shot! I mean, a lot of people do judge books by the cover, and it would be sad to miss out because of that. We will see what happens and what we come up with.

About Strikkland

Strikkland are an electronic body music duo from Gothenburg, Sweden, consisting of Henric Ceder, responsible for music and programming, and Henrik Johansson, responsible for vocals and lyrics. Their first documented release, “Predatorial Right”, appeared on 27 March 2020.

Their debut full-length album, “Bodypop”, followed on 2 December 2022. The ten-track record was mixed and mastered by Hans Olsson at Svenska Grammofonstudion in Gothenburg, using an analogue SSL 4000E console; Strikkland explicitly connected that production choice to their admiration for classic EBM.

Their second full-length, “Hommage”, was released on 28 March 2025. The nine-track album was produced by Hans Olsson, with recording, mixing and mastering work carried out at Svenska Grammofonstudion in Gothenburg and Hansa Studios in Berlin. The band describe the album as a tribute both to the artists who inspired them and to older recording practices. They state that no AI was used in its production, relying instead primarily on classic studio equipment, hardware synthesizers and drum machines.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

When Side-Line spoke with Rina Pavar in 2023, live performance was still something she approached from outside: the studio was familiar territory, while putting herself physically at the centre of the music remained a challenge. Three years later, watching her open Saturday at Nocturnal Culture Night on the Parkbühne, in daylight and before the festival had fully gathered momentum, the change was striking. The restraint was still there, but it no longer read as self-protection. It had become part of the language.

That distinction matters because Pavar’s music is built around control in several senses. She writes, performs, produces and mixes her own material; her arrangements tend towards clarity rather than accumulation; and even live, the electronic architecture necessarily fixes certain parameters in advance. Yet the more interesting development is how she has begun using that control to create freedom rather than insulation. She speaks here about abandoning perfection as a useful measure, learning that a stage persona does not need to be a separate personality, and discovering that authenticity can emerge gradually rather than through some dramatic act of self-reinvention.

That makes the timing of this conversation particularly interesting. Her second album, “six”, appeared in March 2025, followed later that year by “REMIXES”, which handed her tightly controlled compositions to artists including Radondo, Kay-Chi, Skelesys, New Haunts and others. In August 2026, “too much” opened another phase: more direct, more emotionally immediate and, in Pavar’s own words, less subtle. Rather than presenting this as a clean break with what came before, she seems more interested in testing how far the existing language can stretch. The final answer she gives here may be the simplest description of that process: think less, be bolder.

Rina Pavar interview

Karo: I saw you at NCN only a few days ago, on the Parkbühne, and I was thinking about how peculiar the setting actually was for your music: an early festival slot, daylight, people still arriving and adjusting to the day. Does a situation like that require you to construct your own atmosphere almost against the surroundings, or do you prefer not to impose a predetermined mood on a performance at all?

Rina: Yes, that was really unusual. But I always take as much time as possible beforehand to rehearse and visualise the specific setting and the audience. I was familiar with NCN and the Parkbühne from a guest’s perspective, so I could easily imagine what my performance would feel and look like at that time.

I think this approach allows me to adapt more flexibly to the circumstances, including in my song selection and the style of my performance. Even though, of course, the core always remains the same, the details change with every performance.

Karo: When you spoke to Side-Line in 2023, performing was still relatively new territory for you and the studio was very much the place where you felt most secure. Three years later, I watched someone who seemed considerably more settled within the physical act of performing. What changed? Was it simply accumulated experience, or did you have to discover a different version of yourself onstage?

Rina: I think it’s a little bit of both. So far, I still don’t approach the unknown entirely without fear or hesitation. That’s why practice and experience remain the cornerstones of my self-confidence and my progress.

My stage persona has also changed over time. But through my experiences so far, I’ve realised that there’s actually no need for a “different” version of myself on stage. Rather, as my experience and self-confidence grow, more space opens up for me to enjoy the performance and let my authentic self shine through.

That’s why I take the time to discover and refine myself in this environment bit by bit and at my own pace, instead of artificially building something that I’ll eventually have to shed one day because it no longer fits.

Karo: “too much” arrived only a few weeks before NCN and has now been presented as the beginning of a new sequence of releases. Why was this particular song the right point of departure? What does it introduce that you felt had not already been said on six?

Rina: I think it has a completely different vibe. It’s more direct, more emotional and less subtle in terms of content, without going completely over the top. At least, that’s how I feel about it.

That’s why I thought it was the perfect choice for the first single. I’d actually included it in the NCN set, and the reactions were consistently positive. That confirmed my choice.

Karo: six contained a great deal of looking backwards: memory, relationships, places, decisions, versions of oneself that have already existed. I wonder whether your writing is changing now from processing experience towards something more immediate. Are you becoming interested in writing from inside an experience while it is still unresolved, rather than only once you understand what it meant?

Rina: For me, it always happens in a flexible and spontaneous way. When certain topics or approaches are important to me at the moment, they naturally take centre stage at that time. But things might look completely different again in the next project.

Karo: Because you write, perform, produce and mix your own material, almost every important decision remains with you until the mastering stage. That gives you enormous artistic coherence, but presumably also removes the useful resistance another person can provide. How do you recognise the moment when complete creative independence stops being liberating and starts becoming a blind spot?

Rina: That’s an important point. And I’ve often had to listen to all the things that can go wrong when you work on your own. That’s why I’ve found the following approach, which works for me.

First, I took the pressure off myself to be perfect, and for RINA PAVAR I decided to focus on presenting what comes from me as a person, regardless of whether it’s perfect, good enough, innovative, trendy, cutting-edge or whatever. If it brings me great joy and meets my standards for growth at that moment, then that’s good enough. This creates freedom and keeps me from getting stuck in a safe, rigid framework.

Furthermore, with every release, I set new but achievable goals for myself, whether musically, vocally, personally, in live performances or even just in terms of design. I sit down and teach myself something new or try to optimise processes and recognise patterns to eliminate blind spots as much as possible.

Karo: There is considerable restraint in your arrangements; individual sounds are often given enough room to become structurally important rather than being surrounded by layers simply because they are available. Is reduction something you consciously work towards? In other words, do you spend as much time deciding what a song can survive without as deciding what it still needs?

Rina: I think that’s one of the few things I don’t have to consciously work towards. When I’m producing a song, I actually have to force myself to add elements. I’m always surprised when someone tells me how clean or minimal the mix is. In my mind, I’ve actually “packed it full”, and I often think to myself, “Okay, there’s room for improvement here, and I should be a little bolder in approaching this aspect.”

But reduction, or perhaps “clarity” is a better word, is something that runs through everything I do. For me, it’s fulfilling to break down complex situations to their essentials, to distil the core, to organise, structure or simplify things. And that happens completely automatically.

Karo: REMIXES placed your songs in the hands of artists with very different instincts, which is almost the opposite of the control you normally have over your work. Was there a remix that revealed something about one of your compositions that you had not recognised yourself, perhaps because another artist emphasised a rhythm, mood or tension that you had considered secondary?

Rina: I’d almost say that’s the case with all the songs. Often, my favourite elements are highlighted but placed in a completely different context or emphasised even more. I love every one of these songs and am thrilled to experience my creations in a more developed and reinterpreted form.

Karo: Your collaboration with Kay-Chi on “Darkest Night” is interesting for a similar reason, because there you contributed lyrics and vocals to somebody else’s musical framework rather than building the entire environment yourself. Does writing from inside another producer’s world free you in some way, precisely because you are not responsible for every element of the finished piece?

Rina: It’s definitely a challenging yet enjoyable situation. I really enjoy not having to take full responsibility for everything. At the same time, though, I often put pressure on myself to do the parts that I work on perfectly. After all, I want to do the song justice and not disappoint the artist who chose me as a collaboration partner.

Even though it may seem overwhelming at first, and it’s not always easy to find my place on someone else’s song, I always look forward to projects like this. It’s fun, offers the chance to collaborate and is always a nice change of pace from working solo.

Karo: You also work visually, and I am interested less in whether your visual art “matches” the music than in whether the two forms make you think differently. Music unfolds through time, while an image confronts you more or less simultaneously. Does moving between those two ways of organising an idea change the way you compose?

Rina: The way I compose doesn’t change because of this. The approaches and the way ideas come to me are simply too different.

But painting is my balance to music, and vice versa. For me, it’s a kind of respite from the other and therefore the break I need to develop and bring new ideas to life. Music is often stirring, full of energy and, despite studio work, takes place largely outside. Painting is absolute stillness, tranquillity, grounding and complete isolation from the outside world.

Karo: Coldwave and dark electronic music have developed a very recognisable vocabulary, and recognition can become both an advantage and a trap: listeners know immediately where they are, but artists can also end up repeating gestures simply because those gestures belong to the language of the scene. Which elements of that vocabulary still feel central to Rina Pavar, and which ones have you begun questioning?

Rina: If I had to name one thing that remains an important, central aspect, or an indispensable element, for me it would be the melancholy in the sound and lyrics. These are still elements of my songs because I’m still drawn to them.

But to be honest, I don’t think about genre at all when I’m composing. I create songs based on the premise that “I have to like it” in order to maintain the greatest possible creative freedom.

Karo: Electronic performances inevitably contain structures that cannot be altered as freely as they might be in a conventional rock band, yet the person onstage is responding to something entirely unpredictable: an audience. At NCN, how much were you actually reading the people in front of you? Can their response change the way you deliver a song even when its underlying architecture remains fixed?

Rina: I can always feel the energy of the audience, and I try to respond to it as best I can. Even though the set is basically fixed, since it’s tied to a tight schedule, especially at a festival like NCN, I still always leave room within that framework to add or omit details, swap out songs, vary my vocal delivery, let loose and adjust the announcements to be longer or shorter depending on how the audience reacts.

At NCN, it was great to see that everyone was fully into it even at such an early hour, and that really gave me power.

Karo: Your development so far has involved becoming more confident not only as a songwriter but also as someone willing to place herself physically at the centre of the project. At this point, what would artistic growth actually mean to you? Is it greater musical complexity, greater simplicity, taking more emotional risks, collaborating more, reaching larger audiences, or something that has nothing to do with scale at all?

Rina: I want to continue acquiring new technical skills and incorporating them into my compositions. When performing live, I’d like to experiment a bit more, both in terms of the performance and the look, as well as the instrumentation. It’s basically a matter of fine-tuning every aspect to bring out and strengthen the essence of RINA PAVAR even more.

Karo: Finally, looking ahead: “too much” has been announced as the first of a series of new releases, so we clearly are not looking at an isolated single. Without asking you to reveal anything that should remain a surprise, what is beginning now for Rina Pavar? And when we eventually look back at this next body of work, what do you hope we will hear in it that was not there before?

Rina: I do have an idea of what the “new” element will be in the upcoming releases. But since I’m always worried that listeners might not even notice it, I’d like to start by summarising it this way:

Think less, be bolder.

About Rina Pavar

Rina Pavar is a Leipzig-based German solo project started in 2019. Her own Bandcamp describes the music as coldwave and dark electronic music, while Cold Transmission characterises the project through driving basslines, vintage synthesizers, accented vocals and lyrics concerned with consciousness and personal experience.

Her debut album, “vivid night”, was released digitally on 1 November 2021, followed by the EP “things we hide” in May 2022. Pavar writes, performs, produces and mixes her own material; those credits are documented on both “vivid night” and her second album.

The second album, “six”, was released through Cold Transmission on 21 March 2025. It contains nine tracks and was mastered by Frithjof Rödel at Atomino Studio, with artwork and cover by Pavar and photography by yules_pictures.

On 5 December 2025, she released “REMIXES”, a ten-track collection featuring reinterpretations by Radondo, Kay-Chi, Zee Mon, Skelesys, Close Proximity, PJ, Sun’s Spectrum, New Haunts and Three Days Awake by Bent, alongside Pavar’s own club mix of “structured fall”.

Pavar also contributed lyrics and vocals to Kay-Chi’s “Darkest Night”, released as part of the Night Protocol EP on 27 March 2026.

Her latest single, “too much”, was released on 14 August 2026. Cold Transmission announced it as the first in a series of new releases, marking the beginning of the next phase of the project.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Zwickau’s Elektrisch Festival returns on 24 October 2026 with a line-up that makes a convincing argument for electronic music as a continuum rather than a museum of separate generations. At one end stands Portion Control, active since 1979 and fundamental to the development of British industrial electronics; around them are Hungarian EBM veterans Escalator, the much newer KRIEG-B, and the contemporary projects OSZYLAYTER and Cyborg Projekt X.

The 19th Elektrisch Festival takes place at Club Seilerstraße, Seilerstraße 1B, 08056 Zwickau. Doors open at 19:00, with the programme beginning at 20:00. The final line-up announced by organiser emmobiz Records is Portion Control, Escalator, OSZYLAYTER, Cyborg Projekt X and KRIEG-B.

A festival with a rather unusual history

Elektrisch is not a newly invented festival carrying an impressive number. Its history reaches back well before the current revival. Contemporary reports document the 11th edition in 2007, the 12th in 2008, the 13th in 2009, and two editions, numbers 14 and 15, in 2010, then held at Zwickau’s BPM Club. Artists appearing during that period included names such as Absolute Body Control, Birmingham 6, Tyske Ludder and The Klinik.

Then Elektrisch disappeared for fourteen years.

emmobiz Records revived it in 2024 with the 16th Elektrisch Festival, now at Club Seilerstraße. That return was already sold out months in advance and brought together Calva Y Nada, Cat Rapes Dog, Digital Factor and Accessory. The 17th edition followed in October 2025 with Test Dept, NZ, In Strict Confidence, Supreme Court and To Avoid. In February 2026, the 18th Elektrisch expanded across two evenings, separating a synthpop-oriented first night from a harder EBM/electro programme on the second.

That history makes the 2026 autumn line-up apt: Elektrisch has repeatedly connected artists from different phases of underground electronic music instead of reducing EBM to one historical period.

Portion Control

The obvious historical heavyweight is Portion Control. Formed in London in 1979, the group emerged from the early British industrial-electronic underground and became important for its use of synthesisers, drum machines and sampling long before those methods became standard practice. Their influence has subsequently been acknowledged in connection with artists including Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, Nine Inch Nails, Orbital and Nitzer Ebb; they also toured with Depeche Mode in 1984.

But calling Portion Control a heritage act would miss what remains interesting about them. They returned in the 2000s and have continued producing new work rather than maintaining the early catalogue. This August they released “1983-86 – Hit The Pulse to Purge…”, their first major Artoffact archival box, while their official site simultaneously continues to define the project rather succinctly as “uncompromising dark electronic audio.” Zwickau is currently one of only two forthcoming live appearances listed on their Bandcamp.

Escalator

Escalator brings another kind of history to the evening. The Hungarian project was founded in Budapest in 1988 by 2RT+TB and belongs to the late-’80s/early-’90s generation of European Electronic Body Music. Its musical roots lie in the harder intersection of EBM and industrial electronics, with early influences including Kraftwerk, Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, Clock DVA and Front 242.

Escalator’s history has been anything but linear; long gaps between releases and activity have been part of the project, yet its work has remained closely associated with the physical, stripped-back mechanics of classic body music. Their presence next to Portion Control is more than an “old-school” pairing: the two acts come from different geographical and chronological points in the development of electronic body music.

OSZYLAYTER

The German OSZYLAYTER represents a much more recent strand of the line-up. Public biographical information on the project is relatively sparse, so it is better not to manufacture a grand history that isn’t there. What can be verified is a growing Bandcamp catalogue including “Hate This Day”, “Lover Boy”, “Free Girls” and “Dig It in the Dirt”, while current Elektrisch coverage places the project on the modern dark-electro/industrial side of the bill.

In the context of Elektrisch, that relative newness is actually useful. This isn’t five bands demonstrating variations of exactly the same established EBM formula; OSZYLAYTER helps shift the evening toward newer club electronics and shows where some of those older physical principles have travelled.

Cyborg Projekt X

Cyborg Projekt X is similarly one of the less extensively documented names on the programme. The confirmed festival announcement places the project alongside OSZYLAYTER as part of the contemporary dark-electro and industrial side of the line-up, with an emphasis on forceful, club-oriented electronics.

That makes Cyborg Projekt X something of the unknown variable of the evening, especially for listeners arriving primarily for the established EBM names. In a festival whose history has always mixed recognised acts with smaller projects, that is hardly out of character.

KRIEG-B

KRIEG-B is much newer as a project but comes with considerable history behind its members. The duo was formed in June 2023 by Dominique Lallement, known from Kriegbereit, Cobalt 60 and K-Bereit, and Benoît Buyse, associated with Dreadfool, Anamorphosis and Nihiliste. The project describes its music as a meeting point between industrial electronics, EBM and darkwave, drawing on several decades of electronic music rather than one specific period.

Their debut album “War Drums’ Resonance” arrived in November 2024, with tracks including “S.C.S.N”, “Parabellum”, “Artificial Minds”, “Truth Lies” and “King of Emptiness”. In a sense, KRIEG-B makes a neat closing piece to the Elektrisch concept: a young project constructed by musicians carrying several earlier generations of European industrial electronics with them.

More than the line-up

The revived Elektrisch has also developed a strong physical-release component. The 18th edition was accompanied by exclusive 10-inch festival vinyl releases, while emmobiz has already announced a V.A. “19. Elektrisch Festival” 10-inch connected to this year’s event.

The appeal of the 19th edition goes beyond Portion Control finally returning to Zwickau. The five acts represent very different positions within the same broad history: British industrial experimentation, Hungarian old-school EBM, contemporary German dark electronics, and a new Franco-Belgian project carrying the experience of earlier industrial formations into something current.

That is probably the strongest reason to pay attention to Elektrisch. After a fourteen-year absence, the festival did not return simply to recreate the period in which it originally existed. Its current identity depends on putting that history into the same room with what came after it.

19. Elektrisch Festival: date, venue and line-up

• Elektrisch Festival 24 October 2026 Club Seilerstraße Seilerstraße 1B, 08056 Zwickau, Germany
• Line-up: Portion Control Escalator OSZYLAYTER Cyborg Projekt X KRIEG-B
• Doors: 19:00 Start: 20:00
• Tickets are available through emmobiz Records.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

The Sound Veil Society‘s debut album “Things We Kept” is built around an unusual kind of intensity. The record rarely reaches for aggression or dramatic excess; instead, emotional weight accumulates through restraint, space, repetition and the careful relationship between voice, electronics and silence. That became even clearer to me after seeing the duo at E-Only before spending more time with the album. Live, the songs seemed capable of becoming physically larger without sacrificing the intimacy they carry on record.

The Swedish-Norwegian project brings together Erlend Eilertsen and Hans-Olof Mattsson, two musicians with extensive histories in Nordic electronic music, but “Things We Kept” does not sound like an exercise in accumulated experience or genre expertise. The more interesting question is what happens when experience becomes instinct: when musicians know enough to stop demonstrating what they know and instead concentrate on what a song actually needs.

Released on 11 September 2026 through Progress Productions, “Things We Kept” is the duo’s first full-length album. Its title becomes more revealing as the record unfolds. What we keep is not necessarily what we consciously choose to preserve. Memory, grief, unfinished conversations, attachments and previous versions of ourselves remain present long after circumstances have changed. That tension between movement and emotional permanence runs quietly through an album whose apparent delicacy repeatedly turns out to carry considerable force.

The Sound Veil Society interview

Karo: I saw you at E-Only before hearing “Things We Kept”, and what struck me was that the performance generated enormous emotional pressure without relying on aggression or theatrical excess. Is restraint something you consciously build into The Sound Veil Society, or is it simply where the two of you naturally meet?

The Sound Veil Society: It’s the natural way for us to express ourselves, and TSVS is the outlet where we can give these feelings and emotions free space in our performance, both on record and live.

Karo: “Things We Kept” is a debut album made by musicians who are anything but beginners. Does starting a new project after years of experience give you greater freedom, or does experience make it harder to surprise yourselves because you already know too well what works?

The Sound Veil Society: Good question! In a way, it gives us more freedom, as we use our experience together with what we have learned over the years to create something new. But it might just be the circle of life, as we evolve through different phases in our lives, with new experiences and so on.

And it would be boring to repeat ourselves, so to trigger creativity and motivation, we just do what we like and hopefully someone else likes it as well.

Karo: The album feels remarkably coherent across music, lyrics, photography, videos and the physical booklet. Did you think of “Things We Kept” as a complete world from the beginning, or did that visual and emotional language gradually reveal itself while the music was taking shape?

The Sound Veil Society: We did have an idea from the beginning to be very visual in what we do as TSVS.

The album itself is a result of our journey in making it. After a year or so of making a lot of demos, we decided where we wanted to take our sound, and after that everything just fell into place.

“Things We Kept” became a complete world through the process and, indeed, there is a thought behind the booklet, videos and music completing each other.

Karo: There is something almost paradoxical about this record: it sounds delicate, but never weak. I kept thinking of tempered glass: transparent, apparently fragile, yet internally capable of carrying enormous force. Where does that balance between vulnerability and strength come from in your writing?

The Sound Veil Society: Really like your reflection of the record!

It reflects quite well who we are as people, in a way, as both of us are emotional beings, with our share of struggles both in the past and present. But that can also be used as a strength, because you need a certain amount of strength to deal with the challenges in life.

So for us it is a very natural process and nothing we “try” to do. It just happens that way.

Karo: The lyrics repeatedly return to movement: leaving, running, waiting, returning, searching for air. Yet emotionally, many of the characters seem unable to escape what they carry with them. Were you consciously interested in the difference between physically moving on and actually changing?

The Sound Veil Society: Not really. It is just our way of describing thoughts and feelings that are close to us, or stories and reflections that have inspired us over the years.

Karo: The title “Things We Kept” becomes more interesting the longer one spends with the record, because what people keep is often not something they would consciously choose: grief, unfinished conversations, versions of other people, even destructive attachments. What does “keeping” mean to you in the context of this album?

The Sound Veil Society: We think that everything we experience, be it good or bad, stays with us to some degree, even when we have almost forgotten about it, because it shapes us into who we are right now. Without all the experiences we go through in life, we would not be the same people we are today.

Karo: Erlend’s voice is very exposed in these songs, but the arrangements rarely try to underline every emotion he expresses. How do you decide when the music should support the voice and when it should deliberately leave it almost alone?

The Sound Veil Society: It’s all about the feeling, really, and nothing we think too much about when we make music. To express ourselves the way we want, it just tends to become like that.

Karo: One thing I noticed both at E-Only and on the album is how important space is. The songs are not afraid of air, pauses or sounds that are allowed to remain isolated. In electronic music, where it is technically very easy to keep adding layers, is knowing what to remove as important to you as knowing what to write?

The Sound Veil Society: In a way it is, but the most important thing for us is to write a good song and express the feeling we want to express with it. We do use quite a lot of layers, but they are often subtle and just there to emphasise the sound.

Since we have some years behind us making music, we have learned that sometimes less is more.

Karo: The visual material often uses roads, water, landscapes, silhouettes and people partly disappearing from view. They feel less like illustrations of individual songs than fragments of memory. How closely do you work on the relationship between image and sound, and what can an image express that you deliberately leave unresolved in the lyrics?

The Sound Veil Society: It depends on the idea of the song we are working on, but we often get visual ideas while making music. An image or a video clip itself is a great way to describe emotions, and combining sound and visuals simply makes a story more complete.

Karo: Your musical backgrounds give you access to an established electronic vocabulary, yet “Things We Kept” does not sound interested in demonstrating genre knowledge. Was there anything from your previous projects that you consciously had to unlearn in order for The Sound Veil Society to develop its own identity?

The Sound Veil Society: Not much, really. The only thing we have been trying to do is shorten parts, as it is easy to keep things simply because they sound good, but in the end they often just make a track less interesting.

Other than that, everything else just fell into place during the making of it.

Karo: At E-Only I had the impression that some of these songs actually became larger through performance without losing their intimacy. Has playing the material in front of people changed your understanding of the album, perhaps shown you emotional qualities in certain songs that were less obvious in the studio?

The Sound Veil Society: It can happen, but we often already have an idea of how a song will work live when we make it.

So most of our work is made just as much for the live stage as it is for a record, actually. Of course, before the first live show, we didn’t know how our vision would translate to the audience, but after these shows we really feel that we get a special connection with the audience.

Karo: “Things We Kept” establishes a very precise emotional and visual identity for a first album. Looking ahead, does that identity now feel like a foundation you want to deepen, or something you already feel tempted to disturb? What are you curious to discover about The Sound Veil Society next?

The Sound Veil Society: In a way, it is a foundation to build upon and is, in many ways, the core of our concept. But we do want to evolve and make something new along the way, so we don’t yet know what it will become.

But that is also part of the fun: exploring new sides of a concept. We will always aim to be as honest and raw in our expression.

About The Sound Veil Society

The Sound Veil Society is a Swedish-Norwegian electronic duo formed in 2024 by Erlend Eilertsen and Hans-Olof Mattsson. Eilertsen is associated with Essence Of Mind and Lights A.M. and joined Xenturion Prime in 2024; Mattsson co-founded Code 64, later established Xenturion Prime and has also been involved with Essence Of Mind.

The project debuted with “The River” on 24 April 2025, followed by “OK” on 22 August 2025 and “Hunger for Light” in March 2026. Their debut album, “Things We Kept”, was released by Progress Productions on 11 September 2026. The standard edition contains eleven tracks, including “Voices” featuring KÅRP; the CD adds three bonus versions, while the album was also issued on black-and-white splatter vinyl and as a limited MiniDisc edition.

The duo performed at Nocturnal Culture Night and E-Only Festival; a live video for “Nothing to Say” was recorded at E-Only in Leipzig in March 2026. The Sound Veil Society are already confirmed for Eastside Festival in Halle (Saale), Germany, on 2-3 July 2027.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

More than twenty years after Agonoize emerged from Berlin, there is very little ambiguity left about what the name represents. The band built its identity around severe electronic rhythm, distorted vocals, confrontation and a live language that made physical excess part of the music rather than decoration around it. Their own terminology, Hellektro, became closely associated with the harder end of dark electro and aggrotech, combining EBM, industrial and dark-electronic structures with an unusually direct lyrical vocabulary. Agonoize themselves have never seemed especially interested in respecting the borders of those labels.

That history also explains why a short conversation with Chris L in 2026 becomes more interesting than a routine tour update. The existing catalogue carries considerable weight, the visual mythology of the band is instantly recognisable, and songs written years ago remain embedded in club culture. But Chris is not speaking about preservation. After a serious illness interrupted both his physical momentum and his songwriting, he is working on new Agonoize material again, while approaching the band with a strikingly uncomplicated principle: he still makes music because he wants to.

Ahead of Agonoize’s 25 September appearance at Klub Łącznik in Wrocław, where they play alongside System Noire and Antibody, I caught up with Chris L about returning to songwriting, refusing genre boxes, anger as creative material, performing after illness and why getting older has done very little to make Agonoize more polite. The Wrocław event features full sets from Agonoize and System Noire, with Antibody as special guest and an Angst Factor aftershow with DJane Nox Occultae and DJ Bjørn.

Chris L on Agonoize in 2026

Karo: Agonoize have existed for more than two decades now. What does the band need to mean to you personally in 2026 for it still to be worth continuing?

Chris: Why shouldn’t it be worth it? I make music because I love it. That’s really the most important reason. As long as I still have something to say and the passion to do it, it will always be worth continuing.

Karo: “Revelation Six Six Sick” is already five years old. Are you actively working towards a new Agonoize chapter, and if so, what has changed in the way you want the band to sound?

Chris: Five years ago, I was knocked off my feet by a serious illness. It took a long time to find the strength and inspiration to write new songs again.

Now I’m working on new material.

Time will tell…

Karo: “Adios, Goodbye!” with Antibody was one of the more recent glimpses of your writing outside the existing Agonoize catalogue, and now you are sharing the stage in Poland. Did that collaboration open any ideas you would actually like to take further?

Chris: “Adios, Goodbye” is not a musical composition by Agonoize. It’s simply a lyric I wrote. The finished song then sat unused for more than a year, for whatever reason. Jan from Antibody is a permanent part of Agonoize, but this song has nothing to do with the Agonoize album that is currently in the works.

Karo: Aggrotech has gone through periods of enormous visibility and others when people almost seemed embarrassed by the term. Do you still identify strongly with that scene, or has Agonoize outgrown the usefulness of the label?

Chris: I’ve never tried to put a specific musical label on Agonoize. Agonoize is Agonoize. We make our music the way it feels right to us, and I’ve never been interested in putting the band into a box.

Karo: I first saw you at WGT many years ago, when there was literally a warning that “there will be blood on the dancefloor.” Back then, the provocation felt genuinely confrontational. Has your own relationship with shock and theatrical violence changed as both you and the audience have grown older?

Chris: Agonoize has always been known for addressing subjects that other people don’t dare to talk about. I’m loud, I’m uncomfortable, and I think that’s a good thing. Being different has always been important to me. I don’t have to please everyone. I am who I am. And that has nothing to do with age either. Our fans range from 8 to 70 years old. Music doesn’t have an age limit.

Karo: A show with such a recognisable visual language can eventually become something audiences expect rather than something that unsettles them. How do you stop an Agonoize concert from turning into a ritual recreation of its own mythology?

Chris: The lyrics I write speak a very clear language and create a very clear picture. I don’t want to hide things behind unnecessary metaphors or sugarcoat them. If I have something to say, I say it directly.

Karo: Your lyrics have always used anger very directly. What genuinely makes Chris L angry enough to write about in 2026, and has that anger become more focused with age, or less?

Chris: Just look at the world around you. Everything that is happening out there becomes part of the stories we write. We live in a terrible world, and in many ways it seems to be getting worse rather than better. There is just as much anger, frustration and darkness in the world as there has ever been. Of course, all of that finds its way into my lyrics and, ultimately, into my music.

Karo: You played M’era Luna again this summer and will soon move into a much more immediate club setting in Wrocław. Does the scale of the room actually change the way you perform, or is Agonoize supposed to overwhelm the space regardless of its size?

Chris: I’ve always preferred playing small clubs. There’s something special about being close to the audience, with no barriers and no distance between us. That direct connection is what I love about live shows. And ultimately, it doesn’t depend on the size of the venue. We perform in front of 10,000 people with the same intensity as we do in front of 150.

Karo: Agonoize have a catalogue full of songs audiences expect to hear. When constructing a set now, how do you balance that collective memory against your own need not to spend the evening reproducing the past?

Chris: Every show is different. The combination of old and new songs is important, and that mixture should be something people can feel at every show. In the past, two-and-a-half to four-and-a-half-hour shows were not unusual for me. Because of my illness, that’s unfortunately no longer possible. But a shorter show can still be just as intense and uncompromising.

Karo: Looking ahead, what do you want the next phase of Agonoize to prove, not to people who already know exactly what “Bis das Blut gefriert” means to them, but to somebody encountering the band for the first time now?

Chris: I have nothing to prove to anyone except myself. I just want to be able to do what I’ve always been best at: making music. Ultimately, that’s all I want.

About Agonoize

Formed in Berlin in 2002, Agonoize became one of the most recognisable names in the harder European electro scene. Their official biography describes the project through a collision of industrial, EBM and dark electro, while the band has long used the term Hellektro for its own particularly abrasive variant of that language. From the early “Paranoid Destruction” period through records and releases such as “Assimilation”, “Blutgruppe Jesus”, “Bis das Blut gefriert” and the later “Revelation Six Six Sick”, aggression has remained central, but so has Chris L’s insistence on direct language and subjects designed to create discomfort rather than polite distance. Side-Line previously spoke with the band in 2020 for the ‘Click Interview’ with Agonoize.

The theatrical violence of the concerts, including the band’s notorious “Blutshow”, became part of that identity, but the interview above suggests something more useful about Agonoize in 2026: beneath all the blood, noise and provocation, the continuation of the band still depends on something remarkably basic, Chris L wanting to write music again.

Agonoize live, upcoming dates

The band’s site marks the Wrocław and Bärenstein dates specifically as Blutshows.

• 25 September 2026 – Klub Łącznik, Wrocław, Poland (with System Noire and Antibody, doors 19:00, Angst Factor aftershow with DJane Nox Occultae and DJ Bjørn) – Blutshow
• 24 October 2026 – Dark Dance Treffen, Mannheim, Germany
• 11 December 2026 – Unholy X-Mas, Bärenstein, Germany – Blutshow
• 12 December 2026 – Unholy X-Mas, Bärenstein, Germany – Blutshow
• 25 December 2026 – Dark Storm, Chemnitz, Germany
• 9 January 2027 – Fabrik, Bruchsal, Germany
• 6 February 2027 – From Hell, Erfurt, Germany
• 16-18 April 2027 – Dark Malta, Malta
• 16 October 2027 – ORWOhaus, Berlin, Germany

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Die In Eclipse, the EBM and darkwave project of Darkrad‘s Jana Komaritsa, spoke to Side-Line about its debut EP “SexWave”, the emotional link between her two projects, and a new single and video, “We Are Lovers,” planned for release this autumn. Komaritsa released “SexWave” on Bandcamp on 6 May 2026, pairing two original tracks with five remixes, and previously discussed her work with Side-Line’s Karo Kratochwil when the project first surfaced under the Die In Eclipse name.

Komaritsa built her name with Darkrad, a dark ambient project she has run since 2009, working through atmosphere, stillness and inward confrontation. Die In Eclipse, she says, is not a departure from that territory but another way of entering it. “I don’t see Die In Eclipse as leaving the introspective space of Darkrad. For me, it is another way of entering a similar space. The difference is in the direction of the energy,” she told Side-Line. “Darkrad often turns into stillness, atmosphere, memory… Die In Eclipse takes some of those same emotions, gives the feeling a pulse and lets the body move through it.”

The name Die In Eclipse and its Darkrad roots

The title is not new. Komaritsa first used “Die in Eclipse” for a two-track Darkrad release in 2014, inspired by time she spent at Lake Sakakawea in North Dakota, which also supplied that release’s cover image. Asked why she revived the phrase for an entirely new project, she pointed to continuity rather than reinvention. “Some names, images and symbols stay with me because they contain something that hasn’t finished unfolding,” she said. “The symbolism of an eclipse has always spoken to me in many ways. I see it not as disappearance, but more as transformation. I don’t need to erase what came before in order to create something new. Die In Eclipse is a new language, but it comes from the same person, the same artistic history and some of the same obsessions.”

SexWave as a musical language of desire

Komaritsa calls her new sound “SexWave,” a term she is careful to root in structure rather than provocation. “For me, eroticism in music and art is mostly about tension and sensuality. It’s not about explicit sounds or imagery,” she explained. “It can be created by the proximity of a voice that feels too close, a breath, a whisper, a rhythm that keeps repeating without giving you the expected release. Repetition is especially important because it can become hypnotic. You begin anticipating what is coming, and that anticipation itself becomes part of the experience.” Restraint matters just as much to her as intensity: “Sometimes holding something back is much more sensual than giving everything immediately. There needs to be space for mystery. ‘SexWave’ isn’t really about making music that sounds sexy in a conventional sense. It is about exploring desire as an artistic and musical force: attraction, tension, anticipation, surrender and release.”

That approach carries over her earlier idea of silence as an instrument, described in Darkrad as “a breath held before release.” With Die In Eclipse built around beats, she says silence takes on a different function. “In Darkrad, silence could feel like emptiness, isolation or void. In Die In Eclipse, silence can be anticipation. When the beat disappears for a moment, the body still feels and knows the pulse,” she said. “Eroticism needs space because desire is partly about what is not there yet. So yes, I think absence can absolutely be erotic.” She also frames the dancefloor itself as a different kind of ritual from her Darkrad shows: “With Die In Eclipse, the rhythm creates a common physical language, where everyone shares the same pulse. You don’t have to understand the music intellectually. Your body understands it. There is something beautiful and powerful about surrendering individual control to a rhythm, not because you are being controlled, but because you choose to surrender to it.”

Introducing a project through its remixes

“SexWave” contains only two original compositions, “SexWave” and “Unholy Dark,” alongside five remixes by Iszoloscope, Antigen Shift, Cervello Elettronico, HORROH and Spherical Disrupted. Komaritsa chose to let other artists reinterpret the material before establishing her own vocabulary in full. “SexWave is a first glimpse, a doorway into the world of Die In Eclipse, which is yet to unfold. The project doesn’t have to explain exactly what it is yet,” she said. “There are only two original tracks on SexWave, which I wanted to give to other artists to see what they could become in somebody else’s hands. A remix, for me, is another interpretation of the same emotional material. Someone can find a completely different rhythm, aggression, darkness or sensuality inside a track that I thought I already understood.”

The remixer list is not a random selection of scene names. Spherical Disrupted had already remixed Darkrad, while Iszoloscope moved in the musical circle around her earlier King in the Thicket project. “My artistic network has always been important to me, and I have worked with some of these people in different contexts over the years, so it was important for me to have them enter my new creative journey in this way,” Komaritsa said. “These relationships carry memory. When someone has known your work for years, they sometimes recognise new things that you might not consciously put there. But I also don’t want Die In Eclipse to be a project built from old relationships. I like the idea of old artistic connections opening doors into something new, and I would like to collaborate further with artists from a similar artistic and musical world. I have already discussed potential collaborations with some great musicians.”

The voice, the gaze and drawing the line between two projects

Komaritsa also hears a shift in how she uses her own voice. Darkrad relied on whispered, restrained vocals that felt distant from the listener; Die In Eclipse pulls the voice closer to the body. “With Darkrad, the voice often feels as though it is emerging from the music and the environment. It can be distant or partially hidden. It is part of the musical tapestry,” she said. “With Die In Eclipse, I want the voice to be more exposed and less hidden behind the sound. The voice isn’t simply describing an emotional state. It can create one.”

As the sole composer, producer and visual creator behind both projects, Komaritsa is deliberate about how she handles female sexuality as subject matter. “I’m very conscious of the difference between creating eroticism and simply reproducing familiar images of female sexuality,” she said, citing Georges Bataille, Sigmund Freud, Anaïs Nin and the Marquis de Sade among her reference points. “Sexuality is complicated and contradictory. It can contain power and vulnerability at the same time, attraction and fear, surrender and control. The ambiguity is much more interesting to me than simply making something provocative.”

Asked how she decides which new material belongs to Darkrad and which belongs to Die In Eclipse, she described an intuitive rather than formal process. “Darkrad can contain rhythm, sexuality and physical intensity, and Die In Eclipse can contain melancholy and darkness. Those elements don’t belong exclusively to one project,” she said. “If the track is driven by atmosphere, emotional depth and a certain cinematic or ritual darkness, it usually starts moving towards Darkrad. If the body becomes the primary instrument, the pulse, repetition, tension and physical movement, I start thinking about Die In Eclipse. They are both part of me.”

What comes next for Die In Eclipse

Komaritsa is already performing a full Die In Eclipse live set and working on album material, while looking for a label to release it. She is keeping some of the project’s direction open by design. “Just as an eclipse gradually obscures one thing while opening a doorway to something else, Die In Eclipse is moving through a similar process. SexWave is a doorway into the world of DIE, a first shout into the darkness, announcing the arrival of this new project,” she said. “I have already been performing live with a complete Die In Eclipse set, so I have enough material to move forward with an album, and I’m working on it behind the scenes. At this point, I would like to find the right label to work with, and developing that takes some time. This autumn, I’ll also be releasing a new single and video, ‘We Are Lovers.’ I want to leave some secrets, to keep that darkness and mystery around it, like an eclipse, and see what emerges from there.”

About Die In Eclipse

Die In Eclipse is the EBM and darkwave project of Jana Komaritsa, a Russian-born, Netherlands-based musician and multidisciplinary visual artist who also runs the WonderCat art space in Leiden. Komaritsa launched her first project, Darkrad, in 2009, building a catalogue in dark ambient and noise around whispered, restrained vocals. Darkrad’s debut album “Abnormal Love” appeared in 2012 on Cold Meat Industry, followed by “Little Black World” in 2014 on Komaritsa’s own Mrakmur imprint and later through audiophob. The same year, she released the two-track “Die in Eclipse,” the title she later revived for her new project. “Heart Murmur” followed in 2018, and in 2022 she paired with Flint Glass for “Cold Solitude,” an art book with an accompanying CD drawn from her own paintings.

Die In Eclipse moves that same artistic identity toward pulse, repetition and the dancefloor, built on dark techno and EBM rather than ambient stillness. Komaritsa premiered the project live at Regenfest in Mülheim in November 2025 and brought it to the Porta Nigra festival in Belgium in January 2026, alongside Nachtmahr, Diary of Dreams, Enzo Kreft and V2A. Its debut EP, “SexWave,” arrived on 6 May 2026 via dieineclipse.bandcamp.com, featuring the tracks “SexWave” and “Unholy Dark” alongside remixes by Iszoloscope, Antigen Shift, Cervello Elettronico, HORROH and Spherical Disrupted. Komaritsa is now working on a full-length album, currently seeking a label, and preparing a new single and video, “We Are Lovers,” for release in autumn 2026.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

French industrial project HORSKH has released “Connected“, a collaboration with Carpenter Brut, on September 10, 2026, ahead of HORSKH’s forthcoming album “MTNT”. HORSKH’s official Bandcamp credits the track jointly to HORSKH and Carpenter Brut, with mixing and mastering by Thibault Chaumont at Deviant Lab Studio and artwork by Johanna Jaskowska.

“Connected” also appears on HORSKH’s forthcoming album “MTNT”, listed as a ten-track release scheduled for September 25, 2026, issued through Wire Control under exclusive licence to Blood Blast Distribution. “Connected” and the earlier single “Glow” are both tied directly to “MTNT”.

The lyrics give the collaboration a considerably less comfortable meaning than its title suggests. Images of wires, intravenous connection, fear, chemical illusion and an attachment that persists despite attempts to escape recur throughout the song, placing bodily, technological and psychological attachment close together rather than treating “connection” as straightforward communication.

The pairing brings together two French projects that approach heavy electronic music from different but intersecting angles. HORSKH’s recent catalogue has increasingly combined guitars, electronic programming and industrial pressure: “BODY” arrived in January 2024, following “WIRE” in 2021 and “GATE” in 2017. Carpenter Brut, meanwhile, released his latest studio album “Leather Temple” on February 27, 2026. The two releases share a technical link as well: “Leather Temple” was mixed and mastered by Thibault Chaumont at Deviant Lab, the same studio and engineer credited on “Connected”.

“MTNT” arrives on September 25, 2026. “Connected” is available now through HORSKH’s official Bandcamp and streaming platforms.

About HORSKH

HORSKH are based in Besançon, France. Their recorded catalogue dates back to the “DAWN” EP, released in October 2014 and followed by an expanded edition in 2015. Their first full-length album, “GATE”, arrived on April 10, 2017, followed by “WIRE” on January 22, 2021 and “BODY” on January 19, 2024.

The credits for “GATE” and “WIRE” list Bastien on programming, keyboards, vocals and guitar, Briou on live drums, and Jordan on guitar and keyboards. “WIRE” was mixed by Sam Munnier and Bastien Hennaut and mastered at Deviant Lab Studio, while “BODY” was mixed and mastered by Thibault Chaumont at Deviant Lab Studio.

Ahead of “MTNT”, HORSKH released three other singles during 2026: “BAD GLITCH” on January 22, “Hyperhuman” in March and “Glow” in June. “Connected”, featuring Carpenter Brut, followed on September 10. The band have also been active on the European festival circuit in 2026, with appearances listed at Wave-Gotik-Treffen in Leipzig, Castle Party in Bolków and Nocturnal Culture Night in Deutzen, alongside a series of French dates extending into November. The catalogue combines programmed electronics, guitars and live percussion across industrial, EBM and electro-adjacent territory, reflecting the band’s own album credits.

About Carpenter Brut

Carpenter Brut is the stage name of Franck Hueso, a French darksynth musician from Poitiers active since 2012. He released three EPs, “EP I” (2012), “EP II” (2013) and “EP III” (2015), later compiled as the album “Trilogy” (2015), followed by “Leather Teeth” (2018), the “Blood Machines” soundtrack (2020), “Leather Terror” (2022) and “Leather Temple” (2026). His releases since 2015 have come out through his own label, No Quarter Prod. In live performances, Carpenter Brut is joined by guitarist Adrien Grousset and drummer Florent Marcadet, both also members of the French metal band Hacride.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

FOURSCHER Festival returns to Club From Hell in Erfurt, Germany, on 7 and 8 November 2026, with nine acts spanning EBM, dark electro, rhythmic noise and ritual electronics: Snog, Black Lung, Individual Totem, Mildreda, This Morn’ Omina, Heimstatt Yipotash, Polykoptr, KIFOTH and Manipulation.

Having attended the festival twice, in 2024 and 2025, what stood out both times was less any single performance than the combination of a carefully selected programme, an open audience and the sense that organisers Danny Hildebrandt and Andreas Schubert were personally invested in how people experienced the weekend. That impression carries into the 2026 edition, where the nine acts are connected less by genre than by a shared refusal to treat the existing vocabulary of industrial and electronic music as sufficient on its own: some dismantle it, some stretch it toward ritual or techno, some return to it after decades, and some use familiar EBM structures to ask questions that have little to do with genre loyalty.

The clearest example is the pairing of Snog and Black Lung, both projects of David Thrussell. Snog works through legible structures, songs, hooks, slogans and satire, using the dancefloor to examine consumerism, obedience and political absurdity. Black Lung strips away that accessibility for harder, darker and more experimental electronic forms. Their FOURSCHER appearances are billed as their only European shows of 2026; a new Black Lung album, “Ordo Ab Chao,” is due shortly before the festival.

Individual Totem bring an electro industrial catalogue reaching back to the 1990s, including records such as “S.E.T.I.,” “Mothfly,” “Kyria 13” and “Electrostatic,” with live appearances rare enough that the Erfurt date carries weight of its own. Mildreda’s context is more immediate: “Realities,” released 28 August, pushes Jan Dewulf’s work into a space where dark electronic abrasion sits alongside more emotional exposure than the genre typically allows, while retaining the project’s Canadian EBM and Belgian electronic lineage. This Morn’ Omina arrive in their thirtieth year with new release “Vestiges,” which frames three decades as continuity of practice rather than a retrospective; the project’s rhythm-driven material has always worked to alter a listener’s sense of duration and physical orientation rather than simply carry songs.

Heimstatt Yipotash’s 2026 album “Abyss” draws on the physical conditions of the deep sea, pressure, isolation, cold and downward movement, as both imagery and compositional logic, moving between aggressive electro, rhythm noise and more cinematic passages. Polykoptr comes from the wider Amnistia orbit and the Leipzig electronic scene, presented here on its own terms rather than as an extension of that name. The Slovak project KIFOTH released “Artificial Territory” in June 2026, reconnecting earlier KIFOTH material with contemporary EBM production. Manipulation return after close to three decades, with “Feel The Same” remembered as a small club hit from the project’s earlier run.

Line-up and practical information

FOURSCHER Festival 2026 takes place at Club From Hell, Flughafenstraße 41, 99092 Erfurt, Germany, on 7 November (19:00-03:00) and 8 November (13:00-18:00). The line-up: Snog, Black Lung, Individual Totem, Mildreda, This Morn’ Omina, Heimstatt Yipotash, Polykoptr, KIFOTH and Manipulation. Electronic tickets are available, with printed tickets held at the box office on request.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

I genuinely never expected to return to Nocturnal Culture Night. I had visited Deutzen once, in 2023, and already then the sheer scale of the festival impressed me: several stages operating simultaneously, a programme dense enough to render any attempt at complete coverage slightly absurd, and an audience whose warmth remained one of my clearest memories afterwards. Three years later I found myself there again, towards the end of another long summer spent moving between festivals. For me, NCN effectively closes the outdoor festival season, although “closing” seems an inadequate word for an event that still requires its visitors to make decisions at the speed of something in full acceleration.

What is peculiar about NCN is that its physical scale and its social scale seem almost unrelated. The Kulturpark contains several music stages, spaces of very different dimensions and enough simultaneous programming to construct several entirely different versions of the same weekend, yet the atmosphere remains remarkably relaxed. That contrast was already one of the things I remembered from 2023, and this year it became even more apparent.

I have written many times that every festival develops its own social language, but the differences become particularly visible when several are visited within the same summer. At Wave-Gotik-Treffen or Castle Party, clothing itself becomes part of the artistic vocabulary: people construct silhouettes, visual references and sometimes entire characters, so that the audience forms a parallel exhibition of creativity. NCN feels different. This is neither criticism nor a claim that one form of participation is more authentic than another, but attention in Deutzen seemed to travel outwards rather than towards the self. People were there to hear music, catch up with friends, eat and drink together, dance, talk, discover bands and conduct the sort of informal networking that has always existed in music scenes whether anyone calls it networking or not.

For me, as a photographer, that difference became unexpectedly important. An extraordinary outfit already supplies the architecture of an image: colour, line, texture and shape can make a photograph visually compelling before any meaningful contact with the person has occurred. At NCN I found myself looking much more closely at faces. Personality appeared in concentration during a song, amusement between friends, exhaustion, affection, curiosity or the sudden transformation of expression when somebody recognised the opening seconds of something they loved. The portraits demanded slightly more patience because there was less external spectacle to depend upon; I had to wait for something of the actual person to become visible. That made photographing the audience harder, but ultimately more rewarding. People seemed wonderfully unpretentious and considerably more interested in what was happening around them than in attracting attention towards themselves.

Friday

My festival began with HORSKH, and there was never much uncertainty about that choice. I had first seen the French trio after they had been recommended to me for Castle Party, so by NCN they had already become one of those fixed points around which I constructed the rest of a schedule. Their combination of industrial electronics, guitars, live percussion and vocals works because aggression is never treated as an end in itself. The music is extremely disciplined underneath its apparent violence: sequences are exact, rhythmic structures are engineered with considerable care, and then everything performed above them seems determined to interfere with that control.

Onstage, this becomes intensely physical. The guitars do not merely thicken the electronic foundation but push against it, while the vocals repeatedly introduce a kind of organised instability that makes the songs feel much less obedient than their underlying structures actually are. Their interpretation of The Prodigy’s “Breathe” remains a particularly clever choice because it exposes a lineage instead of functioning merely as a familiar cover. The Prodigy understood that electronic music could possess the confrontation and bodily violence of rock without ceasing to be electronic; HORSKH take that principle into a harsher contemporary vocabulary. After almost six hours on a bus to Leipzig, I could hardly have asked for a more efficient recalibration of the nervous system.

I then moved to the much smaller Kulturbühne for frequen-C & TC75, the collaboration between Christian Bergmann and Tino Claus. I have followed and supported this project for some time, and what continues to interest me is how much room exists inside electronics that can nevertheless hit very hard. Christian’s structures are disciplined and precise, while Tino’s vocal presence brings a completely different temperature into them; the result combines electronic control with a performer who is visibly communicating rather than merely executing a vocal part.

The visual component worked beautifully without competing with the music, and the small Kulturbühne gradually turned into a very efficient dance floor. Something that happened away from the stage later gave me another way of thinking about what I had just watched. Tino participates in what sometimes seems like an improbable number of musical projects, so I asked him how many he would actually count as his own if we excluded occasional guest appearances. We eventually arrived at roughly five. I then asked whether he was ever afraid that dividing himself between so many different contexts might dilute his artistic identity.

He came back to the question the following day and said no, because every project is different. It sounds simple, but the answer stayed with me because creative identity does not necessarily become more concentrated by being restricted to one context. It can become more exact through contrast, as long as each collaboration develops its own internal logic rather than becoming another receptacle for identical habits. frequen-C & TC75 have exactly that distinct emotional temperature, hard without being merely aggressive, controlled without becoming emotionally sealed, and sufficiently communicative that the question of dilution becomes rather irrelevant once they are actually playing.

The schedule then forced a split between Hinfort and Jesus On Extasy. Hinfort shifted the afternoon away from HORSKH’s physical aggression towards something considerably more inward. Florian Kerezovic’s relatively young Cologne project works with the familiar materials of post-punk and darkwave, cold bass, restrained electronics, melancholy and a low vocal register, but onstage the important element was not genre recognition so much as composure. There was no attempt to force an early festival audience into attention through exaggerated movement or artificial drama. Instead, the songs established their own pressure gradually, the bass carrying much of the forward movement while the vocals remained darker and more introspective above it.

What interested me was the contrast between that emotional reserve and the clarity of the performance. Hinfort did not sound tentative despite the project’s relatively short history; the musical language already felt remarkably defined, yet not so finished that it had lost the possibility of development. There was something attractive in watching a project still consolidating itself publicly, where the identity was already recognisable but did not yet feel hardened into a formula.

I saw only part of Jesus On Extasy, but even that fragment was difficult to mistake for anybody else. The performance was loud, restless and happily excessive, driven by the friction between hard guitars and electronics rather than by an attempt to make one disappear inside the other. There was a genuine sense of emotional disorder onstage, not because the music lacked discipline, but because the musicians seemed continually willing to push the songs beyond the neat boundaries suggested by their structures.

The result was extremely energetic and at moments almost chaotic in appearance, with movement, guitar force and vocal intensity creating a show that felt much less controlled than most of the electronic performances around it. That theatrical excess is part of the appeal: Jesus On Extasy do not seem particularly interested in the cool distance associated with much dark electronics. What I caught was hot-blooded, physical and deliberately larger than life.

With Melotron, the energy took a completely different form. I only stayed for part of the performance, but the audience reaction was immediate, and it was easy to understand why. There is an enormous difference between a band merely possessing a long catalogue and one knowing how those songs now function in relation to an audience that has lived with them for years. Melotron have that knowledge.

Andy Krüger’s presence was particularly effective because he never appeared to be fighting the scale of the Amphibühne. The performance did not need exaggerated movement to seem substantial; voice, melody and recognition were already doing the work. What I remember most is the collective response, people singing, moving and reacting to songs whose emotional vocabulary is deeply familiar by now. It was energetic without becoming frantic and confident without slipping into routine, the sort of festival performance where experience becomes visible not as professionalism for its own sake but as an unusually precise understanding of how to hold a large audience.

Friday ended unusually early for me. I had been awake since 04:30, spent nearly six hours travelling by FlixBus and gone almost immediately into festival work, so eventually my carefully constructed running order collided with basic physiology. I badly wanted to see Sierra Veins later that night, but the body vetoed the plan. Later I learned that heavy rain had complicated proceedings and produced delays, which made going back to rest easier to justify retrospectively, although not less disappointing. Festival timetables encourage the fantasy that the body is simply another logistical factor; sooner or later it tends to remind us that it possesses final authority.

Saturday

Saturday began before noon, with Rina Pavar providing one of the most elegant openings I encountered during the weekend. Associated with the Cold Transmission orbit, her music works within coldwave and dark electronics, but reducing it to either category misses the quality that matters most in performance: the relationship between an orderly electronic framework and a voice that is allowed to remain unmistakably human within it.

There is fragility in her delivery, but fragility should not be confused with weakness. Pavar does not treat uncertainty or restraint as shortcomings to be compensated for through greater volume; she lets them remain audible while the electronics underneath give those qualities direction and form. On Parkbühne the effect was extraordinarily elegant. The songs retained something private even while being projected into an outdoor festival, which takes far more confidence than simply making everything larger. The beauty came from proportion: voice, synths and movement all seemed to understand exactly how much space they required.

I also managed a short look at TonFehler, and the contrast was considerable. Their electronic body music is deliberately direct, but what makes the project more interesting than another exercise in hard beats is the presence of irony and social observation. The structures move efficiently, while the German-language vocal delivery allows humour and criticism to coexist without turning either into cabaret commentary placed outside the music.

Their performance immediately introduced a certain mischievousness into the day. The beats remained forceful enough to carry the set, but the interaction between the performers prevented the music from becoming another exercise in stern electronic discipline. Rather than standing rigidly inside the machinery, TonFehler seemed willing to acknowledge its absurdities, which gave the short part I witnessed a personality disproportionate to the amount of time I actually spent there.

Ambassador21 increased the physical temperature dramatically. Natasha A Twentyone and Alexey Protasov have spent more than two decades combining industrial electronics, rhythmic noise and punk hostility into something designed less to seduce than to confront. What can initially sound chaotic is in fact highly organised: repetition, compressed rhythm and the vocal interaction create a structure whose aggression is far more deliberate than its surface suggests.

Even during a relatively short encounter, the punk element remained unmistakable, not because of costume or borrowed iconography but because of the project’s fundamental refusal of politeness. Natasha’s delivery in particular attacks the tracks as much as it inhabits them, while Alexey supplies another point of pressure. The vocals are not placed elegantly above the electronics; they strike into them. The performance felt angry, but not vaguely so. There was purpose behind the aggression and sufficient control underneath it to prevent intensity from becoming noise without direction.

Another direct clash followed between Ozibut and Strikkland. I saw Ozibut only briefly, but this was one of those encounters where a few minutes were sufficient to establish that something unusual was happening. Musically, darkdance, synthpunk, EBM and cold electronic structures collided with an almost cabaret-like instinct for exaggeration, while visually the project was immediately distinctive.

What caught my eye was that the appearance did not seem designed merely to make a memorable photograph. The eccentricity belonged to the performance itself: expression, movement and styling all appeared to share the same slightly grotesque, humorous and decadent logic as the music. In full daylight, where many dark electronic projects lose part of their visual vocabulary, Ozibut remained strangely convincing because the personality did not depend on darkness to exist. I left far too quickly to write about the set as a whole, but not too quickly to know that I want a proper encounter next time.

I left because Strikkland were one of my priorities, and the larger Waldbühne revealed something I had already enjoyed about them on a smaller stage but perhaps had not fully appreciated: humour is not an accessory to the Swedish duo but one of the methods through which they understand EBM itself. Their music is genuinely hard-hitting, full of muscular sequences, direct rhythmic structures and Henrik Johansson’s forceful vocal delivery, but they refuse the peculiar genre assumption that musical seriousness requires permanent solemnity.

Henrik changed clothes, appeared in extravagant red fur, exaggerated poses, altered lines, used provocative gestures and played with Swedish and German symbolism and declarations of friendship between the two countries. In less capable hands this could easily have reduced the concert to parody. Instead, it worked because the music underneath was far too good to need irony as an excuse. They were not laughing at EBM from a safe distance; they were playing with conventions they clearly understand and love.

Afterwards Henrik told me that when he and Henric Ceder started the band, already approaching their fifties, they had briefly imagined becoming the “gothiest” band possible before looking at one another and essentially asking whom they thought they were fooling. That decision to interfere with the convention rather than impersonate it seems fundamental to Strikkland. The joke works because there is affection underneath it. Full afternoon sun is rarely generous to music associated with smoke, darkness and club lighting, yet here it almost improved the performance by exposing the absurdity more clearly. Self-awareness is considerably harder to perform convincingly than genre seriousness, and Strikkland manage to combine both.

AD:Key then took over the Amphibühne, and Andrea and René Nowotny delivered exactly the kind of controlled explosion I had hoped for. Their music has always depended on more than alternating female and male vocals; what gives the project its personality is the constant redistribution of energy between two people who know one another intimately enough to respond without making that response look rehearsed.

On a stage as large as the Amphibühne, this became particularly effective. Large spaces can expose electronic acts whose stage vocabulary consists merely of enlarging familiar gestures, whereas Andrea and René filled the space through actual communication. Andrea’s performance became increasingly animated until she moved into the audience, while René remained above onstage, and the physical separation paradoxically strengthened their interplay. Suddenly the crowd itself occupied the space between them. The rhythms remained rigid enough to provide the EBM architecture, but the human exchange continually disrupted any possibility of mechanical impersonality. It was an enormous, joyful release of energy and one of my strongest concerts of the weekend.

I then divided my attention between The Awakening and SIIE. I only caught part of The Awakening, but what stayed with me were the guitars: living, breathing guitars in the most literal musical sense, with sustain and space allowed to become part of the emotional information rather than simply supplying rock weight. Ashton Nyte’s long-running project has moved through gothic rock and darkwave for decades, yet the fragment I saw felt less concerned with genre than with atmosphere produced organically through musicianship.

Nyte’s voice gave those guitars a poetic quality, and for a few minutes the whole festival seemed to breathe differently after so much sequenced electronic precision. The guitars possessed weight, certainly, but also air around them, allowing the songs to remain expansive rather than merely loud. I would not pretend to reconstruct the complete concert from the portion I witnessed, but those minutes were enough to make the contrast with the surrounding programme especially valuable.

SIIE offered almost the reverse kind of tension to The Awakening. Their electronic language brings darkwave, EBM and techno into contact with French-language vocals, but what made the short part I saw particularly memorable was the way the visual identity altered the emotional reading of the music. The mask immediately creates distance: instead of presenting the performer as a conventional frontperson whose face supplies the obvious emotional access point, SIIE partially remove that route and force attention back towards gesture, voice, movement and sound. The result is strangely intimate despite the concealment. The mask does not make the performance colder; paradoxically, it makes the listener search more carefully for expression elsewhere.

And the music itself was genuinely beautiful. Beneath the direct, physical pulse there is a remarkable melodic sensitivity, with electronics that can feel severe one moment and unexpectedly delicate the next. The French vocal delivery adds another layer of elegance and slight detachment, while the beat keeps everything anchored in the body. What I liked most was the contradiction between concealment and emotional accessibility: visually, SIIE create distance, yet musically they invite the listener much closer. Even during the short fragment I caught, the performance felt carefully conceived as a whole rather than as music with an aesthetic added around it, with mask, movement, voice and electronics all contributing to the same beautifully controlled atmosphere.

Schöngeist brought another kind of theatricality to the Amphibühne. Their dark-rock vocabulary allows broad guitars and emphatic rhythms to coexist with more melodic and almost cinematic elements, and the large stage suited a project that is not embarrassed by dramatic presentation. What prevented the material from becoming generic was the contrast within it: harder structures were repeatedly interrupted or complicated by more lyrical textures, while Timur Karakus’ vocal delivery carried enough character to avoid reducing German-language dark rock to its most familiar gestures.

The band looked comfortable with scale. Some groups visibly attempt to fill a large stage by increasing the quantity of movement; Schöngeist seemed more interested in using space compositionally, allowing the guitars, voice and more delicate textures to expand and contract around one another. The result was dramatic but not ridiculously inflated, and the performance benefited from the fact that they do not appear embarrassed by emotional or visual grandeur when the songs require it.

With Menticide, virtually all of that ornament disappeared again. Their set was based on something more elemental: repetition, pressure and the authority of rhythm. The old-school EBM vocabulary was obvious, but onstage it felt less nostalgic than brutally functional. Sequences were allowed to repeat until they acquired physical weight, while Johan Damm’s vocal delivery became almost another rhythmic device inside the construction.

What mattered was the economy. There was very little unnecessary information in the performance, and precisely because of that, small changes carried enormous effect. A shift in vocal intensity, an additional layer or a harder pulse could alter the entire atmosphere. On the Amphibühne, where elaborate productions can easily dominate attention, Menticide demonstrated the opposite principle: sometimes very little is required if every element has enough authority. There was also enough grime within the control to prevent the music from becoming a laboratory reconstruction of old-school body music.

I also caught Debdepan only briefly on Parkbühne, but they made an immediate impression. The Margate-based project is centred around Chelsea Tolhurst and Grace Bontoft, childhood friends who formed the band after writing together during lockdown, with Chelsea handling guitar and lead vocals and Grace bass and vocals; onstage they frequently expand the duo format with live drums. Their music has developed from the darker, more ethereal mood of the early Omen material towards something increasingly difficult to place neatly between dark alternative rock, post-punk, grunge, art-pop and dance-oriented electronics.

What I saw at NCN had exactly that appealing refusal to settle into a single category. There was considerable weight in the bass and guitars, but the music never became conventionally heavy; rhythm remained extremely important, giving the songs a restless, almost danceable momentum underneath the darker guitar textures. The vocals added another contrast, capable of sounding restrained and slightly detached before suddenly becoming much more immediate, while the musicians appeared completely comfortable allowing rougher edges to remain visible rather than polishing everything into immaculate dark-pop surfaces.

Their more recent material makes particular sense in that context. The 2025 Lovers & Others EP moves through grunge-inflected guitars, electronic pulses, heavy rhythm and a much more visceral form of alternative pop, with songs such as “The Girl” and “Habit” relying on sharp contrasts between apparent restraint and sudden bursts of physical force. On Parkbühne, even the few minutes I caught had that same quality: young, direct and slightly unruly, but with enough control underneath to make the collision of influences feel intentional rather than accidental.

I did not stay long enough to judge the complete set, but this was another of those NCN moments where a short photographic stop became a genuine discovery. Debdepan had personality immediately, both visually and musically, and there was something refreshing about a band entering a dark-scene festival without sounding as though they had constructed themselves specifically to satisfy the expectations of that scene.

Another overlap required movement between The Beauty Of Gemina and Lovataraxx. I saw only part of The Beauty Of Gemina, but the fragment was beautiful. The guitars were much more physical than the word “melancholic” might suggest, pounding and expansive without turning the material into conventional hard rock, while Michael Sele’s voice brought an entirely different emotional texture above them.

His delivery has something almost literary about it. The words seem considered not only for what they say but for how their sound changes the emotional meaning of the instrumentation around them. That created a beautiful opposition onstage: muscular guitars underneath, poetic vocals above, neither cancelling the other. The music could become forceful and still retain enormous inwardness. I would have liked considerably more time with the performance, because what I heard suggested one of those concerts in which the power arrives not through obvious aggression but through the coexistence of physical sound and reflective writing.

Lovataraxx approached physicality through reduction instead and were among the most elegant performances of the weekend for me. Their coldwave and minimal electronic language can initially appear restrained, but onstage that restraint becomes surprisingly energetic. There is excellent interplay between the performers, and rather than standing separately inside predefined roles, they seem continually to react to the same pulse.

That interaction gives the music a warmth that is not always immediately apparent within its colder surfaces. The structures are reduced enough that every movement and every change in vocal or electronic emphasis becomes visible, while the beat remains sufficiently insistent to keep the audience physically involved. I found the whole thing extremely graceful but never passive; the beauty came from precision and communication rather than decoration.

The Amphibühne later moved into the much denser artistic world of Samsas Traum. My own attention was primarily on Samsas Traum because I had particularly wanted to see Alexander Kaschte’s project again. My previous encounter had been years ago at Amphi Festival, and I had also interviewed him for Side-Line more recently, so this was one of those concerts in which past impressions, recent conversation and present performance inevitably entered the same frame.

Samsas Traum have never seemed entirely contained by the idea of a band playing songs. The project operates more like an extended artistic system in which music, literature, poetry, imagery and a dense network of references continually interfere with one another. The musical vocabulary has shifted radically across the years, through metal, electronics, gothic forms, orchestral elements and theatrical songwriting, but the continuity lies in Kaschte’s tendency to construct worlds rather than isolated tracks.

The beautiful Amphibühne lighting mattered enormously because Samsas Traum benefit from visual depth, yet it was not decoration. Light, language, gesture and sound appeared to participate in the same construction. Kaschte’s theatricality has always been pronounced, but what saves it from empty theatrical effect is the density behind it: phrases carry literary and philosophical associations, melodic beauty can coexist with violence, and apparent grandeur can suddenly expose something intimate, grotesque or painfully human underneath.

Calling this merely “poetic” is almost insufficient because poetry here is not synonymous with prettiness. It is compression, allowing several emotional registers and possible meanings to occupy a single image without obliging the listener to resolve them. Seeing the project again after so many years was therefore less like revisiting an old band than returning to an artistic language that had continued changing while I was away from it.

What I found especially moving was that the project still seemed capable of revision. I was not watching a beautifully preserved version of something I remembered from Amphi. Kaschte had changed, the language had changed and naturally I had changed as well. Yet the fundamental proposition remained recognisable: Samsas Traum as a place where music and language are not parallel components but parts of the same act of storytelling. In the Amphibühne light, the result felt less like a concert built around isolated songs than a temporary piece of theatre assembled

ACTORS presented a rather different logistical problem. Our Love Will Live Forever had been released only the previous day, on 4 September, so this was not simply another festival appearance by an established band but one of the first opportunities to hear material that had quite literally just entered the world. Having recently spoken with ACTORS about the record, I was especially interested in what would happen when songs I knew through headphones and conversation were suddenly placed in front of an audience.

The Parkbühne, however, was almost comically inadequate for the level of interest. ACTORS have long since grown beyond the dimensions of a stage that intimate, and with a new album arriving at precisely the same moment the problem became very physical: people packed tightly around the stage and sightlines disappeared almost immediately. At points it was practically impossible to watch what was happening unless you happened to occupy the right few square metres. There were technical problems as well, which complicated matters further, although neither the crowd nor the band appeared particularly willing to surrender the concert to them. If anything, the circumstances demonstrated rather efficiently that ACTORS now occupy a very different position from the one such a stage assignment might suggest.

What I could properly observe was interesting precisely because the new material did not arrive carrying an enormous sign announcing a new era. Jason Corbett and the band did not turn vulnerability into spectacle or insist upon a dramatic rupture with what came before. The songs entered the existing ACTORS vocabulary naturally: the visual precision and instinct for melodic shape remained intact, but beneath those carefully constructed surfaces there was a greater acceptance of instability, as though polish was no longer being asked to conceal quite so much.

Corbett’s delivery remained controlled rather than demonstrative, Shannon Hemmett supplied both electronic detail and an essential visual counterweight, while Kendall Wooding and Adam Fink gave the material considerably more bodily weight than its studio elegance might initially suggest. That contrast became particularly useful in these less-than-ideal circumstances. The performance could not depend entirely on perfect presentation – the stage was overcrowded from the audience perspective and the technical conditions were not flawless – yet the songs still survived contact with that disorder.

Leaving Parkbühne afterwards proved almost as complicated as watching the concert in the first place. The crowd had become so dense around ACTORS that simply working my way out and across the festival grounds took considerably longer than expected, which meant I reached SKYND very late and managed only two songs. I would therefore not pretend to review the set as a whole; this was genuinely a glimpse rather than a concert I properly experienced.

Even within those two songs, however, SKYND’s visual and musical identity was impossible to mistake. Since forming in 2017, the project has built its work around real criminal cases, combining industrial electronics, metal weight and heavily processed vocals with a visual language that places the singer somewhere between narrator, witness and deliberately constructed character. What struck me immediately was the precision of that construction. The make-up, movement, voice and sound do not feel like separate elements assembled around the songs; they appear to belong to the same unsettling system.

The vocals can move from something almost childlike or eerily detached into much harsher distorted registers, while the electronics underneath retain a heavy, deliberate pulse. What little I saw was intensely controlled visually, yet the subject matter continually destabilises that control because it refers back to actual human violence rather than fictional horror. Around the time of NCN, SKYND had also moved into material dealing with abuse protected by power and public status, with “Jimmy Savile” followed by “Johnny Kitagawa”, which suggested another shift in emphasis within the project.

Two songs are nowhere near enough to judge how successfully the complete set developed that material, and I will not pretend otherwise. What I saw was visually striking, sonically heavy and immediately recognisable; mostly, though, the experience became another illustration of NCN’s logistical cruelty. Sometimes the running order does not simply force a choice between bands. First it gives you ACTORS on a stage far too small for the audience they attract, and then makes escaping that audience part of the journey to the next concert.

Sunday

Sunday opened with Zalvox, and after two very dense days this was exactly the kind of performance I needed. Ribi’s electronics have an unusually tactile quality despite being carefully controlled, while Dorain’s voice gives the project its emotional centre. What continually surprises me about them is how naturally those two components converse.

Nothing seems overperformed. Ribi reacts to Dorain’s presence, Dorain inhabits rather than simply sings over the electronics, and small exchanges between them become part of the atmosphere. Her voice was especially beautiful at NCN. There is fragility there, but also confidence and considerable control, and the contrast with the electronic structures creates warmth without diminishing their precision.

The result was atmospheric without becoming sleepy, intimate without being withdrawn, and sufficiently detailed to pull an already festival-tired attention span back into focus. Their communication is one of the loveliest aspects of the project because it never feels as though one person supplies “the music” while the other supplies “the voice”; both participate in directing the emotional movement of the same material.

Grundeis then occupied the Amphibühne, and the contrast could hardly have been stronger. The Hamburg band move through post-punk, shoegaze, noise and gothic guitar textures, but what interests me is not the number of genres available for description; it is the way those textures continually change the emotional pressure of the songs.

On the largest stage, their handling of guitar density became especially impressive. Shoegaze can become indistinct outdoors because so much of its intimacy depends on saturation, while skeletal post-punk can seem disproportionately small once expanded into open space. Grundeis managed to preserve both density and definition. Layers of guitar accumulated, withdrew and blurred without becoming an anonymous wall, the rhythm section maintained genuine forward momentum, and Laura Müller’s vocals cut through without needing to overpower everything around them.

The stage suited them surprisingly well. Their music expanded into the space rather than merely occupying it, and there was enough movement inside the guitar structures to keep the performance engaging without resorting to excessive theatricality. It was post-punk in one of its more convincing contemporary forms: informed by history, certainly, but far too alive to resemble historical reconstruction.

The schedule then created an impossible choice between Lovelorn Dolls and Mayflower Madame, so I only saw short sections of each. Neither deserves the false certainty of a complete concert review based on a few photographed songs, but both left very clear impressions.

The Brussels project Lovelorn Dolls has always placed electronic gothic rock, heavier guitars and Kristell Lowagie’s expressive voice inside a visual universe where childhood imagery, dolls and apparent innocence can coexist with considerably darker emotional material. The short portion I witnessed still carried that tension strongly. There was theatrical colour, but also a much heavier musical foundation than the visual language might initially suggest.

Lowagie’s voice was the element binding those contradictions together. She can appear fragile one moment and considerably more forceful the next without either register feeling theatrical for its own sake. There was emotional intensity in the performance that made leaving particularly frustrating, and knowing the difficult history behind the project’s current chapter inevitably added another layer without needing to dominate the experience.

Mayflower Madame, from Oslo, created an entirely different kind of atmosphere. Their guitars seem to expand horizontally, creating a large sonic field rather than simply increasing volume, while the rhythm section continuously pulls that field forward.

The short portion I heard had an almost narcotic quality. Vocals were partially embedded inside the guitar texture, giving the impression that the songs were emerging from within the atmosphere rather than being placed over it. Yet the music never became static. There was always enough rhythmic tension beneath the psychedelic and shoegazing elements to prevent the set from dissolving into beautiful haze. It was dark, hypnotic and immediately distinctive, exactly the sort of performance where leaving after only a few songs feels particularly unfair.

The same problem returned with Mildreda and The Foreign Resort. Mildreda had been particularly high on my list because Realities had appeared only days before NCN, and I had already spent an unusual amount of time with the material, first while reviewing the album and then while discussing it with Jan Dewulf. That inevitably changes the experience of a concert. Instead of encountering the songs as unfamiliar objects, I arrived knowing many of their structures and emotional tensions in considerable detail, which made it fascinating to watch what happened when music I had previously examined almost microscopically was released into a festival environment.

What happened was not simply that the new material became louder. Onstage, Mildreda changed its proportions. Rhythms that can function almost architecturally on record became intensely physical, harsher electronic textures acquired actual impact, and Dewulf’s voice moved much closer to the centre of the experience. The new songs contain considerable vulnerability, but the performance never treated that vulnerability as fragility; if anything, the emotional openness made the aggression feel more purposeful. There was real force in the set, yet the quieter and more delicate passages retained their significance precisely because they were surrounded by so much pressure.

The circumstances made this even more interesting. Mildreda had to perform in uncompromising daylight, which is almost an act of sabotage against the usual visual grammar of dark electro. There was no darkness to extend the atmosphere, no possibility of disappearing into smoke, projections or carefully sculpted light, and therefore very little external assistance available to the music. Instead of weakening the performance, the exposure made its internal construction easier to perceive. Changes in density, rhythm and vocal intensity had to carry the dramatic weight themselves, and they did so remarkably well.

What I appreciated most was the sense that this was not a carefully preserved studio object being reproduced for an audience. Dewulf seemed fully inside the material, allowing it to become rougher, more immediate and more physically animated than its recorded version while still preserving the contradictions that make Mildreda interesting in the first place: severity beside vulnerability, precision beside abrasion and a very private emotional language projected through something much larger and more forceful. The daylight may have denied the band an obvious visual atmosphere, but it also proved that they did not need one.

My glimpse of The Foreign Resort was similarly brief, but the band’s physical understanding of post-punk was obvious immediately. Their guitars produce enormous atmosphere without sacrificing attack, while the rhythm underneath is far more urgent than the melancholy surface might initially suggest.

Even during those few songs, there was a strong sensation of movement. The sound expanded outward, but the pulse continually dragged it forward, creating the tension that makes The Foreign Resort more interesting than a purely atmospheric guitar band. I would have liked to stay because the performance seemed to be building rather than simply presenting its character immediately, but NCN’s simultaneous programme made that impossible.

One performance I deliberately refused to leave was Supersimmetria at Kulturbühne. Armando Alibrandi’s project occupies the borderlands between industrial techno, atmospheric electronics and detailed experimental construction, but its real fascination comes from gradual transformation.

The music does not depend on theatrical drops or obvious moments announcing that something important is about to happen. Rhythmic cells appear and begin changing function, frequencies thicken, microscopic details become suddenly structural, and only retrospectively does one realise how far a seemingly stable pattern has travelled. There is substantial intellectual precision involved, yet none of it feels academic because the body is implicated from the beginning.

This was one of those sets where I eventually put the camera away because continuing to photograph became a less adequate form of attention than dancing. The Kulturbühne’s relatively compact dimensions concentrated the sound beautifully, and the whole performance developed into that rare territory where analysis and bodily response stop competing. I stayed, I danced, and for music designed around the transformation of repetition, that may be more useful criticism than a catalogue of technical terminology.

Peter Heppner & Band changed the Amphibühne completely. There was already something celebratory in the atmosphere, particularly with Heppner’s birthday immediately approaching, but what made the concert emotional went considerably deeper than the occasion itself.

Some songs eventually stop belonging exclusively to the musicians who created them because listeners absorb them into their own biographies. “Dream Of You”, “Once In A Lifetime” and “Kein Zurück” have long since crossed that threshold. They become attached to relationships, departures, particular rooms, years, people who are no longer present and versions of ourselves we can remember without necessarily wanting to become again.

From my position with the camera, this accumulated history was visible across the Amphibühne. There were raised hands everywhere, people dancing, others almost motionless, and tears in more than one pair of eyes. Heppner’s voice still carries an extraordinary amount of emotional information without requiring theatrical demonstration, and the band gave the material enough scale to inhabit the amphitheatre without turning the songs into inflated festival versions of themselves.

Looking across that sea of heads and moving hands, I had the strange impression that thousands of people were listening to different songs despite the sound system playing exactly the same ones. Each listener had accumulated another version through the years spent with the music. That is one of the rare privileges of songs that survive long enough to acquire biographies beyond those of their authors.

Diary Of Dreams on the Waldbühne produced a related feeling for me, although in a far more private register. It was one of the few concerts at NCN that I experienced from beginning to end, and that completeness mattered because this was not a performance built around a sequence of isolated peaks. It developed gradually, with guitars, electronics, percussion, voice and light continually changing their relative weight, so that the emotional direction emerged through accumulation rather than through obvious theatrical cues.

At one point Adrian Hates raised both arms towards the musicians, and for a few seconds he looked almost like a conductor standing before his own small orchestra. The association with Diary Of Dreams’ work with the Philharmonie Leipzig was unavoidable, but what interested me was not any literal symphonic quality. It was the sense that Hates was directing movement, density and emotional pressure, allowing one element to rise while another withdrew and treating the band less as a collection of separate performers than as parts of a continuously changing structure.

That image also connected with something more personal for me. I have known Diary Of Dreams’ music for such a long time that I no longer hear many of these songs as fixed compositions. They have accompanied different versions of me, and what they meant when I was twenty is not necessarily what they mean now that I am over forty. When I was younger, a Diary Of Dreams concert could feel like being allowed into an intensely emotional private world, almost like opening a book whose atmosphere temporarily replaced everything outside it. Now the experience is more layered. Certain songs return with memories attached; others have gradually detached themselves from the circumstances in which I first heard them and acquired completely different meanings.

That, to me, is one of the more interesting measures of durable songwriting. A great song does not merely preserve the emotional conditions of the time in which it was written, nor does it require the listener to become their younger self again in order to respond to it. It changes because we change. Adrian Hates approaches the material differently after decades of performing it, the musicians around him alter its texture, the audience brings new biographies into the room, and the songs absorb all of that without losing their internal identity.

At NCN I was unusually aware of that movement between past and present. The music still carried the same recognisable emotional language, but my relationship with it had become more reflective, more nostalgic in places and, paradoxically, more open because I no longer needed it to mean exactly what it once meant.

That is why the concert felt so complete. Its emotional weight was not forced; it accumulated through pacing, detail, restraint and the extraordinary continuity of a musical world that has been changing for years without losing its centre. The image of Hates with his arms raised stayed with me because it seemed to capture precisely that process: not an artist preserving his past, but one still conducting it into new forms.

Finally, Die Krupps walked onto the Amphibühne. By then I had spent three days moving between stages, photographing, listening, talking and repeatedly forcing my concentration to reset for another performance. Familiarity should also have worked against them: I have seen Die Krupps enough times that I am not automatically impressed simply because “Nazis Auf Speed”, “Schmutzfabrik” or “Der Amboss” suddenly appear in a set. Yet from the opening sequence it became obvious that this was going to be one of those concerts where prior knowledge makes the reaction more meaningful rather than less.

The sound was phenomenal. Electronics remained hard, sharply defined and rhythmically exact, while the guitars had enormous abrasive weight without collapsing the mix into undifferentiated noise. With Marcel Zürcher back, that part of the sound had genuine physical presence again; his guitar did not simply reinforce the electronic structure but rubbed against it, destabilised it and introduced the friction that is essential to Die Krupps at their best. Their music may be founded on repetition, programming, steel and discipline, but its real power onstage comes from the moment when those controlled systems begin to sound as though they might exceed their own boundaries.

Jürgen Engler was outstanding, not because he resorted to exaggerated gestures but because he seemed constantly aware of the amphitheatre and of how the audience was responding. The chemistry across the band was equally strong, and that communication is one reason the performance could remain extremely tight while still feeling dangerous. The lighting was exceptional, the stage arrangement gave every musician visual and physical room, and the entire production seemed calibrated to increase impact without sacrificing clarity.

What surprised me was how quickly the analytical part of my brain disappeared. I know this material, I know how Die Krupps construct their concerts, and I have photographed them often enough to recognise many of the mechanisms involved, yet somewhere in the middle of the set I stopped evaluating them against previous performances and simply thought: they are astonishingly good tonight. That is a significant reaction precisely because novelty was not available to assist it. The band had to overcome familiarity through quality alone, and they did.

The concert had the physical force of a blow to the solar plexus, but it was not crude force. It was adrenaline organised with remarkable precision: excellent sound, magnificent light, aggressive electronics, guitars with real mass and a band operating with the confidence of musicians who understand their own history without behaving as though they are obliged to reproduce it ceremonially. Nothing about the set suggested a heritage act displaying evidence of its former importance. The songs were attacked rather than preserved.

As a finale to NCN, it was difficult to imagine anything better. The Amphibühne was packed, the audience was completely with them, and all the accumulated fatigue of three festival days was converted for a while into something much simpler and much more physical. I have seen Die Krupps many times; this was nevertheless one of the strongest performances I have ever seen from them, an absolute knockout and an almost perfect way to close the festival.

What remained

What remained with me afterwards was the same thing I had noticed while photographing the audience at the beginning of the weekend. For a festival with such a dense programme, so many stages and enough simultaneous attractions to keep everyone permanently negotiating with their own schedule, NCN feels remarkably unpretentious on the human level.

Every day can produce several completely different versions of the same festival depending on which direction someone turns, and yet the weekend rarely felt like a competition for maximum consumption. People stopped for conversations. Carefully prepared schedules were abandoned because someone had encountered an old friend. Audiences danced without appearing to calculate how visible they were while doing it. People ate together, exchanged recommendations, talked about what they had just seen and allowed the festival to become social rather than merely consumable.

That was also what changed my photography. I searched less for costumes and more for expressions, less for surfaces and more for those brief moments when somebody forgot there was a camera nearby. It required a different form of looking and occasionally a little more patience, but I think that difference explains something essential about NCN. The festival has an enormous programme and a range of music broad enough to move from fragile coldwave to industrial violence, from literary theatricality to post-punk guitars and large-scale synthpop within a matter of hours, yet the infrastructure never entirely becomes the subject.

Returning after 2023 therefore felt less like repeating an experience than correcting an assumption. I had remembered Nocturnal Culture Night primarily as an extraordinarily large and complicated festival that I was glad to have experienced once. Three years later I understood that its scale is only the visible part. Underneath it is a surprisingly human mechanism: musicians moving between very different artistic languages, audiences moving between stages and one another, and a festival whose constant motion somehow still leaves room for people simply to spend time together.

For me, after another long summer of festivals, that combination of musical abundance, physical intensity, curiosity and remarkably uncomplicated human contact was a very good place to finish.

Audience gallery

The full set of audience photographs Karo Kratochwil took at Nocturnal Culture Night 2026.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

SPK have never made much sense as an argument for artistic consistency. If anything, their history suggests the opposite: that continuity can reside in refusing to preserve a fixed sound, method or even definition of what a musical project is supposed to be. Graeme Revell’s current work as The SPKtR extends that principle into a very different technological environment, one in which artificial intelligence, algorithmic gatekeeping and increasingly unstable distinctions between human and machine production have become part of the artistic material itself.

Our conversation began with the contrasting directions currently emerging around The SPKtR and the considerably more abrasive SPKtR XXX, but quickly expanded into something larger: post-humanism, seduction as a mechanism of control, the politics of technological systems, the usefulness of unpredictability, nostalgia, artistic failure and the boundary between music and noise. We also returned to the difficult Wave-Gotik-Treffen debut and looked ahead to November’s Wroclaw Industrial Festival, where Revell intends to present something very different: not a reconstruction of early SPK, but an attempt to recover its confrontational principle using contemporary means.

The SPKtR interview

Karo: The SPKtR now appears to be developing along two currents: The SPKtR, where melody, atmosphere and cinematic scale seem to have more room, and SPKtR XXX, where noise and rhythm become dominant again. I find that distinction fascinating because it suggests more than two versions of the same project. Are they two different ways of acting upon the listener – one through seduction and immersion, the other through physical impact and confrontation? What can one communicate that the other cannot?

Graeme: You are absolutely right. It’s still quite early in my new period of creativity and I’m not sure what the parameters and boundaries of each project are yet. As a seasoned artist who has produced music in many different styles both for SPK and for film, I feel a little bit constrained by expectations. While ultimately I will move forward and produce music that I enjoy, I am aware of the audience that has supported me for decades and I am grateful to them.

So I have recreated just a few songs, whose tracks were destroyed in a fire two years ago, to show my love, but I don’t think it comes as any surprise to say that the broader SPK project was ALWAYS about change and defying expectations. Most bands play it safe at later stages in their careers by rehashing their old material to nostalgic audiences, but I prefer to live dangerously and present new material that reflects contemporary means of production and issues.

So, as you observe, these are two possible new versions of the project that reflect my love for both intense rhythm and noise on the one hand and melancholic and exotic melody on the other. Because they are extremes, it is difficult to jam them together, especially in a live concert context. But there are also other manifestations as yet unrecorded, and I wouldn’t say the project has bifurcated.

Karo: “The Last of Men” deals with the erosion of human exceptionalism and our increasing entanglement with technological systems. That is an enormous philosophical proposition to place inside a piece of music. How do you prevent an idea of that scale from turning the music into an illustration of a thesis? Can rhythm, distortion, frequency or the treatment of the voice carry an argument about what a human being is more effectively than words can?

Graeme: Another probing question. A four-minute song is never going to be able to deliver a coherent thesis on such a subject but, as with all my music, can act as a catalyst for somewhat deeper discussion outside of the music. My use of the term Information Overload as both a warning and a prescription for dealing with the social current of the late ’70s and early ’80s is a case in point.

“The Last of Men” is similarly a warning and, as you say, simultaneously aims at a constructive argument against human hubris, which is central to our survival past the very near future. Quite a lot of my music I view as a post-industrial style of “protest song”.

Going even further, the involvement of AI technology takes the project into the area of “post-humanism”, which I see not as the total removal of the human from the process, a la some of Cage’s modernist work for example, but as a decentring and a redefinition of our relationship with technology. I think the song can be an effective signpost for larger issues.

Karo: “La Encantadora Furiosa” introduces a rather different temperature: something darker and more romantic. It made me wonder whether seduction might actually be as important to your current thinking as technological menace. We tend to imagine our relationship with machines through fear, but the systems that transform us most profoundly are often the ones we willingly desire. Is attraction, even intimacy, becoming part of the language of The SPKtR?

Graeme: “La Encantadora” is certainly a different kind of song for me but does build on my years of film scoring, where I introduced a number of indigenous musical styles into film genres. From 1985’s “Zamia Lehmanni” I discovered my love of world music and very much enjoy exploring perhaps a different take.

Sometimes a piece of music is just a piece of music, but I have always agreed that seduction, especially in late capitalism, is an infinitely more efficient system of “normalisation” and submission than naked control. This is something that I have spoken about since the very beginning as a disciple of Foucault. It manifests today in the continuous dopamine hit of scrolling and has become more or less a fait accompli.

Karo: There is an almost absurdly perfect SPK story in what happened to “The Last of Men”: a piece written and performed by a human musician was removed from Bandcamp after an automated system apparently identified its audio as AI-generated. Early SPK examined institutions, psychiatry, media and systems of control; today some of that authority resides in platforms, recommendation systems and largely invisible algorithms. Did that incident change the way you think about where technological power now sits, particularly when the machine is no longer simply an artistic tool but a gatekeeper?

Graeme: Yes, I did it as a test of the gatekeeping actually. There are, in fact, small elements of the track that are AI-generated and I wanted to find out how good AI was at recognising itself. Quite good, as it turns out. So the incident definitely didn’t change any of my expectations.

I do, however, think it is absurd that the policing of the AI content fails to take into account that the content it is flagging actually owes its existence – partially but defensibly – to the very author, myself, which it has scraped. In other words, it has forbidden the creator to re-use his own IP. Now THAT is absurd.

It is a very complex ecology of power but, as with any technology, provides new possibilities while foreclosing others. The role of the artist is to expose these relationships and hopefully to go some way towards subverting them. In this case, the task is twofold: to contribute to the database more extreme content that will exist towards the outside edges of the probability distribution, and to adopt a practice of multiple iteration that allows one to favour these extremes in creating new content.

Karo: I would really like to ask about Wave-Gotik-Treffen because, from the outside, that performance seemed to acquire a drama of its own. It had been conceived as The SPKtR’s live debut with Robert, and then Robert became ill and could not perform. I also understand that at one point the show came very close to being cancelled altogether. Could you take us inside what actually happened that day, and how close you were to deciding that the performance simply could not go ahead?

Graeme: Yes, it was a shock and I really wanted to cancel because I knew that I could only deliver half of a show. It was only when I was begged by many people who had promoted and paid for the concert that I agreed to do my best. Perhaps it was the wrong decision, but onwards and upwards. I was lucky to have the wonderful Evi Vine accompany me on two songs, but the robot technology I had been working on could not be deployed because I was nailed to the keyboard.

Karo: What interests me beyond the circumstances is what that disruption revealed about The SPKtR itself. Did having to improvise around Robert’s absence expose possibilities that a technically perfect debut might not have? Is contingency still creatively useful in a project so dependent on technology and carefully constructed relationships between sound and image?

Graeme: I have always been a solo writer. Even when Neil, the original co-founder of SPK, was alive, we worked entirely separately except on stage. So my shows are tightly controlled from my workstation. Robert is in fact the wildcard improviser, so that contingency was removed by his illness and the show was the lesser for it.

The unpredictability is the fun thing about live performance and the robotic element is firmly still in this territory. We will see how it goes on tour!

Karo: Wroclaw Industrial Festival appears to represent almost the opposite proposition: SPKtR XXX, harder and much more rhythmically and sonically aggressive. How different should somebody who witnessed WGT expect Wroclaw to be? Are we talking primarily about different material, or about a fundamentally different relationship between sound, technology, visuals and the audience?

Graeme: The two shows will be very different indeed! I think there are only about four or five songs in common and I have radically remixed them. I am looking forward to WIF because I would like to re-establish the full-frontal assault that I think I began in 1978.

There are one or two contemporary acts that have taken up the mantle but overall, I have been profoundly surprised how many of my contemporaries have not come up with anything new in the last three decades. In fact, there seems to be quite a lack of exploratory energy.

With respect to the WIF set, I will try to deliver a visceral experience akin to how early SPK audiences described their reaction. The ubiquity of dark imagery nowadays means it is improbable to deliver the kind of visual shock that we once did, but sonically I think the experience is light-years ahead. It is a wonderful challenge!

Karo: Wroclaw also comes with a very particular audience – people steeped in decades of industrial and experimental music. Does performing in that context create an expectation around the name SPK that you feel any responsibility to fulfil, or is frustrating that expectation still part of the point?

Graeme: As I said earlier, I do feel some of that responsibility, but I also look forward to confronting their inevitable reactions, some of them no doubt critical, because throwing out different ideas is always the point. I always said that this variety of approaches was the essence of what has become lumped together under the term “industrial”. The difference is that SPK invokes this variety within a single show. I hope it’s exciting and fresh rather than frustrating.

Karo: You and Robert have described yourselves, broadly speaking, as composer and instrumentalist, but by now the collaboration must have moved beyond such a clean division. What interests me more is where the two generations actually disagree. Does Robert ever hear something you have constructed and tell you that it sounds too recognisably like SPK, or that an instinct which once felt radical has become historical vocabulary? And when those disagreements happen, who tends to win?

Graeme: As I have already stated, I am the sole writer apart from what Rob contributes on stage. So we definitely maintain a clean division. My work process is a very long one of self-criticism, which is why releases are few and far between. As such, there can be no disagreements.

He is free to offer constructive criticism and I would listen for sure. But it’s unlikely that he would, because he understands that making mistakes is all part of the joy for me. And he has his own solo project.

Karo: SPK has changed so radically across its history that perhaps its real continuity was never a particular sound at all, but an unwillingness to become fixed. With The SPKtR and SPKtR XXX now taking shape, what would constitute failure for you creatively? Would it be making something that alienates people, or would the greater failure be making something audiences immediately recognise, understand and comfortably identify as “SPK”?

Graeme: Absolutely, it’s about discontinuity – finding and exploring different definitions of what constitutes the boundary between what is considered music and what is noise. I would like younger generations to enjoy the music I love to create. Failure to engage beyond the wonderful fans that I already have would constitute a kind of failure.

Further, though, the “post-human” project is about shifting the appreciation of art from the old ingrained tendency towards aesthetic judgement to intelligent observation of the means of production. The incredibly rapid shift in the man-machine intellectual relationship – the means of production – is the crux issue of the day and is what my art is all about at the moment. This is not an easy shift for the listener.

I revel in the danger that I might alienate people because if they allow that to happen then they do not really belong in this, our space. Yet there will always be nostalgia and conservatism, and I will tell you a funny anecdote to finish.

I think it was our third ever gig in Sydney in 1979. At the first gig I had hidden one hand in my sleeve and was playing the synth with a large butcher’s hook tucked into it instead. After this third gig, an earnest young punk came up to me and said, “You guys were OK, but the band hasn’t been the same since The Claw left.”

About SPK / The SPKtR

SPK emerged in Sydney in 1978 around Graeme Revell and Neil Hill and became one of the formative projects associated with industrial music, although reducing their history to that category obscures how radically the project repeatedly changed its own vocabulary. Noise, extreme rhythmic experimentation, electronics, performance, increasingly melodic structures and eventually the atmospheric language heard on works such as “Zamia Lehmanni: Songs Of Byzantine Flowers” all appeared under the same name. That instability is important to understanding the present project: the relevant continuity is not one particular SPK sound, but an insistence that the project should remain capable of mutation.

The contemporary The SPKtR brings Graeme Revell together onstage with his son Robert Revell. Graeme remains the principal composer, while Robert introduces the improvisational element that Revell describes as the “wildcard” within performances. The music is currently developing through several possible manifestations rather than one fixed successor to SPK. Broadly, The SPKtR allows more room for melody, atmosphere and the cinematic vocabulary Graeme developed during his long career as a film composer, while SPKtR XXX foregrounds rhythm, noise and considerably greater physical aggression. Revell is careful, however, not to define these as permanent boundaries; other forms remain possible and, in his words, the project has not simply “bifurcated”.

That distinction will become particularly tangible during the forthcoming European dates. The tour begins on 7 November at Wroclaw Industrial Festival, where SPKtR XXX will present the harder configuration. Revell says only four or five pieces will overlap with the material heard at Wave-Gotik-Treffen, and even those have been radically remixed. His stated intention is not to reconstruct the SPK of the late 1970s, but to recover something of its “full-frontal assault” through contemporary production possibilities.

SPK / SPKtR – Europe 2026 tour dates

• 07.11.2026 – Wroclaw, Poland – Wroclaw Industrial Festival @ Stary Klasztor
• 10.11.2026 – Copenhagen, Denmark – Loppen
• 12.11.2026 – Gothenburg, Sweden – Monument 031
• 13.11.2026 – Stockholm, Sweden – Klubb Dod @ Nalen
• 16.11.2026 – Vienna, Austria – Liccht @ Viper Room
• 17.11.2026 – Leipzig, Germany – Hellraiser
• 21.11.2026 – Budapest, Hungary – S1 Beer Factory
• 22.11.2026 – Zagreb, Croatia – Boogaloo
• 23.11.2026 – Kranj, Slovenia – TrainStation SubArt
• 28.11.2026 – Pordenone, Italy – XXII Congresso Post Industriale @ Capitol
• 01.12.2026 – Augsburg, Germany – Rockfabrik
• 02.12.2026 – Berlin, Germany – Urban Spree
• 03.12.2026 – Utrecht, Netherlands – De Helling
• 05.12.2026 – Sint-Niklaas, Belgium – BIMFEST @ De Casino
• 06.12.2026 – Athens, Greece – Black Temple

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Dismantled are back with new material. Gary Zon‘s electro-industrial project will release the new single “Zero” on 18 September 2026 through Metropolis Records, with a new full-length album set to follow in November. The six-minute track is already listed by digital retailers as a Metropolis release, while the label’s current Dismantled page continues to carry the project’s catalogue.

There is considerably more history behind “Zero” than the announcement might initially suggest. The track first surfaced as part of a three-song preview for an album called “Endless”, uploaded to Dismantled’s Bandcamp in November 2021 alongside previews of “Mirror’s Edge” and “Poison”. At the time, the album was expected in 2022 through Metropolis Records in North America and Dependent Records in Europe.

The project itself had been announced even earlier. In May 2020, Zon revealed through Metropolis that he was working on an album titled “Endless”, which he described at the time as combining different periods of the Dismantled catalogue into a more cohesive sound, specifically referencing Standard Issue, the self-titled debut and The War Inside Me. That announcement accompanied “No Escape”, a track written during the early months of the pandemic.

Six years later, a current retail listing gives “Endless” a 20 November 2026 release date on CD. Metropolis has not yet published a complete 2026 album page, tracklist or detailed production credits, so those details remain unconfirmed for now.

“Zero” therefore functions both as the beginning of Dismantled’s new release cycle and as the return of material that has been evolving publicly for several years. The single is listed at 6:14 and will be available digitally in 24-bit/44.1 kHz resolution. Beatport currently categorises the track under Ambient / Experimental and lists it at 110 BPM, although Dismantled’s own history has always been rooted much more broadly in electro-industrial, EBM and electronic music.

About Dismantled

Dismantled began as a studio experiment by Gary Zon in late 2000, initially inspired by the sound of Front Line Assembly. Zon gradually added vocals and drew on influences from film, television and electronic music, developing a layered combination of electro-industrial electronics, melody and trance elements. A first demo appeared through mp3.com in 2001; Dependent Records subsequently included “Purity” on its Septic II compilation, and Metropolis Records contacted Zon later that year.

The self-titled debut followed through Metropolis in 2002, with Post Nuclear arriving in 2004. Later releases included the Breed To Death EP, Standard Issue, The War Inside Me in 2011, the Whole Wide World EP in 2012 and The Hero in 2016. Metropolis currently lists “No Escape” from 2020 as Dismantled’s most recent release in its catalogue. “Zero” marks the project’s first new material in six years.

For now, what is confirmed is simple: “Zero” arrives on 18 September via Metropolis Records, and a new Dismantled album follows in November. All available evidence points toward that album being the long-developed Endless, but complete official album details from Metropolis are still awaited.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

There is a productive contradiction at the centre of SIERRA VEINS: what can appear almost uncontrolled onstage depends on an unusually rigorous degree of preparation. Lighting cues and instrumental parts are fixed in advance, yet the security of that technical structure is precisely what allows the performance to become less predictable, more physical and more responsive to the room. The same relationship between control and surrender exists in the writing process. Images, colours, places and even titles can precede the music itself, so the visual world is not something designed afterwards to illustrate finished songs; it belongs to the same compositional vocabulary from the beginning.

That interconnected thinking became particularly explicit on “In The Name Of Blood”, SIERRA VEINS’ second album, released in November 2025. Its exploration of identity, inheritance and DNA coincided with the transition from SIERRA to SIERRA VEINS, while the recurring image of veins and cables allows biology and technology to occupy the same visual language. The album also reflects how profoundly performing has altered the way SIERRA composes: although the stage is not allowed to dictate the writing, certain moments were deliberately created with physical performance in mind.

That tension between human instability and machine precision extends well beyond the album. In February 2026, SIERRA VEINS released the 19-track “HypnoVizion 031: SIERRA VEINS” DJ mix, using selection and sequencing to expose musical interests that extend outside her own production, while January 2027 will bring her first Australian dates alongside Carpenter Brut, revisiting an artistic relationship that previously produced “Power”.

I spoke with SIERRA VEINS just a while before her performance at Nocuturnal Culture Night Festival in Deutzen – about why artistic abandon requires technical security, composing simultaneously through sound and images, allowing the body to influence electronic music, the changing meaning of songs once they reach the stage, collaboration as a question of shared emotional language, and why the next significant evolution of SIERRA VEINS may happen visually before it happens musically.

Sierra Veins interview

Karo: I have seen you live several times now, and one thing that keeps fascinating me is that I never feel I am watching exactly the same show twice. The visual language is recognisable, the songs are familiar, but the physical intensity, the movement and even the way the light seems to interact with you change every time. How much of a SIERRA VEINS performance is actually fixed, and how much is allowed to mutate according to the room, the audience and your own state that night? Is there a carefully constructed structure that gives you the freedom to become almost wild inside it?

SIERRA VEINS: I’m glad to hear that. My live show is very structured: the lighting and the parts I play with my instruments are predetermined in advance, but there are many things that can vary from one show to another, beyond simply the selection of songs, and make the experience different.

The size of the venue, the location or type of festival, the lighting and sound setup, which can change from one place to another, and of course my own performance all have an influence. From one night to another, depending on how I feel and what is happening in the moment, I can interpret a song in one way or another.

Karo: You have said that when you begin an album, you often start with atmosphere, images and mood boards before the actual composition, and that with “In The Name Of Blood” the visual world of blood, veins, cables and green existed very early in the process. That makes me wonder whether “visuals” is even the right word, because it suggests something added to music afterwards. Do you experience light, colour, sound and movement as separate elements at all, or are you effectively composing one work in several sensory languages?

SIERRA VEINS: Indeed, all the EPs and albums I’ve released so far were written with a universe already in my mind. I often have images, colours, places or even song and album titles in mind before I actually start writing them. Bringing all these ideas together allows me to create a kind of starting point that then guides the way I compose and gives a direction to the whole project.

So I don’t really separate the music from everything that surrounds it. For me, it’s all part of the same universe and everything develops together.

Karo: There is a contradiction in your stage presence that I find particularly interesting. From the audience it can look uncontrolled, extremely physical, almost feral, yet you have said that when the organisation is precise, the equipment works and everything around the performance is properly under control, your performance becomes much stronger. Does abandon actually require discipline? Do you need to construct a completely safe technical framework before you can allow yourself to become unsafe artistically?

SIERRA VEINS: That’s exactly it. When I feel confident and reassured by the technical side of things, and when I feel that the situation is under control, that’s when I can completely let go and feel much freer on stage.

I think it’s the same with my writing process. The moments when I manage to go where I really want to go creatively are the moments when I feel safe enough to let go of some of that control.

Karo: You have also explained that you thought much more about live performance while writing “In The Name Of Blood”, particularly creating room to move away from the machines and towards the audience. That is interesting because it reverses the usual process of making a record and then figuring out how to perform it. Has the body now entered your compositional thinking from the beginning? When you write something new, do you already know what you will physically need to do with it onstage?

SIERRA VEINS: When I started SIERRA VEINS, I didn’t actually intend to perform live. I wrote my first EPs without thinking about any of this, and I was very far from those considerations.

Then, little by little, as I started playing more shows, I realised that some tracks that work well on record don’t necessarily translate as well on stage. And the opposite is also true: some tracks that have a strong impact live aren’t necessarily the most listened to.

Today, I don’t want those considerations to be at the centre of my mind when I’m writing, but I do like to keep a few ideas about the live show in the back of my mind while I compose. On my latest album, there are definitely some moments that I wrote specifically with the stage in mind.

But it’s still very difficult to know in advance how a track will translate live. You only really discover that once you start performing it and seeing how it feels on stage and how the audience responds to it.

Karo: The current stage design uses cables as part of the language of veins, blood and identity, but I also read those cables in another way: they belong equally to electronic machinery. The image is simultaneously biological and technological. Is that ambiguity interesting to you? Your music is created electronically, but your performance is intensely bodily; do you see SIERRA VEINS as existing somewhere in that tension between machine precision and the instability of a human body?

SIERRA VEINS: Yes, that ambiguity is definitely something that interests me. I’m fascinated by digital art, technology, computer-based music and all of that, but at the same time, it’s very important to me that human emotions remain at the centre of what I write.

It’s quite similar on stage. I wouldn’t want to spend an entire 1h10 show behind my machines. I like the idea that my live shows alternate between moments that are purely electronic, where I’m interacting with my machines, and other moments that are more stripped back technologically, with more space for my voice and my physical presence on stage. That contrast between the human and the machine is important to me.

Karo: You once said that it is difficult to generalise about audiences from one country to another because the energy can change completely from one concert to the next. Having watched you more than once, that makes sense to me because your performance seems unusually responsive to the immediate space. What actually changes you most: the size of the stage, proximity of the audience, the architecture of the venue, technical limitations, or simply the energy coming back at you? Have you ever walked onstage with one idea of what the concert would be and realised within the first few minutes that the room required something completely different?

SIERRA VEINS: I would say the technical aspect is probably what can influence my performance the most. My show is quite demanding technically, both in terms of lighting and sound. And as I mentioned earlier, if I don’t feel confident for one reason or another, my performance on stage will definitely be affected. My energy and mental space might be entirely focused on making sure that everything runs properly from a technical point of view.

Then I would say that what can vary the most is the energy coming from the audience. And that really depends on the configuration and size of the venue, the time of the show, etc. There are no rules. But one thing is certain: the more responsive the audience is, the more energy I give on stage.

And yes, it happens very often that I walk on stage and, after a few songs, realise that it’s not at all what I expected. You can never really know in advance.

Karo: “In The Name Of Blood” deals with identity, inheritance, DNA and the uncomfortable question of how much of ourselves is chosen and how much is already carried within us; even the transition from SIERRA to SIERRA VEINS became part of that idea. But then you have spent months performing those questions repeatedly in front of strangers. Has the live cycle changed your own relationship with the album’s subject? I wonder whether performing a work about identity night after night makes that identity feel more settled, or whether repetition reveals that it is actually much less stable than you thought.

SIERRA VEINS: Performing the album on stage for the past few months hasn’t really changed the way I see the questions around identity that I explore on the album.

However, my relationship with the songs can change a lot through performing them. Some of them take on a different dimension on stage, and some that I may have felt less attached to at first become very important in the live show, and vice versa. So I would say that it’s not necessarily my perception of my own identity that evolves through performing, but rather my relationship with certain songs.

Karo: Your most recent release is “HypnoVizion 031: SIERRA VEINS”, a 19-track DJ mix for HypnoVizion. I find that format interesting in relation to your own records because an album constructs identity through sounds you create, whereas a DJ mix can construct identity through choices, transitions and relationships between other people’s music. What can you say about yourself through selection that you perhaps cannot say through composition? Do you consider sequencing and juxtaposition another form of authorship?

SIERRA VEINS: I think DJ mixes are mostly a way for me to show a broader range of my musical tastes. I listen to a lot of music that is quite different from what I produce myself, so it’s a good opportunity to share that side of what I like. There is obviously a creative process in selecting tracks, finding the right transitions and building a progression throughout a mix, so yes, I think it can be a form of authorship, but it’s really difficult to compare it to composing music.

Karo: Collaboration has appeared repeatedly in your work, from HEALTH, Carpenter Brut and Gunship around “A Story Of Anger” to Ghost Dance on “Memory Cells” from “In The Name Of Blood”. What makes a collaboration genuinely worthwhile to you? Is the most interesting collaborator someone who understands your language immediately, or someone who introduces an element that initially feels incompatible with it? In other words, are you looking for recognition or productive friction?

SIERRA VEINS: A collaboration is really worthwhile when you feel there is an artistic understanding. For me, the most interesting collaborator is someone who speaks the same artistic language, and I don’t necessarily mean having the same artistic universe. I mean someone who understands the emotion, the vibe, even if our universes can sometimes be very different.

For me, a good collaboration is mostly about communication and understanding each other from the start.

Karo: You have now announced your first Australian tour for 2027 supporting Carpenter Brut, which gives another chapter to a creative relationship that already includes “Power”. Does returning to the same artistic relationship years later feel different once both artists have moved forward? And does touring together create possibilities that a studio collaboration does not, perhaps even for something new to emerge between the projects?

SIERRA VEINS: A lot has changed since we first worked on “Power”. The last time we toured together, I hadn’t released an album yet and I had much less experience on stage. So going to Australia together several years later will obviously be a very different experience, and I’m really looking forward to it.

As for new collaborations, I’d be very happy to work together again. We’ll see what happens!

Karo: You said earlier this year that you were still composing, experimenting with new sounds and working on remixes, but that you deliberately did not want to rush into defining the next release; interestingly, you have also said that although you do not yet know what form that next release will take, you already know something about its visual direction, its colours and its vocabulary. So perhaps this is the right place to finish: when you imagine the next version of SIERRA VEINS, what feels as though it actually needs to change? Is the next step primarily musical, visual, performative, collaborative, or are you beginning to imagine a form in which those distinctions no longer make much sense?

SIERRA VEINS: I’m taking a lot of time to experiment with different things, think, and figure out where I want to go next. It’s still a little unclear, but I’m moving forward with my research. Maybe my answer will be different in a few months, but right now, I think the next evolution of the project will probably be more on the visual and graphic side. I won’t say more for now.

About SIERRA VEINS

SIERRA VEINS is a Paris-based French electronic artist whose work moves through darkwave, EBM, synthwave, techno and heavier electronic forms. The project began in 2017 under the name SIERRA, after a period devoted to learning electronic production, and developed through releases including “Strange Valley,” “Gone” and the 2023 full-length “A Story Of Anger.” The change from SIERRA to SIERRA VEINS was announced in 2025; rather than signalling a musical reinvention, the new name gave a more individual identity to the project and coincided naturally with the themes of inheritance, blood and identity explored on the second album.

Released on 7 November 2025, “In The Name Of Blood” centres on identity and the inherited information carried through DNA, with the name change itself incorporated into the album’s creative framework. The record includes “Memory Cells,” created with Ghost Dance, while earlier work has connected SIERRA VEINS with artists including Carpenter Brut, HEALTH and Gunship.

Her catalogue has increasingly developed in parallel with an elaborate performance language in which lighting, electronic machinery, voice and movement are conceived as interconnected rather than supplementary elements. That approach is particularly visible in the current “In The Name Of Blood” show, where the visual vocabulary of veins and cables deliberately collapses the distinction between the biological and technological body.

In February 2026 she released the 19-track, 46-minute “HypnoVizion 031: SIERRA VEINS” DJ mix, combining her own music with selections from artists including Boys Noize, Matteo Tura, Corvad, Ghost Dance and others.

In January 2027, SIERRA VEINS will travel to Australia with Carpenter Brut, joining the project for shows in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne before both appear at Froth & Fury Festival in Adelaide. The dates extend a collaboration that previously resulted in “Power” and arrive at a point when SIERRA VEINS is deliberately resisting the pressure to define her next release too quickly. For the moment, she suggests that the next substantial transformation may take place first in the project’s visual and graphic language rather than through an immediately identifiable musical shift.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

HANDS will return to Berlin’s Urban Spree on Saturday, 2 January 2027 for another New Year edition of HANDS Label Night, bringing together six live projects and two DJ sets for an evening moving through rhythm’n’noise, industrial techno and the harder edges of electronic music.

The live line-up features SONAR, NULLVEKTOR, GREYHOUND, ICD-10, ESPECTRA NEGRA and MARIE, while HANDS founder Udo Wiessmann and HELLS will take care of the DJ sets. The night begins at 19:00, with doors also opening at 19:00.

It is a particularly representative cross-section of the label’s history and current direction. SONAR, the Belgian project of Dirk Ivens and Eric Van Wonterghem, remain one of the defining names associated with rhythm’n’noise; their most recent HANDS album, “Future Cries”, arrived in 2023 after a nine-year album break. NULLVEKTOR, Stefan Böhm’s long-running project, connects industrial techno with rhythm’n’noise and has been part of the HANDS orbit since the early 2000s.

GREYHOUND return with their uncompromising rhythmic approach, while ICD-10 arrive after releasing “Quantum Disruption” in May 2026, an album built around industrial-techno propulsion, seismic low-end pressure and tightly controlled rhythmic structures; it also includes a collaboration with GREYHOUND on “Merging Power”. ESPECTRA NEGRA, the project of Verónica Mota, brings the darker and more abrasive end of industrial techno to the bill, while MARIE completes the six-act live programme.

The event also continues what has become a recurring Urban Spree tradition. HANDS staged its previous New Year Label Night there on 3 January 2026, following other Berlin editions at the same venue. The Dortmund-based label itself was founded by Udo Wiessmann in 1990 and became closely associated with the development of rhythm’n’noise while maintaining a catalogue extending into industrial techno, IDM, breakcore, ambient, electronica and sound art.

HANDS Label Night Berlin – Saturday, 2 January 2027, Urban Spree

Live:

• SONAR
• NULLVEKTOR
• GREYHOUND
• ICD-10
• ESPECTRA NEGRA
• MARIE

DJ:

• UDO WIESSMANN
• HELLS

Doors / Start: 19:00

Both e-tickets and limited physical hard tickets are available through HANDS Bandcamp. For those who prefer to begin the year with considerably more noise than champagne, Berlin already has its first serious industrial appointment of 2027.

About HANDS

Udo Wiessmann founded HANDS in 1990 in his home town of Fürth in Franconia as an outlet for his own projects Atrum, Severance and Winterkälte, starting with limited-edition cassettes and industrial compilations. The first CDs followed in 1994 and the first vinyl, a Winterkälte 7″, in 1995. In the late 1990s the label moved to Dortmund and began issuing full albums on CD, opening with the debuts of Orphx, Ah Cama-Sotz and Needle Sharing and continuing with Mono No Aware, S.I.N.A. and Xabec. Winterkälte’s drum’n’noise records became reference points for the rhythm’n’noise scene, and the catalogue later extended into industrial techno, IDM, drum & bass, breakcore, ambient, electronica and sound art with acts including Nullvektor, Empusae, Geistform, Wieloryb, Monolith, Greyhound and Ontal, alongside reissues of The Klinik back catalogue. Between 1997 and around 2004 the label also ran the vinyl-only power electronics and noise sublabel 220N, and most of its sleeves and paper CD packs are designed by Nicola Bork.

Live events sit at the centre of the label’s calendar. Wiessmann started the Forms of Hands label festival in 2001 with Michael Pfefferkorn and the promoter LaborNeun; since 2012 it has taken place at the Förderturm in Bönen in the Ruhr area, and each edition comes with a “Forms Of Hands” compilation of exclusive tracks by the acts on the bill. The Beats and Noise event at the Kulttempel in Oberhausen returns on 10 October 2026 with Sonar, Ancient Methods, Maschinenkrieger KR52, Hysteresis, ICD-10 and Mortaja. In Berlin, a HANDS Label Night at Bi Nuu marked the label’s 28th year in January 2018 before the series settled at Urban Spree, where it now runs twice a year: a summer edition (8 July 2023, 28 June 2025 and 27 June 2026) and a New Year edition. The sold-out 4 January 2025 night had Sonar, Eric De Vries, Greyhound, Templer, Espectra Negra and Phasenmensch on the bill, and 3 January 2026 brought Ah Cama-Sotz, Maschinenkrieger KR52, Supersimmetria, 16Pad Noise Terrorist and Incendie. The 2 January 2027 night is the third New Year edition of HANDS Label Night at Urban Spree in a row.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Agonised Too‘s “EYE CRY” is structured around a refusal of extremes. Its artwork contains neither pure black nor pure white, and Bartosz Hervy describes the music in almost exactly the same terms: it remains close to black, occasionally approaches brightness, but always stops somewhere in the greys between them. That is more than an aesthetic decision. Across the record, vulnerability is rarely presented without some form of resistance, melody can offer access to difficult emotions while simultaneously threatening to make them too comfortable, and distance can function both as protection and as withdrawal.

It also makes “EYE CRY” a marked departure from “Summer Suffering”. Hervy describes the first album as a deliberate engagement with the 1980s and New Romanticism, including the familiar contradiction between brighter music and considerably sadder lyrical content. The releases that followed were already moving elsewhere, but “EYE CRY” makes that change explicit: colder, broader in its musical vocabulary and conceived as something fluid and almost trance-like, where individual sounds matter less as isolated details than as parts of a continuous emotional movement. Melody has not disappeared; Hervy now places melody and rhythm on equal footing, while deliberately working against sweetness through rougher textures, dynamic changes and arrangements continually rebuilt around Rafał Tomaszczuk’s voice.

That relationship between intimacy and scale became particularly clear at Castle Party, where the duo brought this material onto a much larger stage without inflating its emotional language. The arrangements became rawer and more physical, low frequencies gained weight, and Bartosz Hervy’s visual work expanded into something closer to an additional instrument than an illustration behind the musicians. At the same time, the chemistry between Hervy and Tomaszczuk remains grounded in a friendship of more than twenty years rather than in rigidly assigned stage roles.

I spoke with Bartosz Hervy and Rafał Tomaszczuk about the movement from “Summer Suffering” towards “EYE CRY”, why difficult emotions do not require melodrama, melody as both an invitation and a risk, creating music around a voice rather than placing a voice over finished music, the visual architecture of Agonised Too, and the quieter, more cinematic territory the project may explore next.

Agonised Too interview

Karo: When I reviewed “Summer Suffering”, the music placed emotional unease inside an almost luminous, immediately melodic form. “Lurking Fear” already suggested a darker psychological space, while “EYE CRY” feels colder, more severe and more willing to disturb its own beauty. Did you recognise this progression while it was happening, or did each release reveal the direction only after it had been completed?

Bartosz: First of all, I would like to point out that our first album, “Summer Suffering”, was a tribute to the 1980s, New Romanticism and the bands we listened to and grew up with as kids. It had a self-contained form that was meant to be based on what had been created in music back in the ’80s. It is well known that songs from that era were often ambiguous: the music was frequently sunnier and brighter while accompanied by sad, reflective lyrics. We tried to make use of that on our first album as well. However, our first EP from 2022, the subsequent singles and the singles released after “Summer Suffering” were already outlining the path we wanted to take. This direction is more musically open, definitely darker and utilises a broader set of expressive tools. With “EYE CRY”, it was also very important to us that the album felt trance-like, fluid, told a musical story and made you feel that every single sound had its proper place.

Karo: “EYE CRY” is an emotionally intense title, and in less disciplined hands it could easily lead towards melodrama. The album avoids that through restraint, detail and a certain emotional intelligence. How did you decide which feelings should be spoken directly and which needed to remain concealed inside the arrangements?

Bartosz: I think it came naturally. It wasn’t like we intentionally wanted to hide anything. At least from my side, all the feelings I had while composing the music were poured out immediately. However, I don’t like overly literal forms that directly expose our vulnerability or the topic we want to talk about. I think “EYE CRY” is also a slightly playful title. On the album sleeve, it is written as “EYE” “CRY”, something that is more visual, something you can see, not just hear or feel. But already by the third track, which is the title track, the name changes to “I Cry”, which is much more direct. These feelings might seem subdued because this album is not based on extremes. On a continuous spectrum, it sits somewhere close to black, but it is still a dark grey, a graphite. Sometimes it approaches brightness, almost white, but it is always an off-white or a light grey.

Rafał: For many years now, Bartosz and I have been creating, together or separately, music and content brimming with emotions. These are usually difficult emotions, which we sometimes cannot name or define, yet they are so deeply rooted within us that we feel the only way out and the only salvation is to translate them into a musical or verbal message. Perhaps it is precisely because they are genuine and organic that they protect us from falling into cheap and unnatural dramas. Furthermore, having learnt from experience, we know when not to take the next step that would risk entering the “forbidden zone”, that is, resorting to cheap tricks designed to draw listeners’ attention to our emotions in an almost primitive way. We know full well that our listeners are intelligent and won’t fall for it. 🙂 That’s why we try to stay alert and keep our finger on the pulse. Being natural and conveying genuine emotions gives us, to some extent, a guarantee that we won’t fall into our own trap.

Karo: Rafał, the lyrics examine coping, withdrawal and the need to create distance from a world that can be terrifying and beautiful within the same moment. Is that distance presented as protection, or does the album also recognise the point at which self-protection becomes another form of isolation?

Rafał: Keeping my distance from myself and the world in general is, alongside music, one of the most effective tools I have to protect myself. I’m no preacher; I don’t give advice on how to deal with emotions because I simply don’t know. However, by sharing what I feel, what’s inside me, I might help someone find common ground with me, and perhaps then they’ll feel a little better, perhaps they’ll understand something, feel something, or even find an answer to the issues troubling them. That’s why I find it so difficult to talk about my lyrics, and I don’t want to interpret them in my own way, as that would rob listeners of the chance to find their own meaning in them. Let everyone “play” with them according to their own rules, using their own key.

Karo: The cover refuses a simple black-and-white division, and the music behaves similarly: tenderness can sit beside discomfort, while melodic clarity often carries something far less stable underneath. How important was it to leave these contradictions unresolved rather than guide the listener towards one definitive emotional interpretation?

Bartosz: The album consists of shades of grey, and the cover itself, interestingly enough, is not black and white; neither pure white nor pure black was used there. It uses shades of grey that lie in between. This cover was meant to repel. If you were to compare it to feelings, at first you want to push away those heavy emotions. People who feel bad, who experience discomfort, are not always seen as welcome company. People prefer those who are smiling and cheerful, yet these problems exist within all of us. Often, people who seem smiling and very friendly on the surface are hiding something inside. We live in very anxious, overstimulated times, and many people feel this discomfort inside while not showing it on the outside. On the cover, we showed a greater level of discomfort than what you actually experience while listening to the album. For me, as the creator of the graphic design and the band’s visual materials, this was a complete counterweight to the cover of “Summer Suffering”, which was almost glamour: yellow with a black, disco-ball-style heart. Here, we wanted to go in a completely different direction. The cover looks as if someone has already damaged it. People say it looks worn out, but it’s simply a graphic meant to signify that there are scratches somewhere inside and we need to pay attention to them.

Karo: Melody remains fundamental to Agonised Too, even as the production on “EYE CRY” becomes colder and more experimental. How do you recognise the point at which melody gives the listener necessary access to a difficult emotion, and the point at which it might make that emotion too attractive or too easy to consume?

Bartosz: I know that Rafał is a huge fan of melody. I am too. The older I get, the more I believe that melody is the foundation of music, alongside rhythm. There was a time when rhythm was more important to me, but now melody and rhythm stand on equal footing. I try to balance it so as not to make the album too “sugary”, which I personally couldn’t identify with, because I always prefer rougher content and blending contrasts. Dynamic, almost cinematic changes have always been crucial to me. I tried to make sure everything had its place: the vocals and lyrics had to be clear, sometimes enhanced with audio effects. There is a lot of melody in the vocals, so you have to tread lightly to avoid oversweetening it. On the other hand, the rhythm is meant to be trance-like. I like trance, I like how songs flow and change while still forming an integral whole.

Rafał: What Bartosz says is very important. Generally speaking, we’re all looking in the same direction, but each of us sees things through a different lens. Perhaps that is precisely where the key to our “success” lies.

Karo: Bartosz, the album contains considerable sonic detail, yet it rarely feels crowded. There is pressure, but also carefully protected space around Rafał’s voice. How do you construct that balance? Do you begin by building the electronic environment, or by identifying the emotional space the vocal needs in order to remain exposed?

Bartosz: We create in a rather interesting way. Rafał gets initial outlines of the tracks to familiarise himself with them, then he writes the lyrics and sings. At the same time, I keep working on the backing track, so a second or third version of the music is often created before the demo vocals are even recorded. However, once the actual vocals arrive, I write and rebuild the music directly around them so that everything forms a unity. The point is for the vocals not to feel like an element just glued onto a finished backing track, but for the whole thing to sound like a single, organic organism.

Karo: Your Castle Party performance was splendid because the intimacy of “EYE CRY” survived the scale of the Castle Stage. The low frequencies became more physical, Rafał’s delivery carried much farther, and the material seemed larger without becoming emotionally inflated. What did you change in the arrangements or performance to make these songs inhabit such a large open space?

Bartosz: I always try to prepare the arrangement slightly differently for live performances compared to the album. An album follows its own rules: frequencies must be balanced so that it is pleasant to listen to repeatedly without fatigue. Live, aside from the fact that we play part of the material live and the vocals are live, I like to boost the low frequencies and bring out elements that are subtler on the album. I like to push certain instruments to the front and hide others. I simplify the arrangement a bit, but I make it rawer and more emotional, so that it overwhelms the listener in a very positive sense, making them feel the music not just with their ears, but with their entire body.

Rafał: Thank you for your kind words about our performance. 🙂 As Bartosz says, each of our gigs is slightly different. I won’t hide the fact that before the Castle Party gig I had some concerns, which I mentioned to Bartosz. They were about the size of the stage and whether we’d feel “isolated” on it as a duo. It’s hard for just the two of us to fill that space in a way that holds the audience’s attention. Fortunately, my concerns turned out to be unfounded because, thanks to Bartek’s brilliant visuals and the chemistry we share during our performances, we were able to fill that space on our own terms.

Karo: Bartosz, the Castle Party visualisations were among the most precisely integrated I saw during the festival. They did not illustrate the lyrics literally; at times they followed the music, while elsewhere they seemed to resist it through delay, distortion or disappearance. Did you design them as a parallel narrative, an emotional counterpoint, or as another instrument within the performance?

Bartosz: Visualisations are another instrument in our performance and an integral part of who we are. We always play with them. Since I do this professionally, creating and editing video, it was natural to incorporate this element into Agonised Too. I always say that I simply think in images. When I listen to music or when Rafał and I discuss a new track, I see images in my head first, and only then comes the sound. So, the visualisations are another layer of the show for us. Some of them are reworked music videos, while others were created exclusively for the live set. I want the audience to get that “third factor”. At Castle Party, we had incredible opportunities. Seeing these videos on such a massive screen amplified the emotions. Watching the concert footage afterwards, I thought to myself: “Cool, that’s exactly what I wanted, that’s how it was supposed to look.”

Karo: Onstage, Rafał appears to carry the vulnerable human centre of the material, while Bartosz controls the electronic and visual architecture surrounding him. How carefully is that relationship constructed, and how much freedom remains for one of you to alter the emotional direction of a song during the performance?

Bartosz: This relationship stems from the fact that Rafał and I have known each other for over 20 years and we are friends. We talk practically every day. The distance, the fact that I live between Gdańsk and Poznań, and Rafał lives in Białystok, has absolutely no impact on the emotions in our music. Onstage, we want to be integrated, but each of us retains our own personality. Nothing is artificially staged or forced; we don’t have rigid expectations of each other. In electronic music, where there are only two people on stage, authenticity is paramount. We simply rely on natural energy, and that complements us well.

Rafał: You’ve put it perfectly. Bartosz and I work instinctively, fitting the pieces of the whole together seamlessly. It’s a sort of instinct that allows us to tune our radars to the same frequency. This gives us a freedom that, in turn, translates into the studio and live quality of our music. Of course, our long-standing friendship, which Bartosz mentioned, helps us a great deal in this!

Karo: After “Summer Suffering”, “Lurking Fear”, “EYE CRY” and the experience of bringing this material to Castle Party, which part of the Agonised Too language now feels fully explored, and which element still seems unfinished, something you have discovered but have not yet pushed far enough?

Bartosz: In the future, I would like us to dive even deeper into highly emotional and atmospheric tracks. Electronic music doesn’t always have to rely on a fast, danceable rhythm; there is immense power in spirituality and apparent delicacy. An example of this direction is “Fire Has Seen It All”. It is probably our least “concert-ready” track. We haven’t played it live yet, but to me, it is the most cinematic, visual and emotionally raw piece we have ever recorded. Further exploring this cinematic, deep side of Agonised Too is definitely something I want to develop on future releases.

Rafał: For my part, I’ve been feeling comfortable and at ease lately with dance- and beat-driven music, which are, of course, united by a good melody, so I think our current artistic directions and visions will lead us to something unique, fresh and, most importantly, sincere in its message.

About Agonised Too

Agonised Too are a Polish electronic duo consisting of Bartosz Hervy and Rafał Tomaszczuk. Hervy is responsible for the project’s music, production and visual identity, while Tomaszczuk writes the lyrics and provides vocals. Their collaboration also rests on a friendship extending for more than twenty years, despite the musicians currently living in different parts of Poland.

The project’s first material appeared in 2022 with the “First Track” EP on 21 December, followed by the “Type Zero” EP on 21 March 2023, both mixed and produced by Hervy at ROOM XII. The duo came out of Agonised By Love. Their first full-length album, “Summer Suffering”, released on 20 June 2024, established an aesthetic deliberately informed by the 1980s and New Romanticism, and closed on a cover of Army of Lovers’ “Obsession”. Hervy describes that record as a self-contained tribute to music the musicians had grown up with, including the characteristic contradiction between bright, melodic arrangements and reflective or melancholic lyrics. Subsequent material gradually moved towards a broader and considerably darker electronic vocabulary, through the single “The Same” on 6 August 2025 and “Safer/Stronger” on 6 June 2026.

Their second album, “EYE CRY”, released on 26 June 2026, develops that change much further. Rather than relying on constant extremes, the record was conceived around gradations and contrasts: darker production, trance-like rhythmic movement, melody balanced against rougher textures and carefully protected space around Tomaszczuk’s voice. Its seven tracks are “Negative Space”, “Lurking Fear”, “I Cry”, “Fire Has Seen It All”, “Are You Afraid Of Tomorrow?”, “Safer/Stronger” and “The Same”. Hervy also created the album’s graphic identity, deliberately rejecting pure black and white in favour of damaged surfaces and shades of grey.

Visual work is integral to Agonised Too rather than an accompaniment added to the music later. Hervy works professionally with video and describes himself as thinking in images, with some concert visualisations derived from music videos and others created specifically for performances. The duo treat this imagery as a “third factor” alongside sound and performance.

Their Castle Party appearance on 19 July 2026, on the Castle Stage at Bolków Castle, demonstrated how that audiovisual approach can expand to a major outdoor stage. Hervy altered the arrangements by emphasising low frequencies, simplifying certain components and bringing previously subtle elements forward, while Tomaszczuk’s initial concern about whether two performers could occupy such a large stage was ultimately answered by the combination of their chemistry and the scale of the visual production.

The next direction may emerge from an interesting tension already visible between the two musicians. Hervy wants to push further into cinematic, atmospheric and emotionally exposed material, naming “Fire Has Seen It All” as the deepest example of that side of Agonised Too so far, while Tomaszczuk currently feels especially drawn towards dance- and beat-driven music anchored by strong melody. Rather than pointing towards two contradictory futures, those instincts may simply extend the method already at work on “EYE CRY”: allowing different emotional and musical states to coexist without forcing them into a single colour.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Prague Gothic Treffen has become one of the fixed points of my year, and I think the reason has less to do with ritual than with continuity. I return to the same island, recognise many of the same faces, meet people I may not have seen since the previous summer, and yet the two days never feel interchangeable with what came before. Music is the reason everybody travels to Prague, but PGT has always understood something that larger festivals sometimes lose when they become increasingly efficient machines for delivering artists to audiences: a scene only remains meaningful when the people inside it still want to meet one another.

The twenty-first edition, held on 28 and 29 August 2026, made that idea physically larger. Fuchs2 and Bike Jesus were joined by Vila Štvanice as a third full venue, which brought the programme to three parallel stages and 21 performances, eighteen of them Czech premieres and one a European premiere. The festival was sold out, and the expansion unquestionably gave the programme greater range, although it also made this the most physically demanding edition I have covered. The three spaces are close to one another on Štvanice island, but a short walk becomes something else when hundreds of people are moving in the same direction, rooms are full and another band has already started a few metres away.

As a photographer, that changed my own relationship with the weekend as well. There were performances I watched but barely photographed because the light made meaningful pictures difficult, and others where the area around the stage was so dense that I simply stopped trying to move further forward. I understand that completely. The audience has paid to experience a concert, not to spend it negotiating a corridor for photographers, and I would much rather come home with fewer images than behave as though an accreditation places me above the people standing in front of me. PGT has always felt unusually clear about that hierarchy, and for me it is one of the reasons working there remains enjoyable even when the practical circumstances become exhausting.

Friday: the Treffen part of Prague Gothic Treffen

Friday was the more social half of my weekend, although I did actually begin by behaving very professionally and going straight to Kadeadkas. The Cologne band, founded in 2016, describe their own music as a mixture of the raw, clinical post-punk of the early 1980s, psychedelic elements and punk energy, which is quite close to what makes them appealing without reducing them to a period exercise. Their set had abrasion and movement rather than nostalgic neatness, with guitars that retained enough dirt to keep the songs unsettled and a rhythm section that pushed rather than simply supported them. They were a good first band precisely because there was no ceremonial sense of easing the audience into the weekend; the music arrived quickly, directly and with enough punk instinct to shake off the afternoon before the festival had really begun.

CattaC shifted the atmosphere into considerably darker electronic territory. Jens Helmis and Christian Schinköthe describe the German duo through dark electronics and rock, and that combination explains why their material carries more weight than a purely sequenced club project without becoming guitar music wearing electronics as decoration. What I enjoyed was the tension between the solidity of the programmed structures and the vocals, which brought a much more human sense of damage into the machinery. There is a particular kind of dark electronic music that becomes less interesting the more technically immaculate it sounds; CattaC avoided that by keeping enough emotional grain in the performance, so the songs had shape and discipline without feeling sealed off from the room.

Skelesys was one of the Friday performances I particularly wanted to include because his position between guitar music and club electronics is more interesting than simply calling the project darkwave. Born in Buenos Aires and now based in Berlin, Skelesys moved from the darker electronic and EBM-inflected Epsilon material towards a more explicitly song-based combination of synth-pop, post-punk and goth on the 2024 debut album “Fading Echoes”. That history could be heard in the way the set operated: rhythm remained central, but guitar texture gave the music a more tactile, slightly corroded surface, while the vocals kept it from becoming purely dancefloor-oriented. There is a melancholic pull to Skelesys that never quite resolves into romantic softness, and in the intimate space of Vila Štvanice that mixture of movement and introspection worked particularly well.

Darkways brought yet another version of guitar-driven darkness. The Barcelona band’s second album, “Rust”, came out in January 2026 and deliberately revolves around decay, ageing, impermanence and the erosion of identity, while musically combining darkwave and post-punk with rock, metal and synthesizer-based influences. The attraction is that those elements do not appear as separate genre markers that need to be checked off one by one. The guitars give the songs weight, the synths expand their atmosphere, and the melodic writing remains immediate enough to carry the audience with it rather than asking everyone to admire the production from a distance. There is a melancholy in Darkways that feels muscular rather than passive, which made the set easy to enter even when I was already starting to divide my attention between music, photography and the people appearing around me.

By then Friday had begun to do what Friday at PGT usually does to me: the timetable slowly lost its authority. I started meeting people I had not seen for months, then somebody else joined the conversation, then somebody I had not expected to see appeared, and the five minutes supposedly available before moving to another stage expanded into twenty. This is not an accidental by-product of the festival. The organisers explicitly describe the “meeting”, the Treffen, as the central thing they want to provide, with the three venues designed as spaces between which people can move, meet and mix rather than as isolated concert rooms. My Friday followed that philosophy almost embarrassingly well, because somewhere in the middle of all those conversations I stopped trying to win against the programme.

One of the casualties was OH Madonna, and this is the one I genuinely regret. I had wanted to see them, but Vila Štvanice was already difficult to enter and the surrounding timetable simply made it impossible to be everywhere at once. The project is still relatively young and has been developing quickly through darkwave, coldwave and synth-led material, which made this one of the performances I was especially curious about rather than a band I casually sacrificed. Missing something you actually wanted to see is always frustrating, but I would rather admit that than pretend I meaningfully experienced a set from somewhere near a doorway. I hope there will be another chance somewhere on the road, because OH Madonna remain on my list.

I did make it back for Black Nail Cabaret, and they again demonstrated why they have become one of the most distinctive visual presences in contemporary dark electronic music. Emese Árvai-Illés and Krisztián Árvai have worked as the Hungarian duo since 2008, and their sixth album, “Chrysanthemum”, pushed their characteristic “pop noir” language into material preoccupied with death, fear and the difficulty of letting go without sacrificing the seductiveness of the songs themselves. What I admire about them onstage is the intelligence of the imbalance between the two performers: Krisztián can remain comparatively contained behind the electronics while Emese controls the visual field with extraordinary economy. She does not need to move constantly, because one deliberate gesture, one change in posture or the way she holds the audience’s gaze can acquire far more weight when everything around it is restrained. The result is beautiful, but never merely decorative; the elegance contains a certain severity, and her voice is strong enough to make that tension audible rather than leaving it entirely to the image.

Friday ended for me with Vomito Negro, which was almost the opposite proposition. The Belgian project was formed in 1983 and belongs to the foundational history of European EBM and industrial electronics, with a catalogue that has repeatedly moved between dancefloor pressure, ambient material, harsh vocals and more contemplative electronic forms. There is no need for a band with that history to imitate the surface vocabulary of contemporary dark electronics, and the set benefited from precisely that lack of anxiety. The machinery was allowed to sound like machinery, the rhythms had genuine physical density, and the performance carried the severe economy of music that learned long ago that atmosphere does not require endless layering. After an evening in which I had spent almost as much time talking as listening, Vomito Negro provided a suitably uncompromising endpoint.

Saturday: this time I actually followed the music

Saturday was deliberately different. I had done most of my catching up the night before, so I treated the second evening as the day for music, which meant considerably more movement between Fuchs2, Bike Jesus and Vila Štvanice and considerably less standing outside with people promising each other that a five-minute conversation really would only take five minutes.

I began with Majo Polyak & Radmila Svensson, whose work sits on the border between dark electronica and art-pop and has developed through collaborations that often treat sound, voice and image as parts of the same compositional environment. Their 2023 album “Neverending Story” was followed by “Angles morts” in November 2025, again involving Svensson and spoken-word artist Paulína Feriancová. The set was considerably more energetic than the melancholy and layered studio material might suggest, with Svensson giving it a strong physical centre while the projections expanded and destabilised the stage around her. I particularly liked that the visual component never functioned as expensive wallpaper; it changed how the music was perceived, sometimes making the space feel intimate and at other times almost disproportionally large, which is exactly what good visual work should do.

Panic Priest arrived with an additional point of interest because Prague was the European premiere of Jack Armondo’s Chicago project. Armondo’s “Once Wild”, released in August 2025, broadened the project beyond its darkwave foundations through glam, Italo disco, new wave and more overt guitar presence, while retaining the baritone voice and doomed-romantic character that have always made Panic Priest immediately recognisable. The set began with technical problems, which is never the ideal way to introduce yourself to a new continent, but the recovery was more interesting than a perfectly smooth beginning would have been. Once the machinery cooperated, the guitar gained increasing importance and the performance acquired a much stronger rock edge, while Armondo’s voice remained the central dramatic instrument. Instead of allowing the difficult start to flatten the show, he gradually converted it into momentum.

At El Ángel Exterminador, the visual impression hit me before I had time to analyse the musical one. The Berlin-based post-punk, darkwave and deathrock project consists of Alejandra Batalla on vocals, Ludo-Van on guitar and marZiano on bass, and its March 2026 album “Crónica” brings together new recordings with remastered material from the group’s earlier cassette period. The guitars and percussion were ferocious, but Batalla stood in the middle of that force in a red dress and with long black hair, looking almost like a priestess presiding over the noise rather than someone trying to compete with it. That visual authority would have meant little without the voice, and this was where the performance became genuinely impressive: she could remain audible, expressive and emotionally dominant against guitars capable of swallowing a weaker singer whole. The contrast between the elegance of her appearance and the physical aggression surrounding her gave the entire set unusual tension.

Cryo required a factual correction before anything else, because the current configuration is no longer Martin Rudefelt with Torny Gottberg. In 2026 Cryo consist of Martin Rudefelt and Ville Hising, with Hising also known from Run Level Zero and as DJ Rauz; their first concert in this new formation took place only on 25 July at MiNi-festival in Genarp. What surprised me in Prague was how little sense of transition remained. The rhythm was hard, clean and extremely physical, the synth structures retained the mechanical precision Cryo have built over roughly two decades, and the lighting amplified that architecture rather than simply flashing over it. There was a great deal happening rhythmically, but the set never became cluttered, because each repetition seemed to accumulate pressure instead of merely repeating information. For a configuration still very new onstage, the chemistry already felt convincing and, more importantly, alive rather than cautiously rehearsed.

Corlyx were among the strongest surprises of Saturday because the current full-band formation has altered the scale of what the songs can do. Caitlin Stokes and Brandon Ashley are now joined by bassist Davide Rocco and drummer Flow Toulman, and the new 2026 material has increasingly exploited that configuration: “Sweeter Than Blood”, “More Anarchy” and August’s “Your Heart In The Serpent’s Mouth” all lead towards a new album planned for early 2027. The guitars sounded huge without losing definition, the real drums gave the songs much greater forward force, and Stokes remained completely dominant at the centre of it all. She is visually striking, certainly, but what impressed me was how little the show depended on image once the band began playing; the music had enough weight to support every theatrical gesture. Corlyx have moved well beyond the limitations of being described simply as a darkwave act, and the combination of gothic atmosphere, alternative-rock muscle and melodic immediacy makes far more sense when heard at full physical volume.

Horror Vacui followed by stripping away much of that polished construction and reminding everyone where a large part of gothic music’s nervous system originally came from. The Bologna band describe themselves wonderfully as “punker than dark, darker than punk”, and their new album “Shadows Sanctuary”, released on 7 August through Artoffact, examines darkness as a form of protection against a culture of constant visibility and exposure. The philosophical starting point is interesting, but the immediate experience was much less abstract: screaming, guitars, drums and the kind of tightly wound aggression that makes the body understand the music before the intellect has any chance to interpret it. After several electronic sets, Horror Vacui felt almost cleansing in its refusal to smooth the edges. Their current material may have moved somewhat further towards atmospheric goth rock, but the punk impulse is still audible in the attack, and that tension keeps the songs from becoming museum-perfect versions of darkness.

Then came Potochkine, and for me there was no real competition for the highlight of the weekend. I have seen Pauline Alcaïdé and Hugo Sempé several times, and I still never reach the stage where I think I have absorbed enough of what they do. Their 2025 album “Sang d’Encre” continues the duo’s peculiar collision of poetry, techno, EBM, darkwave and synthetic harshness, with a theatricality that never loses its intimate, almost confessional quality. Hugo can stand behind the electronics almost like an operatic figure inside dense smoke and brutal light, apparently holding the entire architecture in place, while Pauline converts that structure into movement. Her dancing is not choreography laid over electronic music; it seems to emerge from the rhythm itself, violent one moment, controlled the next, continually giving the impression that the body is trying to outrun whatever the music has set in motion.

Every time I photograph Potochkine, I begin with the professional part of my brain switched on, watching the light, anticipating movement and trying to calculate where the next usable frame will appear, and every time I eventually realise that I am dancing almost as much as I am shooting. Their performances feel like contained explosions, or balls of fire, because the music underneath Pauline’s movement is actually extremely precise while everything happening above it suggests release, excess and the possibility of losing control. That contradiction is what makes them so addictive for me. The theatricality never becomes self-conscious, the aggression never eliminates sensuality, and the danceability never turns the songs into neutral club material. I could see Potochkine repeatedly and still leave wanting another set, which is probably the simplest explanation of why they were my PGT highlight again.

I had hoped to catch at least part of NITE, but this became one of the points where the physical reality of the weekend defeated me. Vila Štvanice was so packed that entering and reaching a meaningful position became difficult enough that I eventually stopped trying, particularly after Potochkine had already taken most of my energy. The official timetable makes clear how compressed the second half of Saturday was, with Potochkine beginning at 22:15, NITE at 22:30 and The Danse Society at 22:50 in three different rooms. Sometimes the correct response to a festival schedule is simply to admit defeat rather than pretend that two songs heard from the back of an overcrowded doorway constitute a review.

My final major set was Buzz Kull, Marc Dwyer’s Sydney-based solo project, which has been operating since 2012 at the intersection of darkwave, EBM, industrial electronics, minimal synth and synth-pop. The February 2026 EP “Deep Hate” pushed that language towards a particularly severe kind of industrial pop, built around propulsive rhythms and an atmosphere that remains detached and nocturnal even when the music is extremely danceable. Dwyer understands how much authority can be generated without filling the stage with movement; surrounded by smoke and very heavy light, he can appear almost statuesque, like somebody standing inside the machinery rather than in front of it, while small changes in posture or delivery suddenly alter the entire tension of the room. I have seen Buzz Kull before and that economy still fascinates me, because minimal movement does not produce minimal impact. He commands rather than chases the audience, and the resulting set was a beautiful, hard and appropriately exhausting end to my Saturday.

What PGT gets right

The practical difficulty of this year’s edition is real. Expanding to Vila Štvanice gave Prague Gothic Treffen a broader and more ambitious programme, but a sold-out festival across three stages also meant that some rooms became difficult to access, certain transitions took longer than expected and overlaps occasionally forced decisions I would rather not have made. I missed OH Madonna, gave up on NITE, photographed some bands far less than I intended and occasionally realised that I had barely found time to eat because I was moving between venues again.

None of that, however, is what I will remember first.

The greatest value of Prague Gothic Treffen continues to be its people, and I do not mean that in the vague festival-review sense in which every crowd is described as wonderful because nobody wants to insult the readers. There is something structurally different about the atmosphere here. People notice each other, help one another, make room and talk easily to strangers, while the organisers have made the principles behind that atmosphere unusually explicit: racism, homophobia, xenophobia, transphobia, harassment and violent behaviour are grounds for immediate removal and bans from future Sanctuary events. This year there were also people visibly available around the venues to help anyone feeling unwell or unsafe, and the bartenders and staff again treated safety as part of running the event rather than an inconvenience to be dealt with after something has gone wrong.

What matters is that those policies rarely feel as though they are being imposed on a fundamentally hostile crowd. They describe behaviour that is already largely present among the people who come here, which is probably why Friday can disappear into conversations without feeling like time stolen from the festival. Those conversations are part of the festival. The organisers themselves say that while the line-up matters, the meeting is the point, and after attending PGT year after year I think that distinction explains its longevity better than any list of bookings could.

There is already a reason to mark the next summer in the calendar. The poster displayed at this year’s festival announces XXII Prague Gothic Treffen for 27 and 28 August 2027, with the first four names confirmed as Dina Summer, Twisted Nerve, The Spoiled and HUIR, with more still to be announced. It is already a wonderfully strange cross-section: Dina Summer bring the dark-disco and synth-wave world of Local Suicide and Kalipo; the Edinburgh veterans Twisted Nerve connect PGT directly to the punk-to-goth transition of the early 1980s; The Spoiled represent a much newer Italian post-punk perspective; and Barcelona duo HUIR arrive after releasing “States of Light” in May 2026.

That announcement felt like an appropriate way to leave Prague because PGT has never worked for me as a collection of isolated concerts. Friday was almost equally about people and music; Saturday was an intense sequence of performances in which Potochkine set the standard impossibly high, Cryo showed that a changed line-up can immediately find its own chemistry, Corlyx sounded bigger and more physical than ever, El Ángel Exterminador gave me one of the weekend’s most arresting visual and vocal performances, and Buzz Kull once again proved how much power can come from disciplined restraint. Around all of that were the conversations, accidental meetings, people dancing, people taking care of each other and the strange little community that reassembles on Štvanice for two days every year.

That is why Prague Gothic Treffen remains one of my yearly traditions. I go there to work, I take far too many photographs, I run between stages, I inevitably miss something I desperately wanted to see, and at some point I put the camera down because the music is too good not to dance. What makes me return, however, is the fact that none of those experiences happen in isolation. At PGT, music still feels inseparable from the people gathered around it, and after twenty-one editions the word Treffen still describes the festival better than anything else.

About Prague Gothic Treffen

Prague Gothic Treffen is an annual dark alternative festival held on Štvanice island in Prague and run by the Sanctuary organisation. The twenty-first edition took place on 28 and 29 August 2026 and sold out. It ran across three parallel stages for the first time, with Vila Štvanice joining the existing Fuchs2 and Bike Jesus venues, and carried 21 performances, of which eighteen were Czech premieres and one a European premiere.

The 2026 bill included Kadeadkas, CattaC, Skelesys, Darkways, OH Madonna, Black Nail Cabaret and Vomito Negro on the Friday, and Majo Polyak & Radmila Svensson, Panic Priest, El Ángel Exterminador, Cryo, Corlyx, Horror Vacui, Potochkine, NITE, The Danse Society and Buzz Kull on the Saturday. Panic Priest’s set was the European premiere of Jack Armondo’s Chicago project.

The organisers publish a conduct policy under which racism, homophobia, xenophobia, transphobia, harassment and violent behaviour are grounds for immediate removal and a ban from future Sanctuary events, and staffed the 2026 edition with people available around the venues for anyone feeling unwell or unsafe.

The twenty-second edition is set for 27 and 28 August 2027. Dina Summer, Twisted Nerve, The Spoiled and HUIR are the first four acts confirmed, with the rest of the bill still to be announced.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Rue Oberkampf‘s “Wehmut” is not simply a darker or quieter variation on what the band has done before. The more consequential change is where the music now seems to take its instructions from. Julia de Jouy and Oliver Maier say that although they have recorded much of Rue Oberkampf’s music in a rented cabin in the woods, their more club-oriented work was historically fed by the city. On “Wehmut”, the landscape itself moves into the composition: the Lower Bavarian environment in which they grew up, the Goldsteig trail, the sea between Belgium and Finland, and field recordings that retain the identity of the places where they were captured.

That geographical shift coincides with a musical one. Ten years into Rue Oberkampf, the duo feel that much of the current darkwave cycle, including its successive waves and hypes, has already been told. Post-metal and dark folk became important not as genres to imitate, but because of their ability to accumulate tension, physical weight and atmosphere. At the same time, “Wehmut” does not reject the band’s club history. Instead, it seems to open another vocabulary that can eventually be brought back into harder music.

The title is equally precise. Rue Oberkampf distinguish “Wehmut” from nostalgia: nostalgia fixes its attention on something irretrievably past, while Wehmut, as they understand it, can be experienced and even enjoyed in the present, carrying longing without requiring loss. That distinction runs through a record concerned with landscape, transience, language and the limited amount of the world any one person can experience.

I spoke with Rue Oberkampf about longing for places never visited, why six tracks were enough, using languages as musical materials, what field recordings preserve, the influence of post-metal, the next stage of their live presentation, and why predictability would ultimately be a reason to stop.

Rue Oberkampf interview

Karo: “Wehmut” has no exact English equivalent; it sits somewhere between melancholy, nostalgia and longing, but none of those words quite contains it. What interested you in building an album around an emotion that becomes less precise the moment you translate it? Does naming a feeling clarify it, or can language also reduce something that is valuable precisely because it remains difficult to define?

Rue Oberkampf: Nearly two years ago, we started recording the first fragments of “Wehmut”, and we both had the feeling from the very beginning that this was going to develop in a different direction from the things we had done before.

During the creative process, the word “Wehmut” emerged naturally because that was the feeling we both experienced at the time. And yes, we completely agree that the word loses some of its emotional depth when you translate it. But we wanted the title to be a word that expressed something we felt deeply within ourselves.

For us, it’s much more about the feeling than the word itself. Wehmut is also closely connected to the region where we were both born and raised.

Karo: What I find most intriguing about “Wehmut” is the possibility of missing not only something lost, but something never actually experienced. That almost produces nostalgia without memory. Where does such longing come from for you? Can an imagined place become emotionally as real as a remembered one?

Rue Oberkampf: We’re very lucky to have seen many beautiful places around the world. We filmed a video in Patagonia for “Congélation”, experienced temple stays in South Korea, and saw […] landscapes and cities in Japan.

During the production of “Wehmut”, we experienced the rough sea on a container ship travelling between Belgium and Finland, and we hiked along the old Goldsteig trail through the Bavarian Forest. Experiences like these stay with you. And as soon as you’re back home, you start missing those places.

At the same time, you become aware that there are thousands of other places in the world that you will never see, simply because there isn’t enough time in one life. You can long for something you’ve never even seen. You can imagine its beauty, but you’ll never know what it actually feels like.

That’s a beautiful, but also painful, kind of longing. And this is one part of where Wehmut comes from for us.

Karo: Four years separate “Wehmut” from “Liebe”, yet the new album consists of only six tracks. Was that concentration deliberate from the beginning, or did the record simply reach a point where adding more would have altered its emotional proportions? How do you recognise when an album has said enough?

Rue Oberkampf: You’re right with the second thought. We knew the recording was finished when we felt that every facet of our experience of “Wehmut” had found its place somewhere on the album.

Some feelings and emotions don’t necessarily become stronger by repeating them over and over again. Sometimes, saying enough is part of saying something honestly.

“Blanc Poney” in particular is a song we’ve loved for years, but we always had the feeling that “Liebe” was the wrong album for it and simply wasn’t the right time to tell that story. So we completely rearranged and re-recorded it from scratch, to bring its soul to a new and more loving home with “Wehmut”.

And there’s also a more technical reason: vinyl generally sounds better when you put fewer songs on each side. But that was really more of a nice side effect than a reason for making the album shorter.

Karo: The track titles move between English, French, German and Bavarian dialect: “Tonight”, “Come on Moon”, “Blanc Poney”, “Into the Woid”, “Sonne”, “Darkness”. Does changing language also change the emotional temperature of a song for you? Are there ideas that become more intimate, more distant or even more truthful when expressed outside your primary language?

Rue Oberkampf: Maybe yes. In fact, we choose languages like we choose instruments or sounds.

We close our eyes, listen to what we already have, and eventually words, phrases or even entire sentences come to us very intuitively. We can’t really decide which language we’re going to use before we have the basic structure and sounds of a song. Sometimes the vibe simply seems to call for a certain language.

The language becomes part of the sound and atmosphere of the song rather than just a vehicle for the lyrics. Creating art is mostly about listening to what comes up and recognising the diamond ideas hidden within it, and then taking a lot of time to shape and polish those diamonds.

Karo: “Into the Woid” is particularly interesting because “Woid” immediately roots the song in a very specific linguistic and geographical landscape. Rue Oberkampf has always carried a cosmopolitan identity, beginning with the French name itself. Was there a conscious desire with “Wehmut” to move away from abstraction and allow actual geography to become part of the project’s identity?

Rue Oberkampf: We both grew up in an area of Lower Bavaria with dense, dark forests, small hidden creeks, lots of snow and a lot of rough, untamed nature in general. There are many tiny villages with strong local dialects, surrounded by deep forests.

There were times when some of these places could be cut off from civilisation for months during the winter. Even today, you can still feel how deeply this environment has shaped the people who live there.

That’s one of the reasons why we’ve recorded almost every Rue Oberkampf album since the beginning in a rented cabin in the woods. But until now, the inspiration for most of our more club-oriented songs came primarily from the city.

This time, it was different. We didn’t just record in this area and let the surroundings influence the atmosphere of the recording process. We consciously drew inspiration from the landscape itself, from memories and situations connected to it, and from the particular atmosphere of that region.

Karo: The album contains literal traces of places: forest recordings from Buchberger Leite, waves from Kiel, and woodland and owl sounds in “Into the Woid”. A field recording seems documentary, yet the moment it enters a composition it acquires another meaning. Do you regard those sounds as evidence of places you experienced, or as raw material from which an entirely fictional landscape can be constructed?

Rue Oberkampf: Actually, the field recordings we use on “Wehmut” are very clearly recognisable as the sounds of the specific places where we recorded them.

We didn’t sample them in order to integrate them into melodies or beats, or to create some kind of fictional soundscape. Instead, we wanted to bring the original atmosphere of those places into our songs. In a way, we wanted the music to carry a piece of the actual place with it.

The recordings are therefore more like traces or memories of real places than raw musical material.

Karo: Post-metal appears among the influences around “Wehmut”, although the record does not simply adopt the obvious vocabulary of that genre. What interested you in it beyond guitars or heaviness? Was it more about duration, accumulation, dynamics, physical weight, or the way tension can be sustained without immediate resolution?

Rue Oberkampf: Rue Oberkampf has existed for ten years now, and both of us have the feeling that the story of current darkwave and its many waves and hypes has been told. We felt the need to express something different. Something more organic, mystical and profound.

For quite some time, we’ve been listening to many different styles of music, especially post-metal and dark folk. We think that most listeners, apart from perhaps noticing the guitars, wouldn’t necessarily associate “Wehmut” with post-metal. But for us, it was one of the album’s major influences.

What interested us wasn’t so much the genre itself, or simply adding heaviness to our sound. It was more the way post-metal can create an atmosphere, build tension and evoke something physical and almost overwhelming.

We didn’t want to copy the style. We wanted to take what inspired us, filter it through our own musical language, and make it feel like Rue Oberkampf.

Karo: There is an interesting movement through the titles themselves: “Tonight”, the moon, “Sonne”, then finally “Darkness”. I don’t want to impose a narrative that may not be there, but did sequencing the six tracks create an emotional chronology of its own? When you order a record like this, are you constructing a journey or simply finding the most revealing relationship between separate states?

Rue Oberkampf: We didn’t do this on purpose, but you’re right: the titles all seem to come from a similar direction.

They capture different facets of some of the most exciting and inspiring moments of the “day”: sunrise, sunset and the night. There’s something about these fleeting, hard-to-grasp or dark moments that really resonates with the mystical atmosphere of “Wehmut”.

They’re moments that are difficult to hold onto. They appear, change and disappear almost before you’ve had the chance to fully grasp them. We think that quality of transience naturally became part of the album.

Karo: You end the album description with the invitation to “be wehmütig with us”. That turns the listener from an observer into a participant. Is “Wehmut” primarily trying to describe an emotional state, or to induce one? And is there an important difference, for you, between understanding an emotion intellectually and actually being placed inside it by music?

Rue Oberkampf: As you can see when you come to our shows, we love experiencing emotions together with the audience. So for us, it’s much more about the experience than about intellectually describing an emotion.

We always play our new songs to friends before releasing them to see what other people experience when they listen to them. “Into the Woid” was one of the songs that most of the people who heard it beforehand described as being extremely, or even too, sad, which we actually loved because that was exactly what we wanted to express.

In that sense, music can do something that words or explanations can’t: it can put you inside a feeling instead of simply telling you what that feeling is.

So yes, for us, “Wehmut” is definitely more about inducing an emotional state than explaining it.

Karo: “The Singles 2018-2026” and “Wehmut” arrive only months apart. One release deliberately gathers eight years of Rue Oberkampf’s past, while the other revolves around memory, longing and absence. Did encountering your own catalogue retrospectively change your relationship to those themes, or is artistic memory fundamentally different from personal nostalgia?

Rue Oberkampf: With “The Singles 2018-2026”, we’re kind of closing a big chapter in our band’s history. That doesn’t mean we’re going to stop producing club-oriented tracks. But we felt that the next chapter, which opens with the very dark and calm “Wehmut”, needed a clean slate and its own space.

As for the connection between the two releases, we think there is an important distinction between nostalgia and Wehmut.

To us, nostalgia is always about looking back at something that is over, dwelling on the past, on something that can never come back. There’s a certain helplessness to it.

Wehmut feels different. It’s a feeling you can actually embrace and enjoy in the present moment. It’s about longing, but nothing necessarily has to be over or lost. In that sense, Wehmut can even contain a positive impulse towards the future. You can feel the longing without simply looking backwards.

Maybe that’s also why “Wehmut” doesn’t feel like an album about the past to us. It’s more about being deeply aware of the need to stay focused on the present and enjoy it to the fullest.

Karo: I’ve seen Rue Oberkampf live several times, and at Castle Party this year I was struck again by how much intensity you create through restraint: very little movement can make a gesture suddenly carry enormous weight, while the light alternately reveals and removes you from view. Does “Wehmut” require a different physical or visual language onstage? How do you translate absence, distance and landscape into performance without illustrating them too literally?

Rue Oberkampf: Yes, we will definitely change some things onstage, but we won’t suddenly become a completely different band after the release. We will absolutely continue playing songs like “Solitude” or “Deine Augen”.

But with the new atmosphere that comes with the “Wehmut” songs, we feel that we can tell even more complete stories onstage, with an exposition, a climax and, eventually, a catastrophe.

The only exception so far will be a very special two-day event we’re planning in Leipzig in April 2027. We’re currently working on it together with the local promoter, and the idea is to create two completely different worlds over these two nights.

Friday will be dedicated entirely to the dark, atmospheric and almost ritualistic side of “Wehmut”, while Saturday will take things in the opposite direction: harder, faster, harsher and extremely club-oriented.

We’re planning special support acts, lighting, video and stage design for both nights, so the two shows will feel less like two concerts and more like two different chapters of the Rue Oberkampf universe. We’re really excited about what this could become.

Karo: “Wehmut” brings landscape, acoustic elements and field recordings into a project whose live identity remains intensely electronic and physical. Once these songs begin accumulating their own histories through performance, what do you want them to change about Rue Oberkampf? Has this record opened a territory you already know you want to explore further?

Rue Oberkampf: For now, we’ve created only dark and calm songs with this particular vibe. We’re very excited to see what impact this inspiration and these influences will have on future, harder or more club-oriented Rue Oberkampf songs.

We already have a lot of ideas for new sounds, instruments and even different singing techniques. In this increasingly digitalised world and the current Zeitgeist that inspired us to create “Wehmut”, there are still so many sources of inspiration and impulses waiting to be translated into new Rue Oberkampf songs.

So yes, we think “Wehmut” has opened up a territory that we definitely want to explore further, but we’re not quite sure yet where it will take us.

Karo: And to finish by looking forward: after “The Singles 2018-2026”, “Wehmut” and the next cycle of live shows, what feels most important for Rue Oberkampf not to become? Is there a version of the project, musically, visually or creatively, that would feel too comfortable or too predictable, and therefore tell you it is time to change direction again?

Rue Oberkampf: We’ve never been the kind of band that recreates “Glycine” twenty times with only minor changes just because it works well on streaming and makes us more predictable for Spotify.

The focus of Rue Oberkampf has always been on trying things out, taking risks and experiencing our songs together with our live audience in an emotional way.

For us, the magic of playing live comes from seeing how people react when the next song doesn’t simply start the way the previous one ended. We like to surprise people and to create moments where they don’t quite know what’s coming next.

That can sometimes be unpredictable and less comfortable, but it creates suspense and turns a concert into a shared journey. We’re personally bored by movies that try to convey just one single feeling for two hours.

We have a strong inner drive that keeps us from getting bored and pushes us to always try something new. So if we ever become completely predictable, we’ll probably know that it’s time to stop.

About Rue Oberkampf

Rue Oberkampf was founded at the end of 2016 in southern Germany by three DJs: Julia de Jouy, Oliver Maier and Damien De-Vir. Young & Cold Records describes the original concept as a collision between the energy of 1980s electronic music and the physical environment of techno-era club culture. The group’s own 2026 retrospective credits De-Vir as a member from 2016 to 2023; the current “Wehmut” writing credits belong to Julia de Jouy and Oliver Maier.

Their first substantial release was the six-track “Waveclash” in 2018 on No Emb Blanc, followed by the debut album “Christophe-Philippe” on Young & Cold Records in 2019. The 2020 “Negativraum” release appeared through ant-zen, while the second full-length “Liebe” followed on Young & Cold in 2022. Its material moved between EBM and techno-informed tracks, synthpop and darkwave while continuing the band’s multilingual use of French, German and English.

The six-track “Essenz” arrived in November 2024. In July 2026, Rue Oberkampf released “The Singles 2018-2026”, collecting “Eternity”, “Eiszeit”, “Solitude”, “I Won’t Surrender (Brutal Edit)”, “Negativraum”, “Sans Toi”, “Deine Augen” and “Never Stop to Dance”. Its credits explicitly document the earlier trio formation and make the compilation a useful dividing line between that period of the band and what follows.

“Wehmut” contains six tracks: “Tonight”, “Come on Moon”, “Blanc Poney”, “Into the Woid”, “Sonne” and “Darkness”. The album is released through Young & Cold Records in October 2026; Bandcamp lists the digital release for 15 October, while the label’s own store gives 16 October. The vinyl is mastered by Eric Van Wonterghem, while Ludwig Maier masters the digital and CD editions. Field recordings include forest sound captured at Buchberger Leite for “Darkness”, waves recorded at Falkensteiner Strand in Kiel for “Sonne”, and Scottish owl and forest recordings from the BBC Sound Library for “Into the Woid”. The artwork and design are by Kinnat Sóley.

For Rue Oberkampf, “Wehmut” therefore arrives at an unusually explicit dividing point: ten years into the project, immediately after a retrospective gathering eight years of singles, and at the moment when the duo themselves say they no longer find repetition of the current darkwave vocabulary artistically sufficient. The record does not erase the club-oriented Rue Oberkampf; their own answers make clear that they are already interested in what these quieter, more organic and geographically rooted ideas might do once they are pushed back into harder music.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

“Our Love Will Live Forever” had its title before the event that made those words much harder to take literally. Jason Corbett took the phrase from his grandparents’ tombstone; only later, during the writing and recording of the album, a serious cardiac emergency forced him to consider whether he would finish the record at all, or return to the stage. His answer in this interview is strikingly unsentimental: “There is no permanence, there is no forever.”

That does not negate the title so much as change the problem underneath it. “Our Love Will Live Forever”, ACTORS‘ third full-length album, due 4 September 2026 through Artoffact Records, becomes less about permanence as a promise than about what can remain meaningful once permanence itself is no longer credible. The new material emerged through “CTRL”, “Left On Read” and “Youth”, while Corbett’s enforced interruption gave the record a context he could not have planned when he began it.

What is equally interesting, however, is how little Corbett wants to intellectualise his own process after the fact. Again and again, questions about control, rhythmic contradiction, genre or emotional design lead him back to instinct: the beat comes first, a song is left alone until it can be heard afresh, and technical decisions survive only if they produce an emotional reaction. Shannon Hemmett, meanwhile, gives the album’s central idea a visual counterpart through a star adapted from an engraving on medieval armour. The conversation moves between mortality and process, instant communication and old anxieties, authorship inside a four-person band, and what comes after the European tour.

Karo: “Our Love Will Live Forever” existed before the album acquired its most difficult context: the words come from your grandparents’ tombstone, and you had already chosen them before the cardiac emergency interrupted the record. I find that chronology fascinating because the sentence remained exactly the same while your relationship to it changed completely. When you returned to the album, did you feel that you were now making a different record underneath the same title?

Jason: Yes and no. There were definitely challenges to this album that I had not experienced before. When you are forced to take a break like that, you can’t help but reevaluate your motivation and intentions. At the end of the day, there is no permanence, there is no forever. I’m lucky to be here making music.

Karo: The cardiac emergency was serious enough that you were asking yourself whether you would finish the album or ever return to the stage. I’m less interested in the shock itself than in what happened when you went back to work. Did it change your threshold for what was worth keeping? Did anything suddenly feel too clever, too guarded or simply too unimportant to spend time on once not finishing the record had become a real possibility?

Jason: It took some time for me to recalibrate and get my direction again. If anything, the whole situation gave me perspective. You can’t take yourself so seriously that it becomes stifling. The songs come from somewhere inside and outside of myself. I chose to continue trusting in my process.

Karo: The album first became visible through “CTRL”, “Left On Read” and “Youth”, and to me they initially occupy quite different emotional spaces: compulsion and control, digitally prolonged rejection, then memory and the passage of time. Once they became parts of the same album, did you discover a connection between them that perhaps was not obvious while you were writing the individual songs?

Jason: The songs naturally connect. Even the previous two albums were written over lengthy periods of time but were still cohesive. The commonality is that it’s all through my lens. That ties the music together.

Karo: ACTORS are constantly described as “modern post-punk”, but I sometimes think “modern” has become one of those adjectives that explains almost nothing, particularly now that post-punk itself is such an established musical language. You’ve also said that you think less and less about genre. So what actually makes ACTORS contemporary to you now? Is it production, emotional language, technology, or simply the freedom not to treat the past as a set of instructions?

Jason: Genre has become even more prevalent with the advent of streaming. We use modern post-punk as a recognisable jumping-off point for newcomers to our music. I think we operate artistically in the spirit of the first generation of post-punk, but we definitely have one foot firmly planted in the now.

I don’t think about what other artists are doing. I’m interested in getting to the core of what we do.

Karo: By now ACTORS have a sound that can be recognised very quickly, which is a huge achievement but potentially a dangerous one. Jason, you also produce the band yourself at Jacknife Sound, so you have an unusual degree of control over that identity. Have you ever made something technically good and unmistakably ACTORS and then deliberately damaged, changed or abandoned it because it felt too much like something you already knew how to do?

Jason: All I think about is whether I like what I’m hearing. Is it eliciting an emotional reaction when I play it back?

I will start work on a song, then leave it alone for a month, so when I come back to it, it tricks my mind into feeling like I’m collaborating with someone else. Then I get another level of creativity from the process.

Karo: “Left On Read” takes something almost absurdly ordinary in contemporary communication and makes it psychologically cruel: silence is no longer simply absence, because you can see that your message has been received. I find that tiny technological change quite brutal. Has technology actually changed the experience of rejection and abandonment, or has it simply engineered a much more precise interface for anxieties people have always had?

Jason: It’s the same feelings in a world that’s instant. The fact that we have access to each other 24/7 only expedites the emotional transaction.

Karo: “CTRL” is intensely physical, with that very precise four-on-the-floor propulsion, while emotionally the song revolves around the absence of control. I like that contradiction because the body is being given something extremely disciplined to follow while everything underneath it is becoming less stable. How consciously do you use rhythm that way? Can musical control create a safe space in which emotional control can collapse?

Jason: I couldn’t tell you. I’ve never analysed the elements of a song in that way. When I’m writing a song, the beat and vibe come first. Then I react to that and start writing the lyrics. It’s a natural process.

Karo: One thing I keep noticing with ACTORS is how attractive the music can be while dealing with material that is not particularly comfortable. Melody, rhythm and production seduce first; sometimes the darker psychological content registers afterwards. But on this album there also seems to be a stronger movement back towards connection and life rather than simply dwelling inside damage. Has it become more difficult to write hope convincingly than darkness without making it sentimental?

Jason: I hate to sound cliché, but the songs really do kind of arrive on their own schedule and with their own vibe. Once the spark hits, I do my best to craft it.

You can say whatever you like. If that’s your honest expression, it should land.

Karo: Shannon, you created the visual design for “Our Love Will Live Forever”. Here you were dealing with a title that already had an intensely personal history before you began giving the album a visual identity. What did you want the artwork to understand about the record without literally illustrating mortality, memory or love? And because the artwork comes from inside ACTORS, can you allow the visual language to disagree with the music rather than simply explain it?

Shannon: The star design on the cover comes from an engraving on a medieval breastplate. To me, it was an ideal symbol to pair with the themes of the record. As the light from the star reaches into the dark, love becomes a form of armour and protection too.

Karo: ACTORS have also allowed recent songs to be substantially reconstructed through remixes, from Dave Clarke‘s “In Real Life” to “Dead Inside (Crackmix)”. I always find the interesting remixes are the ones that stop behaving respectfully towards the original. When somebody else takes your song apart, how much do you actually want them to preserve? Is a misunderstanding sometimes more revealing than a faithful interpretation?

Jason: I just love to hear what other artists do with a song. It’s fun to hear what their interpretations are. I’m not precious about it. Once the stems are out the door, they’re free to go wild.

Karo: ACTORS originate with your songwriting and production, Jason, but live the project is unmistakably four people. Shannon, Kendall and Adam are not simply reproducing a finished studio object. After all these years of playing together, where does authorship begin to become collective? Can the live band teach you that something you considered fundamental to a recording actually wasn’t fundamental at all?

Jason: Each member brings context and mood to the music. We exist on recordings and live onstage. Both are a different experience and important. The band members are an integral part of what the band and songs are.

Karo: We’ll meet at NCN in Deutzen on September 5, almost at the beginning of the “Our Love Will Live Forever” tour. From there you have an extensive run through Germany, Rotterdam, Switzerland, Spain and Paris, followed by the UK shows with She Past Away and then Canadian dates in October. What happens after this announced run? Are you already discussing more European shows or festivals for 2027, and are there places where you particularly want to take this album that are not on the current schedule?

Jason: After this fall tour, we have a bunch of US dates we will be announcing. That’s all I’m allowed to say.

About ACTORS

ACTORS are a Vancouver-based quartet consisting of Jason Corbett on vocals and guitar, Shannon Hemmett on synthesizers and vocals, Kendall Wooding on bass and vocals, and Adam Fink on drums. Corbett also produces the band’s music at his Vancouver studio, Jacknife Sound. The current line-up is confirmed by both the band and Artoffact Records.

The band’s first full-length album, “It Will Come to You”, was released through Artoffact Records in 2018. Its combination of guitar, synthesizers, bass-driven momentum and tightly controlled production established the sound with which ACTORS became internationally associated. The follow-up, “Acts of Worship”, arrived on 1 October 2021, again produced by Corbett at Jacknife Sound. That album also marked Kendall Wooding’s first ACTORS album on bass.

“Reanimated” followed in 2022, collecting earlier B-sides and related material, while the next period increasingly unfolded through individual releases. “In Real Life”, “Dead Inside” and “Object of Desire” appeared in 2024, followed by the “Crazy Lovers” remix collection in 2025. In 2026 ACTORS opened the new album cycle with “CTRL” in February, “Left On Read” in April and “Youth” in July. Their official Bandcamp currently lists those releases alongside the band’s earlier catalogue. Hemmett also records as Leathers, whose debut album “Ultraviolet” appeared in 2024.

“Our Love Will Live Forever” is scheduled for 4 September 2026 through Artoffact Records. According to the album announcement supplied by the band, it is ACTORS’ third full-length studio album and was produced by Jason Corbett at Jacknife Sound. Shannon Hemmett created the album’s visual design.

The album arrives simultaneously with a major touring period. The European run begins in Berlin on 4 September, followed the next day by NCN Festival in Deutzen. ACTORS then continue through Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain and France before three UK dates with She Past Away in Manchester, Bristol and London. Canadian shows follow in October in Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary.

And, as Corbett reveals here, that will not be the end of the 2026 live cycle: a further run of US dates is already planned, although the band is not yet ready to announce the details.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

There is a useful contradiction at the centre of “Fame Fatale”: NER\OGRIS have become more precise about their identity at exactly the moment they seem most interested in introducing instability into it. KaiN talks about preserving sounds that drift, distort or sit slightly outside the grid; TinoC writes about people attempting to maintain individuality inside systems that make behaviour increasingly predictable. In both cases, the problem is similar: what happens when something becomes so optimised, visible or controllable that it begins to lose the qualities that made it individual in the first place? That makes “Fame Fatale” a considerably more interesting second album than a simple refinement of “I Am the Shadow, I Am the Light”. Its production can be meticulous without aspiring to cleanliness; analogue instability is deliberately left inside digital construction, and influences from industrial electronics and highly polished pop production are allowed to coexist without being reconciled into one obvious aesthetic. KaiN’s distinction between nostalgia and influence is particularly revealing: rather than reproducing an earlier decade, he wants to extract physical qualities from it, warmth, hiss, instability, and place them against sounds that belong unmistakably to the present.

TinoC approaches the present from another direction. He still rejects the role of commentator with a programme or mission, describing the lyrics as observations of what happens around him. Yet those observations now repeatedly encounter social-media visibility, manipulated information and the increasingly strange relationship between individuality and mass behaviour. Even the sarcastic mutation of femme fatale into “Fame Fatale” turns attention itself into part of the problem.

I spoke with TinoC and KaiN about why technical mistakes can become the most valuable part of a recording, the difference between influence and reconstruction, digital perfection and analogue resistance, social-media fame, the uncomfortable politics of attention, and why NER\OGRIS may eventually move in a much quieter direction than “Fame Fatale” suggests.

Karo: When we spoke in 2023, Kai described NER\OGRIS as perhaps the more “grown-up” continuation of ideas that had existed elsewhere, while “I Am the Shadow, I Am the Light” still felt like a project discovering its own internal logic. Three years later, “Fame Fatale” sounds much more certain about what belongs inside NER\OGRIS and what does not. Do you now feel that the project has acquired a language of its own, or is recognising that language precisely the point at which you become suspicious of it and start trying to break it?

TinoC: For me, N\OG has its own, maybe unique style. And I think this matters, because otherwise all my other bands and projects wouldn’t make sense. But we are talking about N\OG, so when we compare the beginning of 2022, when the band started, with now, or rather with the point when the album developed, we were in a completely different situation. When we assembled IATS-IATL, we had several tracks and had to find a selection for the album. For some of those tracks, I wrote lyrics. That is, in short, the story of the first album.

For “Fame Fatale”, we had to start from scratch. It means the cat was out of the bag: the band was there, the music was there, and some people had and have expectations. I honestly hope that we managed to create music which people will recognise as N\OG, but also recognise that there is progress, change or new facets.

Karo: The phrase “Fame Fatale” is immediately suggestive because fame traditionally implies being seen, while the album seems preoccupied with a world in which visibility no longer guarantees understanding; everything is exposed, circulated and measured, yet what matters becomes harder to locate. What does “fame” mean in the title? Are you talking literally about celebrity, or about a broader condition in which ordinary people are increasingly required to perform themselves for attention?

TinoC: The name of the album is a little ironic, or has a decent dose of sarcasm in it. Most of the tracks, lyrically, are about people and their issues trying to “survive” their daily lives. And yes, the so-called “fame” they gain from social media is in fact fatal. I don’t remember exactly why we decided to edit the French phrase femme fatale into the album name, but I am sure there was a reason. 😉

Karo: In our previous conversation, Tino, you said something I found quite important: “I am not on a mission. I am just a guy who writes about some topics at one point of his life.” “Fame Fatale”, however, moves through manipulation, social tension, distorted truth, isolation and attention becoming a currency. Has the scale of what provokes you changed? Are these still fundamentally personal observations, or has it become impossible to write about private anxiety without also writing about the systems producing it?

TinoC: I am still this guy who writes about things I see and hear, and topics that move me in some way. I haven’t written an autobiographical or biographical song for a very long time, so to answer the question: they are still observations, because there is A LOT of shit going on at the moment.

Karo: The album’s central idea seems to involve a strange paradox: we have unprecedented access to information and unprecedented difficulty deciding what deserves our trust or attention. Music itself now exists inside exactly that economy, competing with infinite content, algorithms and increasingly abbreviated forms of listening. Did making an album about fractured attention affect the way you thought about the album format itself? Is asking somebody to stay inside a complete NER\OGRIS record now almost a countercultural demand?

TinoC: Fun fact: you nailed it in some way. As you said, all the information is there, the knowledge is there, but people decide to believe in a damn AI clip in their timeline. In the end, the album is about the fact that almost the entire mankind is fucked. A lot of people are telling this to the people who are obviously more fucked than others, and the result is that the more fucked people decide to declare that they are the elite now. In this case, I am guilty too: I make music because I want to be heard. 😉

Karo: The musical coordinates around “Fame Fatale” are unusually broad. Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly represent abrasion, experimentation and industrial pressure, while Trevor Horn and Frankie Goes To Hollywood represent almost obsessive studio construction, scale and pop precision. Those are not obvious neighbours. Is the interesting territory for NER\OGRIS now found exactly between those approaches: allowing something to remain ugly, unstable or threatening while producing it with enormous attention to beauty and detail?

TinoC: Let’s suppose we knew what we were doing and could control the direction we were heading… I think we’d try exactly what you’re describing. 😉

KaiN: Yes, exactly there, and I think the analogue/digital tension is part of why that space works. Everything today is made inside a computer. Everything can be perfectly in time, perfectly in tune, and that’s precisely what makes it sound so replaceable. So while we build things with a lot of digital precision, I try to smuggle in something that resists it: a hardware synth that drifts slightly, a distorted signal, a take that isn’t fixed to the grid. That friction between ugly or unstable and beautiful or precise is basically the friction between analogue and digital. In this very digital time, I want that friction, that dirt, to stay audible. It’s good for the ears, even when it hurts a little.

Karo: “Fame Fatale” clearly draws on electronic music with a long history behind it, yet it never feels interested in reconstructing a particular decade. How do you distinguish between influence and nostalgia when you work? Is there a point where knowing the history of a sound becomes useful precisely because it allows you to detach it from its original context and make it mean something different now?

TinoC: I mean, if I were a musician, maybe I could monitor or manage my work. Because I am not, I follow my instincts, or the music just happens. And this happens in a way I like, which I feel, and turns into music I personally like. And yes, I love two decades in music history. That’s why almost everything I do is an homage to that sound, or maybe I simply can’t do it differently.

KaiN: For me the difference is this: nostalgia wants to recreate a decade; influence wants to steal one physical quality from it and drag it into now. I don’t want to make a record that sounds like it was made in the ’80s or ’90s. I want the warmth, the hiss, the slight instability that analogue gear from those eras had, and then put that texture next to something that is completely of today. That’s less about a specific decade and more about not wanting music to sound too clean.

Karo: Kai, when we spoke before, you described moments when a single sound could trigger an entire composition, sometimes producing things you later could not quite reconstruct yourself. With “Fame Fatale”, has increased control made those accidental moments harder to preserve? How do you stop a highly developed production process from correcting the very accidents that gave a track its personality?

KaiN: Control and accident aren’t really opposites for me; they’re two different phases of the same process. That moment where one sound triggers a whole track almost never happens once the setup is “finished”. It happens early, when I don’t quite know what I’m doing yet: a filter set wrong, a random modulation routing, a preset I only meant to check for two seconds. The further a track moves into production, the bigger the temptation to smooth exactly those “mistakes” out, because technically they’re not clean. With “Fame Fatale”, I tried to slow that down on purpose, bouncing the raw early version quickly and then building around it instead of endlessly “fixing” the original sound. Sometimes that means something in the final track is technically wrong. But that’s usually its personality. So I use control to protect the accident rather than to correct it.

Karo: Musically, “Fame Fatale” seems interested in two apparently contradictory ideas: abrasion and scale on one side, meticulous construction and memorable melody on the other. How do you decide when a sound should remain harsh, unstable or even ugly, and when it needs to become beautiful? Can excessive refinement actually weaken the emotional truth of a track?

KaiN: For me, it’s less a rule and more a question I ask about every sound: what is it doing emotionally in that moment? If a harsh, unstable element is carrying the tension or the threat in a track, smoothing it out doesn’t make the song better; it just makes it quieter emotionally. A bit of analogue dirt, something slightly off, slightly warm, slightly wrong, does something to your ear that perfection can’t. So my test isn’t “does this sound good?” It’s “does this still feel true?” If the answer is no, I go back.

Karo: The debut used contrast almost as an organising principle: shadow and light, ambient passages against harder electronics, even the distinction between Spanish instrumental titles and English vocal pieces. “Fame Fatale” still works through opposition, but the contrasts seem less clean now; vulnerability can exist inside aggression, seduction inside something deeply uncomfortable, and highly controlled electronic structures can carry a sense of instability. Has your understanding of contrast changed from placing opposites beside one another to allowing them to occupy the same moment?

TinoC: Obviously we have fewer instrumental tracks on the album, and you are right, the tracks are a bit faster or straighter. The exception is “Graves”, which for me is a genius weirdo. 😉

Karo: “A View” is the first piece from “Fame Fatale” that we encounter together with a visual narrative, and I found the message of the video strikingly pessimistic. There seems to be very little faith in our ability to distinguish observation from manipulation, or simply to step outside the systems shaping what we see. What was the original concept behind the video, and how closely does your own interpretation correspond to that rather bleak reading?

TinoC: The video itself is a medium to transport the lyrics. The lyrics are maybe the second optimistic words I have ever written, but the protagonist struggles. He, she or it struggles a lot and mourns about it in a very sad way. It’s not the point that he, she or it feels betrayed or manipulated, just fucked by everything.

Karo: You are taking “Fame Fatale” on the road in autumn, moving through Prague, Germany, Sweden, France and Belgium. You previously told me that NER\OGRIS live is deliberately not a reproduction of the record; the backing tracks are rebuilt for performance, synths and effects are manipulated live, and there is room for controlled chaos. Has that philosophy changed as the music has become more detailed and cinematic? At what point does preserving the architecture of a production begin to compete with the danger that makes a live electronic show exciting?

TinoC: Kai adds some sounds and noises to the tracks and T uses his voice, so “controlled chaos” is maybe a big word for what we will do on the tour, but there will be some differences from the album versions.

KaiN: It’s true that we’re not trying to reproduce the record one-to-one, and for me that’s partly a control question again. A purely digital backing track never changes, never breaks, never surprises anyone, including us. So live, some of what I add is deliberately analogue or hardware-based, things that can drift a little from night to night. It’s a small risk, but it keeps the show honest, and it’s very much in line with how I feel about the whole album: in a time where everything can sound perfect, a bit of unpredictability, a bit of dirt, is what actually makes it feel alive.

Karo: “Fame Fatale” arrives only three years after your debut and one year after “Silenci”, so NER\OGRIS still feels like a project moving unusually quickly rather than settling into a comfortable cycle. Looking beyond this album and the upcoming tour, what part of NER\OGRIS still feels unexplored to each of you? Is there something you have already discovered about the project that you deliberately have not used yet because the right record, collaboration or context for it has not arrived?

TinoC: As always, I personally think that “my” best song has not been written yet. Let’s see if I am wrong or right.

KaiN: There are ideas we’ve already found and deliberately not used, sounds or directions that felt too far away from what “Fame Fatale” needed to be. I think there’s still a much quieter, more minimal side of NER\OGRIS that we haven’t shown yet, almost the opposite of the scale and abrasion on this record. Whether that becomes its own release or just one track on the next album, I don’t know yet. But it’s sitting there, waiting for the right context, not the right idea.

About NER\OGRIS

NER\OGRIS is the German electronic duo of Kai Neugebauer and Tino Claus. Neugebauer is the founder of Les Berrtas and works on the musical and production side of NER\OGRIS, while Claus is known as the vocalist of Amnistia and through projects including TC75 and MRDTC. The two first met in 2014; the project itself formed in February 2022. Its name combines nero, Italian for black, with gris, French and Spanish for grey.

The collaboration began when Neugebauer had been preparing instrumental material and Claus heard one of the pieces and immediately imagined vocals for it. What began as an experiment developed into NER\OGRIS and their debut album, “I Am the Shadow – I Am the Light”, released in February 2023 through Dependent Records; Side-Line reported the first single in Ner\Ogris release first video single ‘Deepest Fear’ taken from forthcoming debut album ‘I Am The Shadow – I Am The Light’ and spoke to the duo in the Click Interview with Ner\Ogris: ‘A Strong Name That Reflects Our Philosophy’. The album established many of the contrasts that remained central to the project: analogue and digital sound, ambient space and rhythmic pressure, melody and dissonance.

The six-track mini-album “Silenci” followed on 1 November 2025. Its production credits already established the division of labour behind the duo: music and production by KaiN, words and vocals by TinoC, with mastering by Arnte of Pyrroline.

“Fame Fatale” is the duo’s second full-length album and is scheduled for 2 October 2026, with the pre-sale and the autumn dates reported here in NER\OGRIS launch ‘Fame Fatale’ pre-sale, confirm tour with Fïx8:Sëd8. Its nine tracks are “Calls”, “Antithese”, “Lack of Proof”, “A View”, “Graves”, “La Hora El Ganador”, “Glowing in the Dark”, “Unter Menschen” and “Dulcimer”.

NER\OGRIS will take the album on the road in autumn, beginning at Prague’s Futurum Music Bar on 17 October. Their current official listings continue through Münster, Stockholm, Gothenburg, Lille, Liège, Hannover, Freiberg, Berlin and Schmalkalden, with the final currently announced date on 28 November 2026.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Escape With Romeo‘s return stopped being interesting simply as a comeback with 2024’s “Suspicious Bliss”. That album established that Thomas Elbern was not interested in reopening the band’s history merely to revisit it; there was new material to write and, increasingly, a present worth responding to. “Night After Night”, released on August 7, 2026 through Zeitklang, continues that trajectory with a harder, more immediate record built around guitars, electronics and a growing unease with the systems that govern contemporary life.

The circumstances behind it were different too. After forty years working as a music journalist for national radio, Elbern suddenly found himself with considerably more time, and sketches already sitting on his hard drive began turning into songs. At the same time, the world entering those songs had become increasingly difficult to separate into “online” and “real”: surveillance, AI, algorithmic behaviour, political extremism, digital dependence and the erosion of privacy all appear across the album. What interests Elbern, however, is less dystopia as spectacle than the moment when something previously intolerable becomes ordinary enough to be accepted as the “new normal.”

That tension also reaches the language of the record. Titles such as “Edit Me Out” and “Cancel Anytime” take expressions associated with platforms and subscriptions and apply them to people, while “New World Order” looks at the vulnerability created when increasingly large parts of everyday existence are handed over to digital systems. Musically, Escape With Romeo remain recognisably themselves, but the references continue to expand: “Wrong Side of Town Pt. 2”, for example, emerged after Elbern encountered Skeler and began imagining what EWR doing hardwave might sound like.

I spoke with Thomas Elbern about “Night After Night”, AI and what he calls “hijacked emotion”, why individuality can coexist with extreme predictability, independence after more than three decades, the practical realities of touring as a trio, and why Escape With Romeo still have reasons to move forward rather than simply preserve what they have already built.

Escape With Romeo interview

Karo: When I reviewed “Suspicious Bliss” for ReGen, the record seemed to exist in a productive contradiction: the music had become more physical and guitar-driven just as the lyrics were becoming increasingly preoccupied with technological intrusion, isolation and a reality that could no longer quite be trusted. “Night After Night” is harder, more emotional and more direct. Did “Suspicious Bliss” already contain the beginning of this record, or did something change in the two years between them that demanded a different degree of force?

Thomas: I would say that “Night After Night” follows the same path that “Suspicious Bliss” already craved. My personal situation was also different: my career as a music journalist working for national radio finally ended after 40 years. Suddenly, I had a lot of time, and all those sketches that were already on my hard drive began to form into songs.

The surroundings played a role as well. Watching catastrophic news and seeing more and more worst-case scenarios developing in the world encouraged me to make an album like this.

Karo: “Night After Night” is an interesting title because it suggests duration rather than catastrophe. Not one decisive collapse, but waking repeatedly into the same anxieties, systems and headlines until the exceptional becomes ordinary. Is that accumulation important to the album? Is the record concerned less with disaster itself than with what happens psychologically when people become accustomed to living inside conditions that would once have seemed intolerable?

Thomas: That’s a very good point. Yes, it is exactly the accumulation that is described here. It’s the thing people call “the new normal.”

What was intolerable in the past can become the new reality, and there seems to be no collective outcry. Instead, we see growing racism, homophobia, income disparity, hate speech and leaders who make everything worse.

Karo: “Edit Me Out”, “Cancel Anytime” and “Something That Lasts” almost form their own vocabulary of contemporary relationships. Words that belong to software, subscriptions and digital services have slipped very easily into the language of intimacy. Has that linguistic shift become interesting to you as a songwriter: the idea that people can now be edited, muted, cancelled, replaced or simply unsubscribed from?

Thomas: A lot of the titles on the album are “internet speech”: “Edit Me Out”, “Cancel Anytime”, or the song “What They Don’t Tell You”, which is not on the album. They all circle around things you read very often in blogs and publications.

It’s the idea that the intimacy you mentioned has stopped being genuinely private. It’s also the idea of masses becoming extremely predictable while still believing themselves to be individuals.

I got this idea while reading a lot of travel blogs. People travel through Bali or Laos and think they are doing something individual. People think that they are using a product, but instead they are the product. And yes, in that sense, they are all extremely replaceable.

Karo: Artificial intelligence was already present on “Suspicious Bliss”, while in our 2024 conversation you spoke about computer-generated voices and described the DAW itself as an instrument. The question feels different now. AI is no longer merely something an artist can use or write about; it increasingly influences distribution, visibility, recommendation and even judgments about value. Has the real concern shifted from what machines are capable of creating to the decisions we are gradually allowing them to make on our behalf?

Thomas: Again, a very good point. The DAW nowadays, or certainly in the foreseeable future, can create almost anything. Even the artist who was once needed to programme it and provide the input it needs can now be reduced to somebody writing a prompt while the computer does the rest.

To quote our famous song “Somebody”, with a wink, this is the “hijacked emotion.”

On the other hand, in combination with a great artistic vision and real skill, this technology could lead to something completely new. But most of what I currently hear and see online is AI-generated shit that feels like cosmic debris, or a bad idea of chart music, while consuming far too many resources.

Karo: “New World Order” enters territory where dystopian language has almost become exhausted through overuse. War, AI, surveillance, extremism and environmental collapse are no longer speculative vocabulary; they are part of everyday information flow. How do you stop a song about the present from merely reproducing that background noise? At what point does a general anxiety become specific enough to turn into music?

Thomas: With “New World Order”, everything started with the trance arpeggio you hear at the beginning.

Lyrically, it could be seen as a protest song about the possibilities of digital surveillance combined with greedy corporations that will enslave you and take over your digital existence.

“Your beautiful saviour will shoot you in the back” is a metaphor for how two-faced everything is in “New World Order”. It’s similar to the idea in the dark comedy film “Brazil”, where a simple typing error, changing the name Tuttle to Buttle, can ruin somebody’s entire life.

In 2026, it can be the deadly phishing email, a vicious Trojan on your computer or your social media account that turns your life upside down. The idea of “New World Order” is essentially: stop for a moment and think about what actually surrounds you in 2026.

Karo: “Wrong Side of Town Pt. 2” returns to “After the Future”, an album you have spoken about with considerable ambivalence, and which became connected, indirectly, to the period when you decided Escape With Romeo had reached an ending. Why reopen that particular door now? Is “Pt. 2” continuing the narrative of the original song, or are you also revisiting your own relationship with a period of the band you once wanted to leave behind?

Thomas: It’s actually neither of those things.

I always loved the atmosphere of the original, particularly the cinematic quality of the sounds involved. Then I went to a gig by Australian DJ and producer Skeler in Cologne the night before, listening to and enjoying all that wave, hardwave and phonk-related material being played there.

I went back to my DAW the next day and tried to recreate what I had heard through a follow-up to “Wrong Side of Town”, using new lyrics, guitars and beats.

It’s my idea of EWR doing hardwave.

Karo: “You Need the Drugs” is an unusual cover because the original already sits between musical worlds: WestBam and Klaus Jankuhn’s electronic language meeting Richard Butler’s unmistakable Psychedelic Furs presence. Escape With Romeo has occupied that border between electronics and guitars for most of its life. Did the song feel strangely familiar for that reason? And at what point in the rearrangement did it stop feeling like someone else’s material?

Thomas: The idea of doing “You Need the Drugs” was born and realised even before the album itself took form.

I heard the original at a New Year’s party and immediately heard the EWR version in my head. It was clear that our version would become very much Escape With Romeo.

Guitars, guitars, guitars were the key.

Karo: Frenzy Erl’s role here goes far beyond drumming: the two of you recorded, mixed and produced the album together, and he also mastered it. Does having a drummer involved at every stage alter the hierarchy of a recording? When the person responsible for pulse is simultaneously making decisions about density, space and final sound, can rhythm begin to determine the architecture rather than simply inhabit it?

Thomas: When I make a demo or even a final production, I also programme the drums that I hear in my head. Frenzy usually plays the drums when the song has reached its genuinely finished version.

During the final phase of production, we decide together where the aural journey should go. What is important is that we normally mix and master everything in Frenzy’s studio in Munich, where there are no distractions and we can finish the album together.

Karo: Stella Tonon’s contribution to “Suspicious Bliss” was already more interesting than straightforward backing vocals; you said in 2024 that she immediately understood where her voice belonged inside the material. On “Night After Night”, does the presence of another voice ever change the point of view of a song itself? Can a voice entering from outside destabilise the narrator and make you hear your own lyrics differently?

Thomas: Talking about the opening track, “Edit Me Out”, the female voice there is actually a sample. That is nothing new for me; my way of working has always been very hip-hop in that respect. If I find a great legal sample that I want to work with, I go for it.

So that female voice is a major part of “Edit Me Out”, but many of the other female voices and improvisations on the record are very much Stella.

She always brings her own particular idea into the music of EWR. She fully understands and feels both the sadness and the rough elements in the music, and she can respond to them with her unique voice.

Karo: You once described the audience as the place where a song is finally tested: only onstage do you discover whether its internal logic actually survives contact with people. Escape With Romeo is now taking these songs out as a trio, despite studio arrangements that can contain almost unlimited layers. Has that smaller configuration forced you to identify what is genuinely indispensable in a song? What remains once production is stripped away and three people have to make the idea physically convincing?

Thomas: Interesting point! We are studio nerds and take full advantage of every sound source we can get hold of.

But if you want to survive financially as a touring band, you have to make decisions that nearly every band makes nowadays. That is called backing tracks.

You have to decide which parts of the sound are the most important. Those are played live. The rest becomes like a parallel universe coming through the speakers. Making that distinction is always crucial.

But I also think that, as a trio, we cannot strip things down much further than we already do. Drums, guitar, bass and the main vocal always have to be live.

Karo: Escape With Romeo built a genuinely independent structure remarkably early, with label, studio and management gradually becoming part of the same ecosystem. But independence in 2026 is a peculiar condition: an artist may own the masters and finance the record while still relying on platforms, distributors and opaque recommendation systems to become visible. Has independence become less about escaping gatekeepers and more about choosing which gatekeepers one is prepared to depend on?

Thomas: Having been independent for more than three decades, I can say that the game is always changing.

The role of record companies has largely vanished for us; now everything is about live gigs and promoters. Yes, it’s also about numbers and streaming, but it is still, as it always was, about luck.

If your music gets used in a famous series or film, you automatically reach another level.

And today’s gatekeepers are tomorrow’s open doors. It’s a complicated music world and nobody is particularly happy about it. But in the end, connecting directly with your fans will always remain one of the main points.

Karo: There is something counterintuitive about making a record more direct after nearly four decades of accumulated technique, experience and musical memory. Young bands are often direct because they have relatively little to discard; an established artist has to decide what no longer deserves to remain. Is directness for you now partly an act of subtraction? And after 13 albums, is making something immediate actually harder than making something elaborate?

Thomas: I found working on the previous albums quite liberating.

From a production point of view, it is always a pain in the ass, because it’s the final 15 percent that creates most of the work. But it is liberating in the sense that we don’t have to prove anything to anyone.

We can evolve and do whatever we think is right for EWR.

Making an album is both elaborate and, in this case, immediate, so “Night After Night” feels like a natural step in our history.

Karo: And finally, where can people actually catch Escape With Romeo on the road in the coming months? Which dates or places are you particularly looking forward to, and is there any show on this run that matters most to you?

Thomas: We are touring mainly in Germany in 2026, and we plan to play more abroad in 2027, if the world is still standing. That includes Europe and South America.

Karo: Thank you very much for your time, Thomas.

Thomas: Thank you, Karo!

“Night After Night” is out now through Zeitklang. Escape With Romeo’s confirmed 2026 tour begins in Munich on 19 September and continues through Cologne, Essen, Karlsruhe, Bielefeld, Nuremberg, Rüsselsheim, Hamburg and Berlin, before crossing into Poland for the Shadow Dance Party at Pod Minoga in Poznań on 31 October. A December date in Rhede is also confirmed, while the band says further dates for 2027 are being developed.

About Escape With Romeo

Escape With Romeo were founded in Cologne in 1989 by singer, guitarist and songwriter Thomas Elbern. Before starting the project, Elbern had fronted the new-wave band Seltsame Zustände and had been a guitarist and songwriter with Pink Turns Blue. The first Escape With Romeo album appeared in 1989, and the early track “Somebody” became one of the songs most closely associated with the band, helping establish an audience beyond Germany. The band’s own historical account describes the project as growing from Elbern’s initial setup of Atari computers, drum machines, four-track recording, turntables, guitar and bass into a full live band after “Somebody” began circulating in clubs.

From the beginning, Escape With Romeo combined guitars with electronic production rather than treating rock and electronics as separate phases of the band. Their long-used description, “Post Punk meets modern Electronica,” remains a useful shorthand, although the catalogue itself has moved through considerably more territory: new wave, darkwave, alternative rock, electronic pop, acoustic work and, increasingly in the current period, elements of trip-hop, post-rock and contemporary electronic production.

The early album sequence included “Escape With Romeo,” “Autumn on Venus,” “Next Stop Eternally,” “Blast of Silence” and “How Far Can You Go?” Later records included “Come Here White Light,” “Love Alchemy,” “Psalms of Survival,” “Emotional Iceage,” “Samsara” and “After the Future.” From 2001 onward, releases were issued through Zeitklang Records, the label established and run by Elbern.

In 2017, Elbern announced that Escape With Romeo would come to an end. A farewell period followed, including the band’s final tour in 2018 and festival appearances in 2019. What was intended as an ending did not remain one. During the pandemic years Elbern began reconsidering the project, and Escape With Romeo returned in 2022, initially through newly arranged versions of older material and the double compilation “Based on a True Story – Best of Escape With Romeo.” The official notes to the 2022 versions of “Refuge” and “White Room” explicitly described those recordings as the beginning of the band’s return.

The more consequential step came with “Suspicious Bliss” in November 2024. Rather than continuing primarily through retrospective material, Escape With Romeo released an entirely new album. Its harder guitar sound, electronics and dystopian lyrical concerns established the direction that now continues into “Night After Night”. The band themselves described “Suspicious Bliss” as a fresh start following their 2022 reorganisation.

Released on 7 August 2026, “Night After Night” is Escape With Romeo’s 13th studio album. It contains fourteen tracks and was produced by Thomas Elbern and Frenzy Erl, with Erl also handling the mastering. “You Need the Drugs” is the album’s one outside composition, written by Klaus Jankuhn, Maximilian Lenz/WestBam and Richard Butler; the remaining songs are credited to Elbern. The record was preceded by 2026 singles including “Fear’s a Ghost” and “Sound and the Fury”.

Escape With Romeo currently perform live as a trio: Thomas Elbern on vocals and guitar, Tobias Schwartz on bass and vocals, and Frenzy Erl on drums. Stella Tonon remains part of the wider recording world around the band and contributed vocals to recent material, including the “Suspicious Bliss” period and subsequent recordings, but she is not part of the touring trio.

The current configuration is deliberately compact. Elbern describes guitar, bass, drums and lead vocals as the elements that must remain genuinely live, while additional studio layers are carried through backing tracks. That division is less an attempt to reproduce the recordings literally than a practical decision about which components constitute the physical core of Escape With Romeo onstage.

The band begin the “Night After Night Tour 2026” in Munich on 19 September, followed by Cologne, two Essen shows, Karlsruhe, Bielefeld, Nuremberg, Rüsselsheim, Hamburg and Berlin. On 31 October they cross into Poland for the Shadow Dance Party: Halloween Edition at Pod Minoga in Poznań, followed by a December show in Rhede. The official band site says further dates are being developed for 2027, while Elbern tells Side-Line that the plan is to return to broader international touring, including Europe and South America.

Interview by Karo Kratochwil.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

With “Realities”, Jan Dewulf does something more interesting than simply broaden Mildreda‘s sound. He removes one of the most recognisable elements of “Blue-Devilled” altogether: there is not a single sacred sample on the new album. The quasi-liturgical weight of its predecessor gives way to colder electronics, sharper industrial abrasion and passages that move considerably closer to noise. At the same time, the writing becomes more exposed, allowing tenderness, ageing, regret, loneliness and vulnerability into Mildreda without translating any of them into softness.

Scheduled for release on August 28 through Dependent Records, “Realities” is an 18-track double album, also issued as a limited 2CD artbook with 48 pages designed by Henk Willems. Recurring “Reality Checks” run through its structure; Constantin “Breñal” Warter of Calva Y Nada appears on “Rückwärts”, while Suicide Commando‘s Johan Van Roy joins “Virtual Goddess”. Where “Blue-Devilled” worked explicitly with Sartre, “Realities” turns towards Camus and Sisyphus: falling, rebuilding and the uncomfortable recognition that a life does not unfold inside one stable reality, but through successive versions of it.

In this conversation, that idea moves far beyond philosophy as an intellectual reference. Dewulf talks about reaching middle age and the lives no longer available to us, why the “Reality Checks” function like the seams in kintsugi, social media complicity, the strange persistence of gods after belief disappears, and why increased vulnerability pushed Mildreda towards more violent sound rather than away from it. The result is also a remarkably precise account of an artist who says he is no longer searching for Mildreda’s identity; he is now interested in finding out how far that identity can be stretched before it stops being Mildreda.

Mildreda interview

Karo: Jan, when we first spoke in 2021, you told me that maturity had finally allowed you to “come home” with Mildreda. I have followed the project ever since, through “I Was Never Really There”, “Blue-Devilled”, the concerts and now “Realities”, and this record gives me almost the opposite impression: you sound secure enough in Mildreda to start dismantling parts of the language you had established. How much did making “Realities” require you to question your own idea of what Mildreda is supposed to sound like?

Jan: You could argue that making music, playing in a band, writing lyrics and creating a story around it will always be a journey of exploration. But the nature of that journey has definitely changed. I’m no longer searching for Mildreda’s identity, and by now I feel I’ve figured out the DNA of the project as well. That foundation is there, and it’s solid. And precisely because of that, I can now embark on more adventurous quests: exploring the boundaries of the Mildreda sound, allowing for a broader emotional range, and seeing how far I can stretch things without losing what makes Mildreda what it is. I think that’s something you can clearly hear on “Realities”.

Karo: When you sent me the album, you described it as your most emotional work and said there were “more colours in the music than ever”. Having heard it, I think the interesting thing is that those colours are certainly not all softer ones. There is industrial abrasion, noise, harsher vocals, but also enormous electronic detail, space and moments of delicacy. When you speak about colour in music, what exactly does that mean to you? Is it timbre, emotional range, dynamics, harmonic language, or the freedom to allow contradictory emotional states to exist within the same musical vocabulary?

Jan: When I said it was my most emotional album, I also, and perhaps primarily, meant that on a lyrical level. I allowed myself to explore themes and emotions that are rather unusual within a genre like dark electro. I deliberately moved beyond the genre’s more traditional themes of pain, anger and darkness, making room for vulnerability and tenderness instead. That vulnerability sometimes finds its way into the music as well, in quieter, more emotional and delicate passages that are relatively new territory for Mildreda. But at the same time, I really pushed the boundaries in the opposite direction too, exploring noisier, harsher and more abrasive territory than before. So in that sense, those additional colours aren’t necessarily softer ones. It’s more about widening the entire emotional and sonic spectrum of what Mildreda can be.

Karo: The distance from “Blue-Devilled” is wide. That album had an almost architectural darkness, with quasi-sacral space, ritual weight and gothic grandeur, whereas “Realities” feels more corporeal, metallic and exposed. The church-like atmosphere has largely disappeared even though the philosophical conflict has not. Did the change in subject matter make that previous sonic language inappropriate, or had you simply reached the point where you no longer needed those symbols to create darkness?

Jan: Especially in Mildreda’s early days in the 1990s, that sacred element was an important part of the sound. I was heavily influenced by bands like Will, early Delerium and In Slaughter Natives, who incorporated bombastic samples of sacred chants into their dark electronic compositions. That whole wave of inspiration came back in full force while making “Blue-Devilled”, so much so that the album is packed with grandiose, sacral samples. One fan joked that if he took a shot of jenever every time he heard a monk singing on “Blue-Devilled”, he’d be completely drunk by the end of the album. He had a point: we may have overdone it a little. So with “Realities”, it was a very conscious decision not to use a single sacred sample anywhere on the album. This time, I wanted the darkness to come from a colder, more purely electronic sound.

Karo: “Blue-Devilled” entered into dialogue with Sartre, particularly his idea of hell in relation to the gaze and judgement of other people. “Realities” moves towards Camus, which changes the philosophical problem considerably: from the self confronted by another consciousness towards the collision between our need for meaning and a world that does not promise to provide it. Why did Camus become relevant to you now, and was that movement philosophical first or biographical first?

Jan: At its heart, “Realities” is about falling down and finding the strength to get back up again. Throughout our lives, we keep having to rediscover and rebuild ourselves after setbacks, whether they are small or life-changing. And we have to do all of that within the brief interlude we are granted in this universe: our finite lives. That is where Camus entered the picture. In many ways, “Realities” became a confrontation with the absurd. Echoing Camus and his comparison of the human condition to the fate of Sisyphus, the album revolves around that endless cycle of falling and rising, breaking and rebuilding, and forcing ourselves to create new versions of reality. We search for meaning even though the universe offers us no guarantee that there is any to be found. And yet we keep moving. That is also exactly what the title “Realities” refers to. We don’t live in one single, fixed reality, but in a succession of realities. With every setback, every decision and every new beginning, we become a slightly different version of ourselves and inhabit a slightly different world.

Visually, that journey is beautifully reflected in Henk Willems’ artwork, where nature slowly reclaims what was once broken. Moss spreads across abandoned ruins, while new growth gradually softens the scars of destruction. To me, it became a powerful metaphor for the album itself: not simply a story of collapse, but of renewal. Not of defeat, but of return.

Karo: Camus famously concludes “The Myth of Sisyphus” with “One must imagine Sisyphus happy”, but your Sisyphus in “End of the Line” carries something rather more specific: biography. “Forty-five, fifty-five / This is the time of your life”, followed by those “thousand lives you never led”, introduces age, memory and unrealised possibility into the cycle. Returning to the beginning at fifty cannot mean returning to the same beginning as at twenty because the person pushing the rock has accumulated knowledge, losses and consequences. Does your Sisyphus still arrive at something resembling Camus’s freedom through lucidity, or are you questioning whether accepting the absurd is enough once time itself has become part of the burden?

Jan: The initial spark was actually something very personal. Not that long ago, when I turned 45, someone told me, “You’re about to enter the ten best years of your life.” Whether that’s true or not is impossible to say, of course, but there was something strangely powerful about that thought. It almost felt like an obligation to make those years count. That naturally led me back to questions that have always fascinated me: the fact that life is finite, that our time is limited, and that with age comes an increasing awareness of all the lives we could have lived but didn’t. At twenty, there still seems to be an almost infinite number of possible futures ahead of you. Later in life, some of those possibilities have inevitably disappeared. Choices have been made, things have been lost, and time itself becomes part of the weight you carry. That is where Camus and Sisyphus became particularly relevant to “End of the Line”. Sisyphus keeps pushing his boulder despite knowing that it will inevitably roll back down. To me, that endless cycle of falling, getting back up and starting again is a very powerful metaphor for life. We all have our own rock to push uphill, and somehow we keep going. So can Sisyphus still be happy while carrying that rock up the mountain again and again? I think, with Camus, that he can. Despite our mortality and the intrinsic meaninglessness of existence, we still have the freedom to create our own stories, to find joy and to give meaning to the limited time we have. Perhaps age doesn’t contradict Camus’s idea of freedom at all; it simply makes it more urgent. We’d better start pushing, living and creating meaning now, because at some point, the time really does run out.

Karo: Musically, I hear more industrial language on “Realities” than on any previous Mildreda album, sometimes moving into very raw, almost noise-like territory. “Rückwärts” is particularly severe and fragmented, but that hardness runs through much of the record in the percussion, distortion, chopped structures and increasingly sharp vocal attack. What led you towards these harsher materials? Did you consciously pursue abrasion as part of the production language, and were there moments when you had to resist making a sound cleaner because its discomfort was exactly what the song required?

Jan: That direction actually emerged quite naturally. But it is true that, with this album, I consciously wanted the music to be less immediately digestible than on the previous record. Musically, “Realities” has far more sharp edges, rough textures and moments of genuine abrasion. Perhaps I had been a little too cautious before, whereas this time I allowed myself to go all the way.

There is a certain duality at the heart of the album in that respect: very harsh, abrasive music intertwined with vulnerability in the lyrics and themes. That contrast has always fascinated me. Nine Inch Nails taught me that industrial music can be layered with vulnerability without losing any of its power or aggression. If anything, the two can reinforce each other.

Karo: At the same time, reducing “Realities” to its aggression would completely misrepresent it because this is also an extraordinarily elaborate electronic record. Across the album, sounds accumulate, separate, change depth and move around one another; dense structures can suddenly open and allow a small sample, voice or electronic detail to occupy an enormous amount of psychological space. How differently were you thinking about density, depth and layering this time, and how do you know when complexity is intensifying an emotion rather than beginning to hide it?

Jan: First of all, thank you for describing our music so beautifully. I’m genuinely happy that I was able to take you along on that musical journey in that way. For me, every track is a new search for the right sound and the right balance. And I love that process. I find it incredibly rewarding to spend hours in the studio working with synths and samples, tweaking sounds and layers until they evoke exactly the feeling I’m looking for. There’s something wonderful about that moment when, after endless tweaking, the pieces of the puzzle suddenly fall into place. This time, there simply seemed to be more puzzle pieces than ever, all demanding their own space. That’s one of the reasons why “Realities” ultimately needed to become a double album. I secretly hope that listeners will surrender to that journey from beginning to end: eighteen tracks moving through very different moods, textures and sonic landscapes. For me, the complexity only works when all those layers ultimately serve that journey and the emotion behind it.

Karo: The “Reality Checks” are one of the strongest compositional ideas on the album. I do not hear them as conventional interludes because they do not merely separate the larger songs or give us recovery time. They make the whole record feel interwoven, almost braided: the substantial compositions form one strand, these smaller pieces enter between them, and gradually the relationship between the two becomes part of the album’s architecture. When did you realise that “Realities” needed this structure, and what makes an idea a “Reality Check” rather than something that develops into a full Mildreda song?

Jan: The idea of using interludes was there from the very beginning. I wanted something that would weave the individual songs together and make the album feel like one continuous journey rather than simply a collection of tracks. Albums like “Entities” by Project Pitchfork and “Galleries of Pain” by Placebo Effect were important references in that respect. Gradually, those interludes developed a character of their own and became the “Reality Checks”. I started to see them almost as the golden seams in kintsugi: they sit between the larger pieces, but rather than simply separating them, they bind the fractured parts into a new whole. Some echo or distort elements from the songs around them, some contain vocals, while others became little sonic adventures of their own. And perhaps that is what distinguishes a “Reality Check” from a full Mildreda song. It doesn’t need to arrive anywhere or tell a complete story. It can remain fragmentary: suggest something, disturb the balance for a moment and then disappear. Its incompleteness is part of its purpose.

Karo: Their placement also gives the album something almost physiological, like a heartbeat. Pressure accumulates, then comes a caesura, a moment of recalibration, and movement resumes. Yet the “Reality Checks” are not predictable moments of relief; sometimes they open the music and allow it to breathe, while elsewhere they make the footing even less secure. In ordinary life, a reality check is exactly such a moment: the narrative we have been living inside is interrupted and we are forced to take stock of where we actually stand. Afterwards the external circumstances may be identical, but our perception of them has changed. Is that also what these pieces are doing, repeatedly altering the position from which we perceive the music around them, and perhaps offering another way of understanding the plural title “Realities”?

Jan: Yes, very much so. I like your description of them as moments of recalibration, because that is exactly how I see a reality check in life as well. Something happens that briefly disrupts the story you have been telling yourself. The world may still be exactly the same afterwards, but your position within it has shifted. That connects directly to the central idea of “Realities”. We fall, we rise, we rebuild ourselves, and each time we do, we are forced into a slightly different version of reality. There is no single fixed perspective from which we experience our lives. Our perception constantly changes through loss, experience, decisions and new beginnings. “Reality Checks” translate that idea into the architecture of the album. They interrupt the flow and slightly reposition the listener before the next piece begins. And importantly, as you point out, they are not always moments of relief. Sometimes a reality check brings clarity; sometimes it only makes things more confusing. But either way, something has shifted. You continue the journey from a different position than before. And yes, in that sense they are very closely connected to the plural in “Realities”: there is never just one reality to return to.

Karo: You told me that the material grew into a double album, yet for you it still tells one story. That is a difficult structural problem: eighteen pieces, radically different degrees of intensity and a very broad electronic vocabulary could easily become abundance without coherence. At what point did you understand that you were not making two albums, or an album with supplementary pieces? What makes “Realities” one work for you: narrative, emotional continuity, musical recurrence, or something that only exists through the sequence itself?

Jan: There was also a very practical starting point. New albums on Dependent are nowadays released as beautiful, exclusive hardcover artbooks with two CDs. I’m a big fan of that format, but I’m not necessarily a big fan of the idea that the second disc automatically has to become a collection of bonus material. I didn’t feel like inviting a dozen remixers for this one. This had to remain my story. So in a way, I was quite happy to discover that I simply had too much to say for a single CD. There were so many musical ideas, moods and little sonic adventures that all felt integral to the same universe. Cutting them down just to fit the conventional length of an album would have felt more artificial than allowing the record to expand. And there was a reassuring precedent, of course. Nine Inch Nails showed with “The Fragile” that a double album can be an extraordinary work in its own right rather than an album plus an appendix. That record gave me confidence that abundance doesn’t necessarily have to come at the expense of coherence. For me, “Realities” is ultimately one big story. Despite the range of sounds, moods and emotions, everything belongs to the same conceptual journey: falling, rebuilding, shifting perspective and entering another reality. The “Reality Checks” help bind that journey together, but ultimately I think the coherence exists in the sequence itself. I hope the listener experiences those eighteen pieces not as separate destinations, but as chapters in one long journey through constantly changing emotional and sonic landscapes.

Karo: In our first interview you described songwriting as a way of exorcising your demons. “Realities”, however, seems less protected by symbolic architecture than some of the earlier material. “Damage Done”, “Clair-Obscur” and “End of the Line” allow loneliness, emotional asymmetry, ageing, regret and exhaustion to remain recognisably human rather than disguising them completely as theology or elaborate metaphor. Has becoming more personal also changed your relationship with abstraction? At what point does transforming an experience protect the song, and at what point does it protect the writer too much?

Jan: That is something that happened quite naturally and evolved over time. Initially, Your Life On Hold was the project where I allowed myself to reveal more of my soul and dig deeper into personal emotions, while Mildreda was primarily the place where I wanted to be loud, confrontational and channel aggression. But gradually, while writing new material, I found myself digging deeper with Mildreda as well. I started allowing a much broader emotional range into the project and became less dependent on abstraction or metaphor to express what I wanted to say. I think that also has a lot to do with becoming more confident as a songwriter. I no longer feel the need to hide behind anything. If there is something I want to say, I can say it openly and without disguise. And what changed with “Realities” is that I discovered I can do that within Mildreda too, without compromising what Mildreda is.

Karo: You mentioned Nine Inch Nails to me while explaining the direction of this record, particularly the possibility of allowing vulnerability and emotional depth to coexist with intensity and noise. On “Realities”, vulnerability rarely means making the music gentler; quite often exposure seems to make it more violent. Did that become a compositional principle in itself, that tenderness, humiliation, rage, longing and industrial aggression do not need separate musical languages because they can actually originate from the same emotional state?

Jan: What is vulnerable, fragile and delicate is also more susceptible to pain, and I think you can hear that throughout the album. There is a lot of sadness, underlying pain and unanswered longing on “Realities”. Those emotions don’t necessarily ask for gentle music. Sometimes vulnerability can be extremely violent precisely because there is so little protection around it. The best way for me to translate that duality into music was therefore sometimes to work with very dissonant, abrasive and explosive sounds. Tenderness and aggression don’t have to be opposites; they can grow out of exactly the same emotional state. That constant interplay between light and shadow runs through the entire album, I think. The fragile moments make the harsh ones more painful, and the harshness in turn makes the vulnerability feel even more exposed.

Karo: The collaborators introduce another interesting contradiction. In 2023 you told me that with “Blue-Devilled” you deliberately wanted to undertake the creative process yourself, partly because after previous collaborations you needed to demonstrate that you could stand alone artistically. “Realities”, which you consider much more personal, opens the door again: Constantin Warter of Calva Y Nada enters “Rückwärts”, while Johan Van Roy of Suicide Commando appears on “Virtual Goddess”. Why did the more personal album become the right place for other voices again, and how much of their own identity do you want a guest to bring into a Mildreda song?

Jan: That’s true: on “Blue-Devilled” I deliberately avoided collaborations for exactly the reason you mention. But that was an artistic decision rather than something dictated by the subject matter. I needed to prove to myself that I could carry an entire Mildreda album on my own. Once I had done that, there was no reason to keep that door closed. This time I wanted other voices on the record, and I’m incredibly happy with the people I managed to bring in.

The collaboration with Calva Y Nada was actually a blessing on a very practical level as well. “Rückwärts” was one of the first songs I wrote for the album, but after living with the demo for a while, I realised I was completely stuck. I loved the track, but I simply couldn’t imagine my own voice doing it justice. Constantin has such a unique and unmistakable voice that once I started fantasising about someone else singing it, I simply couldn’t hear anyone but him. Through mutual friends we got in touch, eventually met in person, and to my delight he connected with the idea. For me, it was a genuine full-circle moment. Calva Y Nada was one of the bands that defined my teenage years, so hearing Constantin’s voice on a Mildreda record still feels both surreal and deeply meaningful.

Johan Van Roy represents something very similar to me. Together with Dirk Ivens, he helped shape what dark electro sounded like in Belgium. With “Realities”, I deliberately wanted to reconnect with that cold, uncompromising Belgian industrial DNA, and “Virtual Goddess” immediately felt like the perfect track for Johan. He brought exactly the intensity and attitude I had hoped for. And I think that also answers the question of how much of themselves I want guests to bring. I don’t invite someone simply to perform a part that could just as easily have been sung by me. I want their identity to become part of the song. Constantin and Johan are unmistakably themselves on these tracks, while somehow still sounding completely at home within Mildreda.

Having them both on “Realities” is a real privilege. They are far more than guest vocalists to me: they are two artists whose music helped shape my own musical identity long before Mildreda even existed.

Karo: The remixes take that question of identity even further. Das Ich and Steril reconstruct “End of the Line”, while Flesh Field rework “Virtual Goddess”, and around a record called “Realities” the very act of remixing becomes conceptually appropriate: the same composition receives another body, another emphasis and another emotional temperature while remaining recognisable. Did any of those versions make you discover something in your own original that you had not consciously put there? More fundamentally, where does the identity of a song reside if rhythm, texture, atmosphere and structure can change so dramatically while we still perceive it as the same work?

Jan: I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with remixes. I love them when they have a genuine reason to exist, rather than simply being part of some endless process of squeezing more material out of a release. The occasion has to feel right, and so does the remixer. That’s why I’m quite selective about both. Mildreda hasn’t actually been through the remix machine that often, so having several artists reinterpret these songs was relatively new territory for Mildreda, and quite exciting.

Das Ich were genuine heroes of my youth. Their first two albums still give me goosebumps today, and remarkably, they haven’t aged at all. They were simply light-years ahead of their time. Having Bruno remix one of my songs was therefore a childhood dream coming true. And when I first heard the result, I actually did a little dance of joy. It sounds unmistakably like Das Ich, yet “End of the Line” is still clearly there. In a strange way, it feels like a true hybrid: half my song, half a Das Ich composition. Perhaps that is also an answer to your question about where the identity of a song resides. Apparently you can change an enormous amount and still preserve some kind of core that remains recognisable.

I’m equally happy with the other remixes. Steril are heroes of mine as well, and they transformed “End of the Line” into a wonderfully tight club track. Flesh Field, on the other hand, happened to cross my path at exactly the right moment, so involving him was almost an act of serendipity. I loved hearing “Virtual Goddess” thrown into his wonderfully mad industrial mixture of bombast, aggression and even a touch of dubstep. What fascinates me about all three is that I can still recognise my songs, but I’m hearing them through someone else’s ears. Maybe that’s what a good remix should do: not simply decorate the original, but reveal another possible reality that was somehow already hiding inside it. The Das Ich and Steril versions of “End of the Line” were released on the June 2026 EP, while the “Virtual Goddess” release includes the Flesh Field remix.

Karo: “Virtual Goddess” avoids one of the easiest traps in writing about digital culture because the narrator is implicated in the mechanism he criticises. There is a virtual goddess, but there is also a virtual god; desire becomes entangled with images, attention, views and projection, so nobody gets to occupy the comfortable position outside the system. Is complicity important here? Have we reached a point where criticising mediated reality while continuing to produce, consume and emotionally invest in it is itself one of the defining contradictions of contemporary life?

Jan: This is a difficult question because there are several things tangled up in it. There is the sheer amount of our day that social media consumes, but also the way it affects how we present ourselves and how we perceive other people. Both images are inevitably distorted. At the same time, however critical I am of social media, I can’t dismiss it as purely negative. It remains, whether we like it or not, an important way of discovering music and news, staying connected and sharing your own story with the world. And occasionally you even find a good joke there. So yes, complicity is absolutely part of it. I notice the contradiction in myself all the time. I can hardly keep away from my smartphone, call it an addiction if you like, while simultaneously being deeply irritated by the whole mechanism. I’m frustrated by all those pixel-perfect façades, yet at the same time I participate in creating one myself. I criticise the game while continuing to play it. And artificial intelligence is adding yet another layer of complexity to all of this. The boundaries between what is real, constructed, enhanced or entirely artificial are becoming increasingly difficult to define. We seem to be living inside a fascinating and slightly disturbing science-fiction film, except that none of us gets to sit outside it and simply watch.

Karo: “Götterfall” almost feels like an older Mildreda argument surviving inside an entirely different philosophical environment. We have discussed your atheism before, and the quasi-sacral architecture of “Blue-Devilled” has largely vanished, yet somebody is still firing at gods who remain silent, mocking and apparently impossible to kill. If those gods are no longer theological, what has taken their place? Are there ideas, institutions, authorities, memories or even people we consciously stop believing in while continuing to grant them enormous psychological power?

Jan: The ancient Greek historian Herodotus tells us that the Getae would shoot arrows into the sky during thunderstorms, threatening their god. I’ve always found that an incredibly powerful image, and I had actually used it before in a Your Life On Hold song. But it was simply too strong not to bring into the Mildreda universe as well: man, confronted with a reality he cannot accept, firing his arrows at the heavens. I also knew I wanted a song in German on the album, which allowed me to reshape the idea into something new. The arrows became bullets, and German inevitably gives the whole thing a very different weight and character. But the central idea remained the same: we are powerless and insignificant, raging against forces that are infinitely larger than ourselves.

Karo: “Reality” widens the scope dramatically at the end: headlines, war, mediated violence, environmental destruction, the repeated consumption of catastrophe through screens. Much of the album has dealt with extremely intimate realities such as desire, damage, loneliness, ageing and unrealised possibilities, and then the individual is placed inside this enormous informational environment. Is the movement outward suggesting that there is ultimately no purely private reality, because even our most intimate emotional lives are continuously penetrated and reorganised by images, narratives and catastrophes arriving from outside?

Jan: Despite what the title might suggest, this closing track is something of an outsider on the album in terms of content indeed. Where the rest of the album navigates my inner landscape, this song shifts its gaze to the world around me, our planet, and it isn’t doing well. Long-time fans who were with us back in the cassette days may recognise this piece. I wrote the first demo thirty years ago. I had always intended to give it a definitive version someday, and this album finally made that possible: new lyrics, new sound and a long-awaited rebirth.

Karo: Finally, you already have concerts around the new-album period, including NCN in Deutzen on September 6 and Fourscher Festival in Erfurt in November. What happens after those dates? Are further Mildreda concerts already being discussed, and is the ambition eventually to take “Realities” on a more extensive tour of its own?

Jan: I definitely hope to play a lot of shows with Mildreda in 2027. A few things have already been confirmed, but there’s still a lot up in the air. If the stars align, it could turn into quite an adventurous year!

About Mildreda

Mildreda is the Belgian dark-electro project led by producer, vocalist and songwriter Jan Dewulf. Its roots go back to the mid-1990s, when Dewulf, still in his teens and strongly affected by the cold Belgian electronics of acts such as The Klinik, began working with synthesizers and home-recording equipment. His self-released cassette “II Castrato” appeared in 1995, followed by “De Laffe Denker” in 1996. The latter circulated widely through the electro underground, and Mildreda subsequently shared stages with acts including Plastic Noise Experience, Terminal Choice, Covenant and VNV Nation.

Dewulf later put Mildreda on hold and concentrated on Diskonnekted, while also completing a degree in philosophy. He returned to Mildreda with the digitally released “Coward Philosophy” in 2016. After signing with Dependent Records, the project released “I Was Never Really There” in 2021, bringing the early Belgian dark-electro foundations into a substantially more detailed contemporary production environment. Guests on that record included Dirk Ivens, Cyan of The Eternal Afflict and Numb’s Don Gordon, while Claus Larsen of Leaether Strip handled mastering.

The concept album “Blue-Devilled” followed in December 2023. Built partly around Jean-Paul Sartre’s treatment of hell and the judgement of others, it expanded Mildreda’s melodic and atmospheric vocabulary while retaining its Belgian and Canadian dark-electro foundations.

“Realities”, released on August 28, 2026 through Dependent, contains 18 tracks across two discs and is available as a limited 48-page hardcover artbook designed by Henk Willems. The album features Constantin “Breñal” Warter of Calva Y Nada on “Rückwärts” and Johan Van Roy of Suicide Commando on “Virtual Goddess”. Its conceptual grounding shifts from Sartre towards Camus, while recurring “Reality Checks” connect the individual compositions into one continuous album structure. Mildreda’s official biography describes the project as led by Dewulf; the live incarnation consists of Jan Dewulf and Christophe “Salva” Salvatore. The single “Silk Skin” preceded the album in August 2026.

Interview by Karo Kratochwil.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Nocturnal Culture Night returns to Kulturpark Deutzen from 4 to 6 September 2026, with its traditional Warm-Up taking place on Thursday, 3 September. Now at edition number 19, NCN once again uses several stages to accommodate a programme that reaches well beyond any single definition of goth, industrial or electronic music.

The 2026 bill shows that range plainly. Nik Kershaw, Die Krupps, SKYND, Diary of Dreams, Peter Heppner & Band, L’Âme Immortelle, Girls Under Glass, Samsas Traum / Weena Morloch, Siglo XX, Esplendor Geométrico, Pankow, Actors, Sierra Veins, The Beauty Of Gemina, HORSKH, Mildreda, Melotron, Of The Wand & The Moon and Container 90 are the most familiar names on the bill, and they come from very different points in electronic and alternative music history.

The festival takes place in Kulturpark Deutzen, roughly 30 kilometres south of Leipzig. NCN stays small by design, with the festival shop describing a capacity of around 2,500 visitors. The programme is spread across the Amphibühne, Waldbühne, Parkbühne and Kulturbühne, alongside the separate Lesebühne.

From 300 people to NCN 19

The first Nocturnal Culture Night took place in 2005 with approximately 300 visitors. Holger Troisch had begun developing the idea two years earlier, and that first edition was much smaller than the present festival: one stage and barely a full day of concerts. The growth that followed did not turn NCN into a conventional large festival. Four music stages have been in operation since 2014, while different parts of the programme gradually acquired their own musical emphasis. The Parkbühne, for example, became associated with synth, coldwave, minimal and post-punk from 2016 onwards; the Kulturbühne developed a stronger relationship with neofolk, industrial and experimental work. 2026 is officially NCN 19, while the organisers regard 2027 as the twentieth jubilee edition. The chronology does not correspond directly to twenty consecutive calendar years because there was no regular second edition in 2006 and the pandemic period produced separate special editions. NCN is currently operated through NCN Event GmbH, based in Leipzig, with Holger Troisch remaining the festival’s organiser.

Holger Troisch and a festival with no single genre

Troisch’s approach to booking explains much of the 2026 programme. Years ago he summarised the balance: “The line-up, the festival lives by big and successful names, but also by insiders.” He followed it with an even simpler statement: “Versatility is important for me.” (Reflections of Darkness, 2017) His more recent comments say the same. Discussing NCN’s identity in 2026, Troisch said that the festival had become too broad musically to tie itself to a single genre, and that introducing new styles was necessary if the event itself was to continue developing.

The running order shows that principle more clearly than an alphabetical line-up. On Saturday alone, Nik Kershaw closes the Amphibühne, SKYND headline the Waldbühne, Actors occupy the evening Parkbühne slot, and Esplendor Geométrico close the live programme on the Kulturbühne. Those artists do not belong to one genre or even one generation. They share NCN’s long-standing remit: electronic, post-industrial, dark and alternative music in the broadest sense.

Nik Kershaw: an unusual headliner for NCN

The most conspicuous name this year is Nik Kershaw, who closes the Amphibühne on Saturday at 22:30. Kershaw’s breakthrough came in 1984, with “Wouldn’t It Be Good”, “I Won’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” and “The Riddle”. His official biography records 62 weeks on the UK Singles Chart across 1984 and 1985, and he performed at Live Aid in 1985. His later career took in songwriting and production for other artists alongside his own releases and performances. He is not a darkwave or industrial artist, and NCN does not try to redraw his history to make him fit. The festival has long treated the wider electronic and alternative culture of the 1980s as part of its remit rather than limiting itself to artists carrying a particular scene label. Kershaw sits at one end of the festival’s historical spectrum: highly crafted British electronic pop that entered mass culture in the 1980s. Only a few hours earlier, other stages will be presenting EBM, post-punk, industrial electronics and experimental music that developed around or against that same decade.

Die Krupps: the industrial line runs directly through Düsseldorf

On Sunday the Amphibühne closes with Die Krupps, whose place in this programme needs less explanation. The Düsseldorf group began with the industrial construction of “Stahlwerksinfonie” before “Wahre Arbeit Wahrer Lohn” and subsequent releases developed a hard electronic language closely associated with the foundations of EBM. During the 1990s, metal guitar was folded into that vocabulary, creating the electronic-metal combination that became another major strand of the band’s identity. Die Krupps marked 45 years of activity in 2025. Their current phase is not limited to anniversary performances: the band signed a multi-album agreement with Dependent Records, with a new album announced for 2026, and guitarist Marcel Zürcher returned to the group in June 2026. The band’s own announcement specifically lists NCN among the concerts following his return. There is also a long NCN connection. The festival archive lists Die Krupps in 2015, 2018, 2023 and 2026, making this their fourth appearance in Deutzen.

SKYND: industrial music through the architecture of true crime

SKYND close Saturday’s Waldbühne at 21:00 and represent a much newer form of industrial performance. The project is built around vocalist SKYND and producer/multi-instrumentalist F, with its catalogue structured around real criminal cases. Rather than using true crime as occasional imagery, the project has made it the organising principle of its music, videos and visual identity. Its own description is simply “TRUE CRIME MUSIC.” The project has released steadily through 2026. Material from “Chapter VII: Red Winter” has included pieces concerning Andrei Chikatilo, Tamara Samsonova and Mikhail Popkov, while the subsequent “Jimmy Savile” opened Chapter VIII: The Open Secret, shifting attention towards institutional protection and the mechanisms that allowed abuse to remain concealed. The NCN set lands in the middle of that run of releases.

Diary of Dreams: five appearances across the history of NCN

Diary of Dreams play the Waldbühne at 19:25 on Sunday. Adrian Hates’ project has run for more than three decades on electronic production, darkwave structures, guitars and inward songwriting. The current release is “Chapter 1: Dead End Dreams”, while the band continue touring extensively through 2026. Their NCN history is long. The official archive lists appearances in 2007, 2009, 2013, 2021 and 2026, making this their fifth visit.

Repeat bookings shape the festival’s history as much as new ones. Some projects come back at intervals long enough for NCN to have documented how their work and their audience changed.

Peter Heppner & Band

Peter Heppner & Band play the Amphibühne at 17:20 on Sunday, immediately before Die Krupps later that evening. Heppner’s own site confirms the full-band NCN appearance on 6 September 2026. It will be his third NCN, following appearances in 2014 and 2020.

Heppner and Die Krupps on the same main stage shows how NCN handles German electronic history. One represents a melodic, vocal-driven lineage closely associated with synthpop and dark pop; the other comes directly from industrial music and EBM. NCN does not collapse those histories into one genre, but it does recognise that their audiences have overlapped for decades.

L’Âme Immortelle and Girls Under Glass

Friday brings two other established names whose careers have repeatedly crossed the boundaries between electronics, goth and heavier music. L’Âme Immortelle, appearing at 21:25 on the Waldbühne, were founded in Austria in 1996 and are centred on Thomas Rainer and Sonja Kraushofer. The male/female vocal contrast has stayed central to the project while the music itself has moved between dark electronics, rock and more melodic material. The group will mark its 30th anniversary in 2027 with a dedicated concert series. This is their second NCN appearance after 2016.

Girls Under Glass, meanwhile, close Friday’s Amphibühne. Their history reaches back to the mid-1980s and encompasses wave, gothic rock, electronics and industrial influences rather than a single fixed style. NCN has hosted them in 2010, 2016, 2022 and now 2026.

Siglo XX, Pankow and Esplendor Geométrico: the historically important names are not all on the main stage

Some of the historically important bookings are positioned away from the Amphibühne.

Belgium’s Siglo XX, appearing at 21:25 on Friday’s Parkbühne, emerged in Genk in 1978 and became an important part of the austere Belgian post-punk and coldwave history of the period. The NCN archive lists 2026 as their first visit to the festival. Pankow, playing Friday on the Waldbühne, represent a different European trajectory. The Florence project developed from the Italian experimental underground into harder electronic and industrial territory and later became strongly associated with EBM. They return to NCN after a previous appearance in 2016.

Then there is Esplendor Geométrico, closing Saturday’s Kulturbühne at 22:45. The Spanish project dates to 1980, and its repetitive, physical combination of mechanical rhythm, noise and industrial electronics developed largely outside the Anglo-German narratives through which industrial music is often described. NCN 19 will be their first appearance at the festival.

That booking is the kind Troisch’s distinction between “big names” and “insiders” covers: historical weight and billing size are not the same thing.

Actors, Sierra Veins, HORSKH and the current generation

The contemporary programme

Several of the contemporary acts arrive with new material rather than a back catalogue.

Canadian ACTORS take the 21:00 Parkbühne slot on Saturday, returning to NCN after their first appearance in 2019. The Vancouver band have released steadily through 2026: “CTRL” appeared in February, followed by the DJ? Acucrack reworking “Dead Inside (Crackmix)” in March, “Left On Read” in April and “Youth” in July. The latter arrives while ACTORS are working on a new album, their first studio record since Acts of Worship and Reanimated. The singles keep the tightly constructed post-punk songwriting the band are known for, but the production hits harder: stronger electronic rhythm, more low-end pressure and a closer relationship with the dancefloor. NCN catches ACTORS mid-change rather than between records.

Sierra Veins closes the Parkbühne at 00:10 on Friday, a late slot that suits how far her work now runs past darkwave into techno and harder club music. Her second full-length album, “In The Name Of Blood”, was released on 7 November 2025 and made the change from SIERRA to SIERRA VEINS part of the record’s central subject: identity, inheritance and the traces carried within us. It also includes the collaboration “Memory Cells” with Ghost Dance. In February 2026 she followed it with “HypnoVizion 031: SIERRA VEINS (DJ Mix)”, a 46-minute mix for REZZ’s HypnoVizion series that places her own tracks and remixes beside material from artists including Gesaffelstein, Boys Noize, Matteo Tura and Ghost Dance. The album and the mix place her at NCN with one foot in the dark electronic scene and the other in a much wider club culture.

French trio HORSKH open the Parkbühne programme on Friday, three weeks before the release of their new ten-track album “MTNT” on 25 September 2026. Three pieces from this phase have already appeared: “Bad Glitch” in January, “Hyperhuman” in March and “Glow” in June. HORSKH themselves describe the project as neo-industrial / grunge / metal. The new material continues the collision between electronic programming, heavily processed vocals, distorted guitars and industrial rhythm that sets them apart from acts rebuilding an older industrial vocabulary. The NCN set is one of the last festival dates before MTNT is out.

Belgium’s Mildreda, appearing on the Waldbühne at 14:20 on Sunday, arrive in Deutzen even closer to a new record. “Realities” is released by Dependent Records on 28 August 2026, just nine days before the NCN performance. The eighteen-track double album follows Blue-Devilled and pushes Jan Dewulf’s dark electro past the colder boundaries usually associated with the genre. The structure expands too: recurring “Reality Check” pieces divide the album, while Johan Van Roy of Suicide Commando appears on “Virtual Goddess” and Constantin “Breñal” Warter of Calva Y Nada guests on “Rückwärts.” The first single, “End of the Line,” appeared in June, followed in July by “Virtual Goddess”; Dewulf has described the latter as a confession rather than a criticism of social media: the contradiction between seeking meaningful connection and still responding to the tiny rewards of digital approval. He also says the writing brought colours and emotions into Mildreda that had sat outside his comfort zone, rather than extending the sound of Blue-Devilled. The NCN set is one of the first chances to hear how that studio material works live, against a show built on Dewulf’s vocals and electronics and Christophe Salvatore’s keyboards.

Around them, The Foreign Resort, Mayflower Madame, Winter Severity Index, SIIE, Debdepan, Lovataraxx, Lone Assembly, Grundeis, Container 90, Ambassador 21, Menticide, AD and Intent extend the contemporary programme in very different directions. They are not one new generation of “dark music”. The schedule shows post-punk, EBM, industrial electronics, synth-driven music and club culture overlapping without becoming interchangeable, and the separate stages keep those distinctions visible.

The acoustic, ritual and experimental side

The Kulturbühne runs its own programme.

Of The Wand & The Moon close the stage on Sunday, while Corde Oblique, Cawatana, Darkwood, Paganland, Tears Of Othila, Nemuer, SIAMGDA ꕾ Marie, Supersimmetria and MS Gentur + Sven Phalanx occupy points between neofolk, ritual sound, experimental electronics, ambient and industrial music.

Those artists would lose their context between larger electro acts on a main stage. Splitting the site lets NCN stay broad without pretending all of its music is interchangeable.

Who plays when

Thursday, 3 September – Kulturbühne / Warm-Up

• 19:00 Doors
• 20:00 Bagger 258
• 20:40 MRDTC
• 21:35 Prager Handgriff
• 22:30 Tyske Ludder
• 23:30 DJ Team – quiet aftershow party

Friday, 4 September – Amphibühne

• 15:30 Doors
• 16:10 Vanguard
• 17:50 Melotron
• 20:05 Elinborg
• 22:45 Girls Under Glass

Friday, 4 September – Waldbühne

• 15:00 Doors
• 15:30 Extize
• 17:00 Jesus On Extasy
• 18:55 Pankow
• 21:25 L’Âme Immortelle

Friday, 4 September – Parkbühne

• 15:00 Doors
• 15:30 HORSKH
• 17:00 Hinfort
• 18:55 Atlas Bird
• 21:25 Siglo XX
• 00:10 Sierra Veins

Friday, 4 September – Kulturbühne

• 15:00 Doors
• 16:10 Frequen-C & TC75
• 17:50 Tears Of Othila
• 20:05 MS Gentur + Sven Phalanx
• 22:45 Nemuer
• 00:50 DJ Adler & DJ SPU Manne – quiet aftershow party

Friday, 4 September – Lesebühne

• 15:00 Doors
• 15:30 M. Kruppe
• 17:00 Christian von Aster
• 18:50 Torsten Low
• 21:00 Jessica Iser

Saturday, 5 September – Amphibühne

• 11:45 Doors
• 12:20 Ambassador 21
• 13:40 AD:Key
• 15:20 Schöngeist
• 17:30 Menticide
• 19:45 Samsas Traum / Weena Morloch
• 22:30 Nik Kershaw

Saturday, 5 September – Waldbühne

• 10:30 Doors
• 11:50 Aktion: Fiasko
• 13:00 Strikkland
• 14:30 The Awakening
• 16:25 Container 90
• 18:30 The Beauty Of Gemina
• 21:00 SKYND

Saturday, 5 September – Parkbühne

• 10:30 Doors
• 11:50 Rina Pavar
• 13:00 Ozibut
• 14:30 SIIE
• 16:25 Debdepan
• 18:30 Lovataraxx
• 21:00 Actors
• 23:50 Lone Assembly

Saturday, 5 September – Kulturbühne

• 10:30 Doors
• 12:20 Paganland
• 13:40 SIAMGDA
• 15:20 no artist is named in the current schedule
• 17:30 Darkwood
• 19:55 Les Chaussers De La Nuit
• 22:45 Esplendor Geométrico
• 01:10 DJ Bastard & DJ Tobi – quiet aftershow party

Saturday, 5 September – Lesebühne

• 10:30 Doors
• 13:00 Torsten Low
• 16:25 Christian von Aster
• 18:30 Markus Heitz

Sunday, 6 September – Amphibühne

• 12:00 Doors
• 12:30 Grundeis
• 13:40 Junkie Kut
• 15:15 Intent:Outtake
• 17:20 Peter Heppner & Band
• 20:45 Die Krupps

Sunday, 6 September – Waldbühne

• 11:00 Doors
• 12:00 Beyond Border
• 13:00 Lovelorn Dolls
• 14:20 Mildreda
• 16:10 Sturm Café
• 19:25 Diary Of Dreams

Sunday, 6 September – Parkbühne

• 11:00 Doors
• 12:00 Venin Carmin
• 13:00 Mayflower Madame
• 14:20 The Foreign Resort
• 16:10 Winter Severity Index
• 18:30 Hundreds

Sunday, 6 September – Kulturbühne

• 11:00 Doors
• 12:30 Cawatana
• 13:40 Corde Oblique
• 15:15 Supersimmetria
• 17:20 Of The Wand & The Moon

Sunday, 6 September – Lesebühne

• 11:00 Doors
• 13:00 Dirk Bernemann
• 14:20 Erk Aicrag
• 16:15 Markus Heitz
• 18:55 Christian von Aster

NCN 19

Warm-Up: 3 September 2026 Festival: 4-6 September 2026 Kulturpark Deutzen Arno-Bahndorf-Straße 12 Deutzen, Germany

Day tickets are currently listed at €75 for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, while several categories of weekend tickets are also available through the official NCN shop.

The running order shows Troisch’s booking method in practice. A British pop songwriter with a 1980s chart catalogue goes on one stage, Spanish industrial pioneers on another, true-crime industrial performance on a third and neofolk or experimental electronics elsewhere, with none of them redefined to make the combination work.

NCN’s identity rests on which strands still make sense for the same audience in the same weekend, not on holding a genre boundary. After nineteen editions that is still a booking question.

About Nocturnal Culture Night

Nocturnal Culture Night has been staged at Kulturpark Deutzen in Saxony since 2005, when Holger Troisch opened the first edition on a single stage for roughly 300 visitors. The site sits in the village of Deutzen, part of the municipality of Neukieritzsch, about 30 kilometres south of Leipzig, and its wooded amphitheatre and surrounding buildings gave the festival its four-stage layout from 2014 onwards. Troisch has run the event throughout, latterly through NCN Event GmbH in Leipzig, and the programme covers EBM, industrial, post-punk, coldwave, synthpop, neofolk, ritual and experimental electronics side by side rather than in separate weekends, with a Lesebühne carrying readings by German genre authors in parallel with the music.

The 2026 line-up reached its present shape after a change at the top of the bill. Marc Almond was announced as the first NCN 19 headliner in September 2025, then withdrew on health grounds; Nik Kershaw was booked in his place for the Saturday Amphibühne slot. Camping and non-camping weekend tickets and day tickets are sold only through the official NCN shop, and caravan and parking tickets sold out earlier in the year. The 2027 edition is the one the organisers count as the twentieth jubilee, which makes NCN 19 the last edition before that anniversary.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Twenty-five editions after a self-financed experiment in a bunker beneath Wrocław’s Wzgórze Partyzantów, Wrocław Industrial Festival reaches XXV. From 5 to 8 November 2026, Industrial Art brings another four days of industrial, experimental electronics, noise, ritual music, dark ambient and related forms to Stary Klasztor, Sala Gotycka and Sala Witrażowa at ul. Purkyniego 1, with Kino Nowe Horyzonty at Kazimierza Wielkiego 19a/21 also part of the festival infrastructure.

The anniversary line-up is appropriately difficult to reduce to one generation or one definition of industrial music. SPKtR / SPK, The Legendary Pink Dots, In The Nursery and Crash Course in Science bring histories reaching back to the formative years of post-industrial and experimental electronic culture. Around them sit artists from power electronics, ritual ambient, rhythm’n’noise, dark folk and contemporary noise, together with two collaborative performances created specifically around meetings between artists.

Good to know, because WIF has never functioned well as a nostalgia festival. Its history is built as much on juxtaposition as preservation: originators of industrial culture appear alongside artists who inherited, distorted or ignored its vocabulary completely.

From a bunker to the 25th edition

The first Wrocław Industrial Festival took place in 2001, founded by Maciej Frett and Arkadiusz Bagiński, both associated with Job Karma. Frett later recalled that the inaugural festival was financed from their own savings and held in the former bunker beneath Wzgórze Partyzantów. The early editions subsequently moved into Sala Gotycka, at that point still an austere, unheated space hardly designed for concerts; organisers have recalled hauling stage equipment through a second-floor window.

The first edition brought together ten friendly projects. By 2025, Frett estimated that well over 500 acts had appeared in Wrocław across the festival’s history, ranging from musicians directly involved in establishing industrial music to successive generations of experimental artists.

WIF has retained its identity as something broader than a sequence of concerts. Film, audiovisual work, performance, exhibitions, publishing and encounters between artists have repeatedly entered the programme. The festival’s own anniversary reflections have described it as a meeting point for an international community rather than a single-genre event.

In 2026, that history arrives at edition number 25.

SPKtR / SPK: not simply reopening an archive

The most historically important name on the bill is SPKtR / SPK. SPK dates back to Sydney in 1978 and became one of the defining projects of early industrial and noise culture. The present incarnation is centred on Graeme Revell and Robert J. Revell, but its stated purpose is explicitly not to reproduce the old project unchanged. The new SPKtR material is conceived as a continuation of SPK’s experimental logic through contemporary technology and composition.

There is an especially strong Wrocław connection here: SPKtR’s own official site describes its November WIF appearance as the point at which the harder, noise-and-rhythm-oriented SPKtR XXX direction will culminate in a major live statement. Robert Revell will additionally perform his own solo material at the festival. His debut solo album, “Torn Remnants of Nobility”, appeared in 2025; he is also part of the current SPK line-up.

The Legendary Pink Dots

The Legendary Pink Dots bring another extraordinarily long history to Wrocław, although from a very different branch of the underground. The group formed around Edward Ka-Spel and Phil Knight in 1980, subsequently relocating its centre of gravity from Britain to the Netherlands. More than four decades later, the project remains active rather than functioning solely around its catalogue; the official discography continues through 2026.

Their psychedelic electronics, experimental song structures and surreal, frequently unstable relationship between pop form and abstraction make them appropriate for WIF: recognisable enough to possess a long-established following, but historically resistant to fitting comfortably into a single scene.

In The Nursery: cinema becomes part of the festival

One of the most distinctive elements of XXV WIF will come from In The Nursery, the Sheffield project built around twin brothers Klive and Nigel Humberstone, active since 1981.

Rather than presenting a conventional concert, In The Nursery will perform their score to Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 silent film “The Passion of Joan of Arc”. The music belongs to the duo’s long-running Optical Music Series, through which they have composed new scores for classic silent cinema; the Joan of Arc score itself was released in 2008. Their official site describes the work as following both the extraordinary intimacy of Renée Falconetti’s close-up performance and the escalating violence of the film’s final sequences.

Maciej Frett has specifically identified this as the special cinema concert opening the festival.

Crash Course in Science

Philadelphia’s Crash Course in Science provide another direct connection to the beginnings of electronic post-punk. Formed in 1979 by art-school students Dale Feliciello, Mallory Yago and Michael Zodorozny, the group developed a raw, percussive electronic sound whose influence subsequently travelled into both industrial music and techno.

Placed alongside SPKtR, they make the historical component of XXV WIF more interesting than a simple procession of “industrial pioneers”: these artists arrived at machine music from distinctly different cultural and musical positions.

Two collaborations made for the moment

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the programme is found in its collaborative projects.

N.U. Unruh & Meta Meat will bring together the co-founder and percussionist of Einstürzende Neubauten with French duo Meta Meat, itself built around Phil Von of Von Magnet and Hugues Villette of 2Kilos &More. Meta Meat describe their work as “tribal-industrial”, combining acoustic percussion, physical performance and electronic structures.

This is not simply two existing sets placed next to one another. Meta Meat have confirmed that the Wrocław performance with Unruh is a completely new work created specifically for the festival, while Frett has described it as the collaboration’s first public appearance.

The second collaboration, Flint Glass & Ah Cama-Sotz, joins Paris-based Gwenn Trémorin and Antwerp-based Herman Klapholz. Their latest album, “The Shadow of the Torturer”, was released by ant-zen in April 2026 and draws on Gene Wolfe’s “The Book of the New Sun”, combining cinematic electronics, ritual elements and darker rhythmic structures.

Wrocław matters for this project too: Klapholz has confirmed that WIF will host their first concert together.

From rhythmic force to ritual space

The rest of the international programme moves across very different understandings of industrial music.

Belgium’s Imminent, the project of Olivier Moreau, sits at the harder intersection of sophisticated rhythmic programming, industrial electronics and technoid force. His recent “Mythrality” material continues the combination of intricate rhythm, distorted sequences and colder atmospheric construction that has defined the project.

German project Apoptose moves in almost the opposite direction. Active since around the turn of the millennium, its work has long centred on dark ambient, ritual structures and field recording. The 2025 album “Die Zeit und die Dunkelheit” returned explicitly to forests, natural recordings, solitude and slowly unfolding electronic environments.

American Control, Thomas Garrison’s long-running project, occupies the territory between power electronics and death industrial, using aggression less as uninterrupted assault than as part of a carefully constructed atmospheric architecture.

Finland’s Halo Manash, active since 2003, takes ritual even further. Its recordings draw heavily on drone, elemental field recordings and ceremonial approaches to sound; some releases originate directly from private ritual performances recorded in northern Finland.

Belgian Empusae brings another organic and electro-acoustic interpretation of post-industrial music, moving through ritual, ambient, doom and soundtrack-like composition.

And Blood and Sun, formed by Luke Tromiczak in 2011, takes the programme into dark folk: voice, strings, percussion and a musical language concerned with myth, spiritual experience and human struggle rather than electronics alone.

Robert Revell, PFFFT…! and Espectra Negra

Alongside his work in the current SPKtR configuration, Robert Revell will perform separately. His 2025 solo album “Torn Remnants of Nobility” brings together his background across noise, metal, musique concrète and experimental composition.

Berlin’s PFFFT…! reaches almost as far back historically as some of the festival’s best-known guests. The project describes itself as an autonomous, constantly mutating body whose first actions date to 1984; its 2025 “Bunkerbeschallung” sits between industrial electronics, noise and what the project itself tags as “miner wave”.

Espectra Negra, the Berlin-based project of Mexican artist Verónica Mota, works with ritualistic noise, industrial experimentation and politically charged sound. Her album “Empire” appeared through HANDS and includes contributions from artists including N.U. Unruh.

The Polish contingent

The Polish side of XXV WIF is equally broad.

Opowieść construct performances around noise, mechanical sound, film projection and live visual actions. Their album “Podróż” develops a language strongly associated with movement and train-like mechanical rhythm, while their concerts have been described by the project itself as forms of musical ritual combined with visual performance.

Rites of Fall & Fugavit continue their joint audiovisual project. Rites of Fall, created by Bartek Kuszewski, grew from experiments placing religious and folk material into new contexts; with visual artist Fugavit, the collaborative performance has previously appeared under the title “Into the Well”.

Warsaw duo Mazut, Paweł Starzec and Michał Turowski, have spent roughly a decade moving between acid, industrial, noise and experimental dance music. Their 2025 “Dirt Collector” slowed the project down toward gritty post-industrial ambience, while the 2026 “Live Collector” documents performances from Wrocław and Kraków.

Finally, Gdańsk-based Dystopian Control brings the uncompromising end of the Polish noise underground. The project’s first full-length album, “Nothing Changes the Narrative”, arrived through Zoharum in May 2026, using harsh noise as a foundation while pushing beyond straightforward genre formalism.

After the concerts

The announced DJ programme is equally substantial: Ancient Methods, Philipp Strobel, Blackdeath 1334 / Francesca, Eric and Paradroid are all currently confirmed.

The official festival page has not yet published a complete day-by-day running order, so individual performance times should not be assumed at this stage.

Who plays when

Thursday, 5 November 2026 – Kino Nowe Horyzonty

• In The Nursery – live score for Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent film “The Passion of Joan of Arc”
• Afterparty: DJ Eric

Friday, 6 November 2026 – Gothic Hall

• The Legendary Pink Dots
• Crash Course in Science
• Halo Manash
• Control
• Blood and Sun
• Robert Revell
• PFFFT…!
• Afterparty: Ancient Methods & Philipp Strobel

Saturday, 7 November 2026 – Gothic Hall

• SPKtR / SPK
• N.U. Unruh & Meta Meat
• Flint Glass & Ah Cama-Sotz
• Imminent
• Apoptose
• Empusae
• Espectra Negra
• Afterparty: DJ Blackdeath 1334

Sunday, 8 November 2026 – Sala Witrażowa

• Opowieść
• Rites of Fall & Fugavit
• Mazut
• Dystopian Control
• Afterparty: DJ Paradroid

Practical information

• XXV Wrocław Industrial Festival 5-8 November 2026
• Main venue: Sala Gotycka / Sala Witrażowa / Stary Klasztor ul. Purkyniego 1, Wrocław
• Cinema venue: Kino Nowe Horyzonty Kazimierza Wielkiego 19a/21, Wrocław

The official Polish ticket page currently marks the four-day pass allocation as sold out. Single-day tickets are available, with the current early-bird period running until 31 August: Thursday 85 PLN, Friday 250 PLN, Saturday 250 PLN and Sunday 85 PLN.

Twenty-five editions in, perhaps the most convincing thing about WIF is that its anniversary programme does not attempt to summarise industrial music into a fixed historical style. SPK and Crash Course in Science connect directly with its formative period; In The Nursery bring cinema into the equation; Unruh with Meta Meat and Flint Glass with Ah Cama-Sotz create performances whose history is only beginning; while projects such as Dystopian Control demonstrate that noise and industrial practice are still producing new languages locally.

For a festival born in a bunker in 2001, that seems a more appropriate way to mark twenty-five editions than simply looking backwards.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Portion Control have always been slightly awkward candidates for canonisation. Formed in London in 1979, their early use of synthesisers, drum machines and sampling is routinely positioned at the beginning of a lineage that runs through industrial, EBM and harder forms of electronic music. Their influence on subsequent artists is well documented; Portion Control themselves, however, have rarely seemed interested in behaving like a historical institution. Their attention has remained stubbornly fixed on whatever comes next. That makes “1983-86 – Hit The Pulse to Purge…” interesting. The four-CD set, released by Artoffact Records on August 14, 2026, gathers material from one of Portion Control’s most consequential periods, including “Hit The Pulse”, “..Step Forward”, “Psycho Bod Saves The World”, singles, demos, rarities, live recordings and previously unreleased material. Paul Lavigne remastered the archive at Kontrast Mastering, while Stefan Alt created the new visual presentation. The collection also includes Rhys Fulber‘s rebuild of “Refugee”, allowing an artist who drew partly on the electronic vocabulary Portion Control helped establish to return to that vocabulary four decades later.

There is also a good contradiction here. When Side-Line spoke with John Whybrew in 2020, he described new work as the band’s “lifeblood”, stressed that nothing remains still for long and was distinctly unsentimental about physical formats, including the CD. Six years later, Portion Control have signed to Artoffact after decades of independence and begun the process of formally curating their own history.

Having seen Portion Control at Wrocław Industrial Festival 2025, what struck me was precisely how little the performance behaved like heritage music. The material was physical, severe and entirely present. That raised a more interesting question than whether the old recordings had “aged well”: what happens when a band so committed to moving forward finally acquires enough distance from its own past to treat it as an archive? We talked about historical distance, control and independence, imperfect technology, remastering, the strange burden of being called influential, Rhys Fulber’s reconstruction of “Refugee”, why some old songs become more disturbing rather than less relevant with time, and whether unlimited technological possibilities can be as creatively restrictive as having almost none.

Portion Control interview

Karo: You have spent much of Portion Control’s existence resisting retrospection. In our previous Side-Line interview, new work was described as your “lifeblood”, and even now you have said that compiling this archive was almost the antithesis of your usual forward-facing approach. What had to change before looking backwards became creatively legitimate? At what point does preserving the past stop feeling nostalgic and become another form of authorship?

Portion Control: Nothing changed as a conscious decision; it was more that enough time passed for the material to feel like a document rather than a repeat. While you’re still inside a period, revisiting it just feels like going over old ground. Forty years on, it’s not the same band looking at its own work anymore; it’s closer to handling someone else’s archive that happens to have your name on it. That distance is what turns it into authorship rather than nostalgia; we’re not trying to relive 1983-86, we’re trying to finally, fully document it.

Karo: The period covered by “1983-86 – Hit The Pulse to Purge…” was also the moment when increasing industry attention, management and eventually a major-label relationship began to make you feel that control was slipping away. Four decades later, after years of determined independence, Portion Control has entered a partnership with Artoffact. What distinguishes collaboration from surrendering control for you now? Has doing almost everything yourselves for so long changed your ability to recognise that boundary?

Portion Control: The difference is consent and reversibility. Losing control in the mid-80s wasn’t a choice we kept renegotiating; it was structural, built into the deals we were in. Working with Artoffact is a genuinely acceptable, realistic partnership, and that’s precisely what keeps it from feeling like surrender. Four decades of doing everything ourselves has made us sharper at spotting the difference between someone adding capability and someone quietly taking a decision away from us. We’re not naive about it, but we don’t assume every partnership repeats that old pattern either.

Karo: An archive is never completely neutral. Once you decide which demos, B-sides, live recordings, alternate versions and apparently marginal pieces belong together, you are effectively establishing a new hierarchy within your own history. Did compiling the set alter your understanding of that period? Were there recordings you once regarded as peripheral that now tell you more about what Portion Control actually was than some of the records considered central at the time?

Portion Control: Yes, more than we expected. There were pieces we’d filed away as ambient/experiments that, heard again in sequence, turned out to carry more of what the band actually was than some of the tracks we’d always treated as the “proper” releases. Putting things into an archive forces you to listen for what’s consistent, and it’s usually the rough or marginal pieces where that consistency shows up most clearly. A lot of this material carries strong memories of the period that are impossible to listen past.

Karo: Paul Lavigne has remastered material created under technological conditions radically different from those available now. But those limitations, the noise floor, early sampling, imperfect machines and restricted possibilities, are also part of what gave the recordings their character. Where is the line between revealing what was originally there and retrospectively improving it? At some point, does an imperfection become part of the composition itself?

Portion Control: Paul’s remastering was about getting the material into the best possible shape given the formats we had to work from, not about correcting or improving it. The noise floor, the limitations of the originals, the crude sampling and early electronics: none of that is incidental to the sound, it’s structural to it. Scrub it all out and you’re not restoring the piece, you’re making a different piece that happens to share a title.

So yes, we think imperfection becomes part of the composition once enough time has passed; not because we’re sentimental about tape hiss, but because those limitations shaped the choices we made in the first place. Remove them and the choices stop making sense. Paul understands our material on all levels and it reflects in the care he has applied to the mastering.

Karo: When I saw Portion Control at Wrocław Industrial Festival, what struck me was that the concert did not feel archival at all. The material remained extremely physical and immediate. What allows a forty-year-old electronic piece to remain convincing in that environment? Is that durability already embedded in rhythm and sound design, or does older material have to be actively reconstructed through performance in order to survive?

Portion Control: It isn’t automatic; you have to keep reconstructing it through better equipment, process and performance rather than just replaying it. A track from this period has to earn its place in the set the same way a new one does; every track has to serve the overall physical energy we’re aiming for. We don’t have many tracks from this earlier era, but the ones we do have to sit naturally into that balance.

Karo: Portion Control is repeatedly described through the artists you influenced. That is obviously recognition, but influence can also become a peculiar historical trap: the discussion moves immediately toward what happened after you rather than asking what the original work was doing on its own terms. Does being treated primarily as a precursor ever obscure the work itself?

Portion Control: Sometimes, yes. It’s a strange position; being useful mainly as a reference point gets tiresome. We don’t resent the artists we’re named alongside, but the conversation tends to stop at “and then X happened because of this”, rather than asking what the work was actually doing on its own terms. We’d rather be talked about for what’s intriguing or specific in the material itself than for the lineage it’s slotted into.

Karo: That makes Rhys Fulber rebuilding “Refugee” interesting. Someone who belongs to a later generation of industrial electronics, and who encountered a language Portion Control helped establish, is now returning to one of the pieces that helped form that language in the first place. Is there something circular about that? Can somebody influenced by your work hear possibilities in it that you could not possibly have heard in 1984?

Portion Control: Very much so, and it’s one of the most satisfying parts of this whole project. Someone who grew up in the industrial/electronic scene we helped shape comes back to rebuild one of our own pieces. Rhys was hearing things in “Refugee” we genuinely couldn’t have heard in 1984, because he’s hearing it through everything that’s happened since. We’re proud both to have been a small part of Rhys’s formative years, and for him personally with what he’s gone on to achieve.

Karo: “Refugee” is also uncomfortable because its subject has not become safely historical. When an old song suddenly seems newly relevant, is that proof of artistic durability, or evidence that the circumstances it responded to were never resolved? What happens to the meaning of a song when another forty years of history accumulate around it?

Portion Control: The second, honestly. We’d rather “Refugee” felt safely dated. That it doesn’t says less about the song ageing well and more about the conditions it was responding to never really going away. The meaning does shift with accumulated history, but not in a comfortable direction. It gets darker and heavier, not more historical.

Karo: I have to return to something you told Side-Line in 2020. You were remarkably relaxed about the decline of the CD because, as you put it, you never particularly liked the format anyway. Now we have this substantial four-CD archival set, accompanied by Stefan Alt’s design and a 24-page booklet. Has the CD finally won you over, or is there an important distinction between a format as a carrier of music and a physical object as a way of giving an archive shape?

Portion Control: No; we still have no particular affection for the format itself. The four-CD set isn’t a statement about CDs; it’s about giving an archive a shape you can hold, with the booklet and Stefan’s design doing most of the real work of contextualising the material. If a different physical format had suited the archive better, we’d have used that instead. The object is what matters here; the format is just the vehicle. We’ve always been stubbornly uninterested in using format as an excuse, whether that’s hardware, recorded media or working methods.

Karo: In 2020 you also criticised the tendency for electronic music to become almost tutorial-driven, with technique treated like a science while ideas become secondary. Early Portion Control was shaped partly by severe technological and financial restrictions. Today, when almost any sound can be produced and manipulated relatively cheaply, has limitation become something an electronic artist has to create deliberately? Can having too many possibilities now be as serious a creative problem as having too few?

Portion Control: Too many possibilities is a real creative problem. Our own limitations back then, technical, financial, whatever you want to call our “ineptness”, weren’t an obstacle to the sound, they were the sound. Today we can make the sounds we’ve always wanted to, and doing that well on a modest budget is entirely possible now. Our sound has always been built on a natural aggression combined with heavy sound design, and that’s still true; it’s just no longer constrained the way it once was.

Karo: There is now an interesting collision of times around Portion Control: Artoffact is beginning to excavate the catalogue, while you are still producing new material and performing. So perhaps this is the right place to finish. Has spending this much time inside 1983-86 changed anything about what you want Portion Control to sound like next? Or does examining that period actually reinforce the need to move somewhere it cannot follow you?

Portion Control: It’s too far back to have any real influence on Portion Control today. Nothing about how we made things in that period carries forward except the indomitable PC spirit and that we understand the technical synth/sampler sequencing of that era, but that’s about as far as it goes. Our new material, like all our material before, relies on whatever is new, challenges us but lies within our reach.

Portion Control live

• 24 October 2026, Zwickau, Germany
• 19th Elektrisch Festival, Club Seilerstraße. Portion Control perform alongside Escalator, Oszylator, Cyborg Projekt X and KRIEG-B.
• 1-4 July 2027, Canterbury, UK
• Shadowlands Festival, Gulbenkian Arts Centre, University of Kent. Portion Control are confirmed alongside artists including Foetus, Lustmord, Test Dept, Clock DVA, The Wolfgang Press, Regis feat. Liam Andrews, Githead, hackedepicciotto, People Like Us, Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan and :Zoviet*France:.

About Portion Control

Portion Control formed in London in 1979 and emerged from the first wave of British post-punk and industrial electronics. Their early work combined sequenced synthesisers, primitive sampling, drum machines, aggressive vocals and rhythmic structures that helped establish a vocabulary later absorbed into industrial, EBM, techno and other forms of electronic music. Records including “I Staggered Mentally” (1982), “Hit The Pulse” (1983) and “..Step Forward” (1984) established the group’s reputation for a physical form of electronic experimentation. Portion Control toured with Depeche Mode in 1984 and subsequently became an acknowledged influence on artists including Nitzer Ebb, Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, Nine Inch Nails and Orbital.

After a hiatus beginning in the late 1980s, Portion Control returned in the 2000s and continued developing the project through releases including “Wellcome”, “Filthy White Guy”, “Pure Form”, “Head Buried” and the recent “SEED” series. Rather than recreating their early sound, the renewed Portion Control has continued to work with contemporary production technology while retaining the aggressive rhythmic construction and detailed sound design that have remained central to the project.

After decades of independence, the group signed with Artoffact Records in late 2025. The label is now working with Portion Control both on new material and on a series of archival releases, beginning with “1983-86 – Hit The Pulse to Purge…”, released on August 14, 2026.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

When Thomas Rainer and I spoke in 2024, “Verboten!” was presented as a decisive stage in Nachtmahr’s development, a record moving the project toward something more mature and less interested in obeying its own established rules. Two years later, Rainer slightly revises that interpretation himself: “Verboten!” did not complete an evolution, it established the method for what came next. That next step is “IMPERIVM”, released on June 26, 2026, ten tracks in which ideas first tested on “Verboten!” are refined rather than repeated. Between the two records came “Dominant: The Piano Sessions”, apparently moving in the opposite direction by removing much of Nachtmahr’s electronic machinery and exposing the construction underneath. Rainer, however, sees the piano record as a separate exercise, one intended to demonstrate something he considers fundamental: beneath the production, the songs have to survive. “IMPERIVM” then returns to force, rhythm and electronics with that confidence already established. The title creates another, more interesting complication. “IMPERIVM” inevitably suggests command, hierarchy and centralised authority, ideas that already sit comfortably within Nachtmahr’s visual vocabulary. Rainer’s interpretation is different. The Empire here is the relationship between the project and the people who have sustained it; many of the record’s lyrical ideas were informed by their experiences. Resistance, in his account, is not presented as party politics but as resistance to conformity, exclusion and the pressure to become easier to categorise. That tension becomes clear when Nachtmahr moves from record to stage. The upcoming “IMPERIVM” tour is being presented as the project’s longest and largest to date, with Cygnosic and Bagger 258 joining the tour; the first three dates take place in Poland, in Wrocław, Poznań and Warsaw, before the itinerary continues through Austria and Germany. What looks like excess from the audience side is, Rainer explains, built on considerable precision behind it. The starting point is not the lighting, uniforms or visuals, but the setlist. Everything else follows its dramaturgy.

We spoke about what “Verboten!” actually changed, why stripping Nachtmahr down to piano mattered, the meaning behind “IMPERIVM”, politics and the limits of artistic influence, the paradox of creating a safe space through an aesthetic built around hierarchy and discipline, the scene’s attachment to nostalgia, and why losing control onstage requires a great deal of control everywhere else.

Karo: When we spoke in 2024, you described “Verboten!” as the album that would complete Nachtmahr’s evolution toward a more mature, less playful sound, and you said its release would herald a new era for the project. Two years later, “IMPERIVM” is already here. Looking back, was “Verboten!” actually the arrival point you imagined at the time, or did making that record reveal another direction you had not yet foreseen?

Thomas: “Verboten!” was not the album that completed an evolution, but it set the course for the future. It was a successful experiment that paved the way for the sound and writing of “IMPERIVM”. Many techniques and structural improvements were first introduced during the production of “Verboten!” and then refined, expanded and improved for its successor.

Karo: Between “Verboten!” and “IMPERIVM” came “Dominant: The Piano Sessions”, reducing Nachtmahr material to piano before you returned with something far more forceful and electronic. That is an interesting sequence: first removing much of the machinery, then rebuilding it at full pressure. What did you discover about your own songwriting when rhythm, distortion and production were stripped away? Did any of that feed back into the way you approached “IMPERIVM”?

Thomas: The piano album was a standalone project and can be seen more as a sister concept to the acoustic releases “Flamme”, “Funke” and “Feuer”, as they all follow the same idea: deconstructing and rebuilding Nachtmahr’s music to bring out aspects of the compositions that were overlooked before. Ultimately, they proudly proclaim that our music also works in a stripped-down version because, in its essence, these are simply good songs. Something that most bands in our scene couldn’t achieve.

Karo: “IMPERIVM” is a loaded title. Empire suggests hierarchy, command and centralised power, while the record is built around resistance, nonconformity and refusing to be broken. Nachtmahr has always borrowed the language and aesthetics of authority while often directing the content somewhere much less obedient. Has that contradiction become more central now: the possibility of appropriating the appearance of power in order to question power itself?

Thomas: “IMPERIVM”, both as an album and as a title, is a monument to our incredible fan base that has carried us on its wings over the years, through light and shadow. Our fans and us, indivisible and forged together in fire and flame, are an Empire. An army is nothing without a commander, and vice versa. This is what the title stands for.

Karo: Taken together, titles such as “Unterwerfung”, “Willenlos”, “Stärker als ihr Hass” and “Neue Ufer” seem to establish a tension between submission and refusal, being acted upon and reclaiming agency. Is there a movement through “IMPERIVM” from one condition toward the other, or are you more interested in the uncomfortable fact that power and submission can coexist inside the same person?

Thomas: It is hard to find a common denominator for all the titles you mentioned, as they all have very different meanings and intentions, both lyrically and musically. One common theme remains, though. As I already explained in relation to the title, the red thread binding all the songs together is the connection between our fans and us. It was their stories and experiences that inspired me when writing the lyrics. That ranges from “Stärker als ihr Hass”, which is a strong statement for self-expression against all external factors, to “Unterwerfung”, which deals with self-discovery in a BDSM context.

Karo: In our previous conversation, you were very precise about one boundary: you said that the influence an artist receives from an audience creates a responsibility not to turn that power into political endorsement. At the same time, the language around “IMPERIVM” now invokes resistance, solidarity and revolution. Has that boundary become harder to maintain? When does resistance remain an artistic or existential idea, and when does an audience inevitably begin to read it politically?

Thomas: There is still no political statement whatsoever. We praise individuality, self-discovery and self-expression above all. There is resistance against social norms, solidarity with those oppressed for expressing themselves, and revolution against a system that wants to keep people conforming and alike because that makes them easier to rule, steer and oppress. This has nothing to do with politics per se, but with things everybody can change or take action on themselves.

Karo: The current presentation of Nachtmahr also speaks about the project as a space for outsiders and people who do not comfortably fit social norms. That creates an intriguing tension with a visual vocabulary built around severity, uniforms, hierarchy and control. Is that paradox important to you? Can a space feel safe because everybody inside it understands that the threatening imagery belongs to an artistic construction rather than an actual hierarchy between the people in the room?

Thomas: There is a paradox, but that is exactly the point. The uniforms, hierarchy and discipline are part of the artistic world of Nachtmahr, not a real hierarchy between the people in the room. Quite the opposite: everyone enters that world on equal terms. I think that is why it can, and should, feel liberating. Everybody knows that the threatening imagery is theatre, and that gives people the freedom to step outside their everyday roles for a while, perhaps even discovering their true selves in the process.

Karo: In 2024, you told me that Nachtmahr’s success had finally given you enough confidence to stop caring about the stylistic boundaries of the scene and to give each song whatever treatment it required. After almost 20 years, is crossing genre boundaries still liberating, or has the more difficult challenge become escaping the conventions of your own musical language?

Thomas: After so many years, you can easily start repeating your own formula. “IMPERIVM” was about avoiding that. Every song should sound the way that song needs to sound, even if that means stepping outside the Nachtmahr rulebook, if there even is one. The scene we mostly operate in thrives on nostalgia, and it would be easy, and maybe even more successful, to keep repeating that formula. But my own artistic standards make me want to reinvent over and over.

Karo: The new tour is being presented as something much larger than simply performing songs from “IMPERIVM”: sound, visuals, outfits, light and attitude functioning together as one system. When you construct a Nachtmahr show now, where does that process begin? With the music, with an image, with the physical reaction you want from the audience, or does the performance only really exist once all those elements begin influencing one another?

Thomas: Every tour design begins with the setlist. This is the key. Once the dramaturgy is established, all the other elements follow suit. The setlist is the script for the movie we present every night on tour, adapted to the local circumstances. It is a short answer and it may sound simple, but trust me: getting the setlist right takes weeks and can make or break every show, no matter how good the other elements are.

Karo: You are opening this tour with three nights in Poland, Wrocław, Poznań and Warsaw. There is something appealing about beginning a large production in club rooms where the distance between performer and audience is relatively small. Does starting in Poland carry any particular significance for you, and what do those first nights need to tell you before the rest of the tour unfolds?

Thomas: Starting the tour in Poland was a logistical decision at first, but in the end it is the perfect kick-off for what we plan to bring to the stage. Judging from my previous experiences in Poland, the crowds are very enthusiastic and welcoming. On the other hand, there are always certain insecurities within the band when you present a new programme for the first time. I am 100 percent sure all of those will be swept away by the energy of our Polish fans, and that wave will carry us all the way through the other dates of the tour.

Karo: Cygnosic and Bagger 258 are joining you on the tour and bring rather different approaches to electronic physicality. When you choose touring partners, do you think primarily in terms of compatible audiences, or about the architecture of the entire evening? Can the support acts change the state in which the audience eventually receives Nachtmahr?

Thomas: Good support acts are very important for how every night goes. They can make it easier or harder for the main act when they enter the stage; for example, a well-warmed-up crowd is already at a point that you would normally need to take them to yourself. The main factor in whom I take on tour is a personal one, though. I want to tour with people I genuinely like and who share the same morals and work ethic as my team and me. You know what they say, “one bad apple can spoil the whole basket”, and this is very true on tour. I speak from experience.

Karo: There is a fundamental contradiction in Nachtmahr live that becomes more interesting as the production grows. On your side of the stage, enormous control is required: sound, light, visuals and presentation have to work together. Yet what the performance seems to seek from the audience is almost the reverse: surrender, physical release, catharsis. How much control do you need to exercise in order to create a space where everybody else can safely lose theirs?

Thomas: I have a wonderful band and crew who take the need for control out of my hands, so I can completely let go onstage and simply become one with the energy of the crowd, opening the floodgates of my heart and letting all my emotions pour out. The same is true for the crowd. They should completely lose themselves in the music. The safe space you mentioned can only partly be created by us. Mostly responsible for that is our wonderful fan base, which is accepting and welcoming to everyone, and of course the great promoters of each show, who also do their part.

Karo: This is being presented as the largest and longest Nachtmahr tour so far. Rather than asking what people can “expect” from it, I’m more interested in what you expect to discover. After almost two decades of Nachtmahr, what can a tour of this scale still teach you about the project that you do not already know, and which of the coming shows are you personally most curious to experience?

Thomas: Honestly, I am mostly curious about discovering my most recent songs in a live context, performing them and maybe falling in love with them all over again. I want to see which parts of which songs resonate with whom in the crowd. And secondly, I am looking forward to hanging out with and meeting our fans.

Nachtmahr tour dates 2026

• 1 October 2026 – Wrocław, Poland – Klub Łącznik
• 2 October 2026 – Poznań, Poland – Klub Pod Minogą
• 3 October 2026 – Warsaw, Poland – VooDoo Club
• 17 October 2026 – Vienna, Austria – Escape Metalcorner
• 5 November 2026 – Munich, Germany – Backstage
• 6 November 2026 – Nuremberg, Germany – Der Cult
• 14 November 2026 – Hamburg, Germany – Logo
• 15 November 2026 – Berlin, Germany – Frannz Club
• 27 November 2026 – Erfurt, Germany – Club From Hell
• 28 November 2026 – Dresden, Germany – Strasse E
• 4 December 2026 – Oberhausen, Germany – Kulttempel
• 5 December 2026 – Mannheim, Germany – MS Connexion Complex
• 12 December 2026 – Aarburg, Switzerland – Musigburg

About Nachtmahr

Nachtmahr is the Austrian industrial electronic project founded by Thomas Rainer in 2007. Beginning with the “Kunst ist Krieg” EP, Rainer developed a severe musical and visual language built around hard electronic rhythms, distorted club structures, uniforms, discipline, sexuality, confrontation and theatricalised images of authority.

Over almost two decades, the project has expanded from Rainer’s original conception into a full live band. Its catalogue now encompasses eleven studio albums and nine EPs, alongside extensive international touring. While Nachtmahr is frequently situated within industrial, EBM and dark electronic music, Rainer has resisted treating those categories as compositional limits.

Recent releases show that widening vocabulary clearly. “Verboten!” arrived in 2024, followed in 2025 by “Dominant: The Piano Sessions”, which reinterpreted Nachtmahr material through piano arrangements. “IMPERIVM”, released on June 26, 2026 through Trisol Music Group, returns to the project’s electronic force while developing the compositional and structural ideas Rainer says were first tested on “Verboten!”. The album contains ten tracks, including “Wer Wind sät”, “Unterwerfung”, “Stärker als ihr Hass”, “Willenlos” and “Neue Ufer”.

Interview by Karo Kratochwil.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Swedish electro artist EMMON released “Relics (Agent Side Grinder Remix)” on 14 August 2026 through Icons Creating Evil Art. The track is the third remix issued ahead of “ICONMIXED”, a remix album scheduled for 23 October 2026. Jimmy Monell produced and mixed the new version, Hans Olsson mastered it, and Emma Nylén is credited as writer.

The original “Relics” is the eighth track on “ICON“, the album EMMON released on 17 October 2025 with Emanuel Åström as guestvocalist. Agent Side Grinder move it off its EBM footing and into house tempo, adding LinnDrum programming, a Euro-disco riff and acid basslines.

Johan Lange of Agent Side Grinder set out what the duo changed:

“Had a great time remixing my dear friend Emmon (and a certain obscure guest singer). I took the EBM-driven original and pushed it in a more ’90s house direction, with LinnDrum, a Euro disco riff and plenty of acid basslines.”

Two reworkings of “Speak to Me” preceded it, one by SIIE and one by Copenhagen trio The Foreign Resort. “ICONMIXED” reworks material from “ICON” across a wider set of collaborators.

Icons Creating Evil Art issued an official video for the original “Relics” the same day. Niklas Kärreskog directed it, with Tyko Lann Lundin as editing assistant and Joakim Kärreskog on technical resources. Kärreskog set out his reference points in the video credits:

“Relics could easily be part of the soundtrack to a film adaptation of William Gibson’s Neuromancer. That’s why I aimed for a cyberpunk aesthetic inspired by Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) and Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo (1989). To achieve this, the video was processed through a CRT television and many metres of cable.”

EMMON has run this pattern before. “RECON” arrived in 2022 and drew a full companion remix record a year later; “ICONMIXED” applies the same treatment to the newer album.

About EMMON

EMMON is the solo project of Swedish artist and producer Emma Nylén, based in Stockholm and signed to Icons Creating Evil Art. Her earlier catalogue runs from “The Art and The Evil” and “Closet Wanderings” through “Nomme”, “AON” and “Under Construction”, built on hard synth basslines, clipped vocals and melodic electro structures.

“RECON” followed on 7 October 2022 and reopened that catalogue after an extended gap. Its eleven tracks include “Machines”, “Like A Drum” and “Purebloods”, a duet with Agent Side Grinder vocalist Emanuel Åström that set up the working relationship behind the current remix. On 6 October 2023 EMMON issued “RECONMIXED”, a thirteen-track companion that handed “Machines”, “Reconstruction”, “Purebloods” and others to Ultra Sunn, Tobias Bernstrup, Sex Kino, Harlem, Fred White, Maschine Brennt, Majestoluxe, ZackZackZack, Potochkine and Livmødr.

The “XCEPTION” EP came next, then “ICON” on 17 October 2025, a ten-track album covering “Neon Brown”, “Decisions”, “Shades of Blue”, “Cold Within”, “No Mans Land”, “Speak to Me”, “Blood on the Ceiling feat. Majestoluxe”, “Relics”, “DARK” and “Slow Running”. Icons Creating Evil Art issued it on vinyl, CD and digital. Side-Line covered that release and published an EMMON interview in February 2026.

The rollout toward “ICONMIXED” started with SIIE and The Foreign Resort on “Speak to Me” and continues with Agent Side Grinder on “Relics”. The album is due on 23 October 2026.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

When I spoke with Bon Harris in February, on EBM Day of all days, our conversation kept returning to something more fundamental than legacy. Creativity. At one point, talking about what had changed across four decades of Nitzer Ebb and what had stubbornly remained, he said: “The thing that never changes is the desire to be creative.” He described it as an instinctive force, something present from the moment he wakes up in the morning.

Today, 12 August, Bon Harris turns 61, and that sentence feels like a much better place to begin than another ceremonial list of influential records. Because although Harris is inseparable from Nitzer Ebb and from a particular idea of physical electronic music, his creative life has always been much wider than the role history assigned him.

Born Vaughan David Harris in Chelmsford on 12 August 1965, he co-founded Nitzer Ebb in 1982 with school friends Douglas McCarthy, David Gooday and Simon Granger. The early records developed a brutally economical musical vocabulary: sequenced electronics, percussion, repetition, command-like vocals and a relationship with rhythm that treated the body as seriously as the intellect. After signing with Mute, “That Total Age” arrived in 1987, followed by “Belief”, “Showtime”, “Ebbhead” and “Big Hit”; after the long interruption, “Industrial Complex” followed in 2010.

Harris’s role inside that history is difficult to reduce to “keyboard player.” His own Bon Harris biography describes him as a founder member and principal writer/producer of Nitzer Ebb, while his work has encompassed programming, synthesizers, percussion, vocals, composition and production. The machinery was important, obviously, but talking to him earlier this year reminded me how strongly his understanding of electronic music remains connected to physical presence.

“Music historically is a communal pastime,” he told me. For Harris, the live show remains the highest expression of that idea: people gathering in one place, the performers giving energy to the audience and receiving it back. That philosophy explains quite a lot about Nitzer Ebb. The famous severity of the programming has always contained something deeply social: this is music designed to happen between bodies.

But Bon did not stop exploring when Nitzer Ebb first went quiet. After relocating to Los Angeles, he moved further into studio production and composition, with scoring work becoming his primary source of income for several years. His work outside the band has included Billy Corgan and The Smashing Pumpkins, Marilyn Manson and Avril Lavigne, while working with arranger Andrew Poppy during Nitzer Ebb had already given him an early view into orchestration and scoring. His film and television work later included music for Project Runway, Top Chef and NBC’s Treasure Hunters.

There was also Maven, the post-Nitzer Ebb project he was already developing by the late 1990s, which placed Bon much further forward as a vocalist. Years later, BLACK LINE offered almost the inverse experience of his traditional role in Nitzer Ebb: a deliberately collaborative environment in which he could enter music other people had already started, find his own space inside it and, as he put it, feel like one of the band rather than having the musical architecture resting largely on his shoulders.

Then there is bonharris:arts, the platform Bon created for work extending beyond Nitzer Ebb into his own music, animation and collaborations. During the 2020 lockdown, “songs:from the lemon tree” began as a series of intimate performances filmed in his Los Angeles garden, with Bon radically rearranging songs that had been important to his own musical development. The project also brought him back to sustained lead vocals after the Maven period.

If “songs the lemon tree” exposed one side of Harris, “mikro” opened another. Released as his first substantial solo project in almost two decades, it joined raw modular synthesis with the funk, soul and R&B that surrounded his childhood and adolescence. Harris described the idea as “twenty-first-century electronic punk funk“; the recordings brought electronic programming into contact with brass, vocals and a rhythmic vocabulary very different from the disciplined severity people automatically associate with Nitzer Ebb.

And Bon Harris extends beyond sound. Harris has spoken about teaching himself animation after suffering music-industry burnout, finding in it another creative language when he needed some distance from music production. He has also discussed ambitions to combine animation and music in larger narrative or theatrical forms. It is an interesting detail because it makes his career look less like a sequence of side projects and more like a restless investigation of how an idea can be given form: through rhythm, voice, image, movement, performance or technology.

That question still stands in 2026. Douglas McCarthy died in June 2025, and Harris has since carried a much greater vocal responsibility in Nitzer Ebb while continuing the band with David Gooday, Simon Granger and the wider live unit. When we spoke in February, he was candid about the difficulty of that transition. Singing Douglas’s words every night had forced him to enter those lyrics at a depth he had never needed to before; he spoke about being repeatedly reminded of what an extraordinary lyricist and singular vocalist his friend had been.

Yet he was equally insistent that Nitzer Ebb was not simply becoming a memorial. In February, Harris confirmed that a new album had been written and was awaiting the administrative work necessary for release. He said there were roughly 15 or 16 finished pieces from which the final album would be selected, including recordings featuring McCarthy as well as newer material written and sung by Harris. His description was telling: the album should carry one period forward while opening another. No later release date has been announced. Nitzer Ebb remain active onstage, with another US run scheduled to begin later in August.

There was another answer from that February conversation that stayed with me. When I asked what he hoped people would eventually remember about Nitzer Ebb, Harris did not choose the sound, the influence or even the extraordinary physical force of the concerts. He chose commitment.

He talked about the financial, emotional and spiritual difficulty of sustaining a creative life, about encountering people who do not understand what you are doing, and about continuing anyway. What mattered to him was that Nitzer Ebb had remained committed to its own artistic vision and had refused to back away from the work. That seems like the right thing to celebrate today.

There is the Bon Harris who helped create one of electronic music’s most recognizable rhythmic languages. There is the producer, programmer and synthesist. The drummer and, more and more, the singer. The studio collaborator and screen composer. The man who returned to the songs that formed him and rebuilt them under a lemon tree. The modular-funk experimenter. The animator. And there is still the person getting up in the morning with ideas that need somewhere to go.

At 61, the history is substantial. Fortunately, Bon Harris still seems much more interested in creating than in becoming history.

Happy birthday, Bon.

About Bon Harris and Nitzer Ebb

Nitzer Ebb formed in Chelmsford, Essex in 1982, when Bon Harris co-founded the group with school friends Douglas McCarthy, David Gooday and Simon Granger. Signed to Mute Records, the band built a stark, body-driven strand of EBM around sequenced electronics, percussion and command-like vocals, releasing its debut album, “That Total Age”, in 1987. “Belief” followed in 1989, “Showtime” in 1990, “Ebbhead” in 1991 and “Big Hit” in 1995, after which the band went on extended hiatus.

Nitzer Ebb reconvened in the mid-2000s and released “Industrial Complex” in 2010, and has continued to tour internationally in the years since, with Gooday and Granger rejoining the live lineup alongside Harris and McCarthy. Douglas McCarthy died in June 2025, and Harris has since led Nitzer Ebb as its vocalist as well as its programmer and instrumentalist, continuing the band’s live schedule into 2026 while completing a new studio album.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Brazilian-born, Brighton-based producer Gil OS released “Mono Substance” as Amorphous on 7 August 2026 through Semantics Productions. In this Amorphous interview for Side-Line Magazine, Gil OS speaks with Karo Kratochwil about the album’s core question, where the individual ends and the system begins, the role of Nora Avant’s voice across four tracks, bringing berimbau and alfaia into “Maracatu”, and testing an idea against the body before trusting it on record.

Mono Substance begins with a philosophical problem, but Gil OS does not treat philosophy as something to paste over electronic music after the machinery has already been assembled. The interesting part is what happens when an abstract question, where the individual ends, whether separation is ever complete, how systems become internalised, has to survive bass pressure, repetition and a moving body. That line has been developing through Amorphous for some time. “Skepticism” looked outward at technology and the structures shaping human behaviour; “Devour” moved closer to consumption, obedience and the erosion of individual autonomy. On “Mono Substance”, Gil pushes underneath both questions and starts interfering with the boundary itself. If the individual and the system continuously shape one another, how useful is the distinction between them in the first place?

Musically, however, “Mono Substance” is anything but an exercise in abstraction. Gil’s earlier history in chill out, freestyle electronics and psytrance remains somewhere inside his understanding of repetition and momentum, while Amorphous has developed a harder electro/EBM language of its own. Nora Avant’s voice enters the machinery on four tracks, while “Ancestors” and, above all, “Maracatu” open the rhythmic vocabulary toward ancestry, ritual and collective physical experience. On the latter, Gil brings his Brazilian roots directly into the album through berimbau and alfaia, setting hand-played percussion against programmed electronics.

Kratochwil had already seen how physical this music becomes when Gil performs it at Fourscher Festival. That experience became one of the starting points for the conversation that follows: control and surrender, melody as seduction, rhythm as communication, Nora Avant as another consciousness within the record, and why an idea that works perfectly in theory may still fail the moment the body refuses to believe it.

Amorphous interview

Karo: When I reviewed “Skepticism”, I was interested in the way you examined systems, technology and the structures that begin shaping the people who created them. “Devour” moved further into consumption, obedience and the erosion of self. On “Mono Substance”, the question seems to move underneath both of those subjects: where does the individual actually end and the system begin? Was that conceptual shift deliberate?

Gil: Yes, I think that shift was deliberate, although it happened quite naturally through the work. With Skepticism, I looked outward at systems and technology, and with Devour, I became more interested in what those systems do to us through consumption and obedience. Mono Substance felt like the next step: turning the question inward and asking how much of what we think of as the self is actually our own. The line between the individual and the system becomes increasingly difficult to locate. At a certain point, the system isn’t just something outside us that we participate in, it becomes part of how we think, behave and understand ourselves. That tension is really at the centre of the record.

Karo: The title “Mono Substance” immediately invokes the philosophical problem of whether apparently separate things are ultimately expressions of one underlying reality. What interested you in that idea musically?

Gil: Musically, I was interested in the idea that very different things can emerge from the same underlying material. I wanted the record to explore that without trying to literally illustrate a philosophical idea. Rhythm, texture and sound became different ways of working with the same substance, repeating, mutating and breaking apart until something familiar starts to feel completely different. There’s also a tension in that: if everything comes from the same source, where does difference actually begin? Rather than adding a philosophical concept onto the music, I wanted the concept to exist within the way the sounds behave, develop and relate to each other.

Karo: There is a fascinating contradiction between the album’s concept and its construction. Philosophically, the record questions separation, while musically your production is extremely precise, with sounds carefully differentiated and positioned. Did you ever think about the production itself as a way of exploring the difference between distinction and genuine separation?

Gil: Yes, absolutely. Precision can create the impression that everything is clearly separated, but the more closely you listen, the more those boundaries start to blur. Sounds can occupy their own space while still being completely dependent on everything around them. Distinction doesn’t necessarily mean separation. You can isolate a sound, a rhythm or a texture, but it still exists within a larger system and is shaped by its relationship to everything else. In that sense, the precision of the production actually reinforces the central idea of the record rather than contradicting it.

Karo: Before the current Amorphous sound, you had already travelled through very different electronic territories under Gil Mahadeva and Mukunga Umbura, including chill out, freestyle electronics and psytrance. How much of “Mono Substance” comes from allowing those older parts of your musical identity back into Amorphous rather than trying to maintain a strict electro or EBM vocabulary?

Gil: I think those earlier projects are still present in the music, even if they’re not always obvious on the surface. I’ve always been interested in repetition, trance and the physical effect of rhythm, so those elements naturally found their way into Mono Substance. I wasn’t trying to return to those styles specifically, but I also didn’t want to exclude parts of my musical history just to maintain a strict Amorphous vocabulary. The older electronic work gave me a different understanding of movement and repetition. It’s less about genre and more about what certain sounds and rhythms can do to the body and the mind.

Karo: One thing I have consistently liked about your work is that the intellectual element never becomes an excuse for the music to stop being physical. Do you consciously test an idea against the body, almost asking whether a concept still works once it has to survive a dance floor, bass pressure and repetition?

Gil: Yes, definitely. For me, an idea ultimately has to work physically as well as intellectually. I can be interested in a concept, but if it doesn’t translate into rhythm, tension, movement or some kind of bodily response, then it probably doesn’t belong in the music. The dance floor is a useful test because repetition strips away a lot of the intellectual scaffolding. You experience the sound first, and only later might you think about what it means. The body is almost the final reality check for the idea.

Karo: Across the album, questions of control appear in several forms: political power, technological systems, consumption, conditioning and even control over one’s own perception. Yet musically there is also a strong tension between very disciplined programming and moments that feel more fluid, hypnotic or ritualistic. How much of that tension between control and surrender is built deliberately into the sound?

Gil: Very deliberately. Control and surrender are two sides of the same process, especially in electronic music. Programming gives you an incredible level of control over rhythm, repetition and detail, but once those elements are repeated and layered, they can start to produce something that feels almost autonomous. There are moments where everything is tightly controlled and mechanical, and others where the repetition becomes hypnotic and you almost stop listening analytically and simply follow it. Surrender isn’t necessarily the opposite of control, sometimes it is what control eventually produces.

Karo: Your music has become darker and more confrontational over time, but melody has never disappeared. Is melody important to you as a counterweight to aggression, or perhaps as something more dangerous, a seductive surface through which uncomfortable ideas can enter more easily?

Gil: I think melody can do both. It can be a counterweight to aggression, but it can also make something much more unsettling because it gives the listener a way in. A melodic element can feel familiar or even beautiful while the material around it is much darker, and that contrast can make the underlying idea hit harder. If a difficult or uncomfortable idea arrives through something seductive, you may engage with it before you’ve had the chance to put up a defence.

Karo: There is the hard electro and EBM impact I already associate with Amorphous, but also trance logic, more organic movement and, in places such as “Ancestors” and “Maracatu,” something communal or ritualistic. Is rhythm becoming a larger conceptual language for you, rather than simply the engine underneath the songs?

Gil: Yes, I think so. Rhythm has always been central to the music, but on Mono Substance I became more interested in rhythm as a way of communicating rather than simply driving the track. With tracks like “Ancestors” and especially “Maracatu,” I was interested in that more collective aspect of rhythm: the idea that rhythm can connect people physically and almost temporarily dissolve the sense of the individual. Maracatu comes from the northeast of Brazil, particularly Pernambuco, and carries a strong Afro-Brazilian cultural identity, combining percussion, dance, ritual and community. I played the berimbau and the alfaia, the large bass drum that gives Maracatu much of its deep, powerful pulse, and then had to find a way of mixing and producing those organic instruments alongside the electronic elements. I wasn’t trying to reproduce Maracatu traditionally, but to let something from my own cultural background enter the language of Amorphous.

Karo: Nora Avant appears on four tracks. On an album concerned with unstable boundaries and the idea that apparently separate voices may belong to the same underlying continuum, how did you think about bringing another voice into the record?

Gil: Nora’s presence felt like much more than simply adding another voice. I think she became another consciousness within the record. Her voice has a very particular emotional and psychological quality, and that allowed the music to move into spaces I couldn’t reach through the production alone. At times she feels like a contrast to the machinery and repetition, and at other times she feels completely absorbed into it. I wanted her voice to become part of the same structure and, in a way, blur the boundary between the human and the system.

Karo: I saw you live at Fourscher Festival, and what stayed with me was how little distance there was between the electronic construction and your physical performance. While making “Mono Substance”, were you already thinking about what these tracks would require from you physically when performed live?

Gil: Yes, definitely. I don’t want the live show to feel like a reproduction of the record; it needs to have its own physical energy and sense of movement. The electronic elements can be very precise, but the performance introduces something human and unpredictable into that structure. For me, the ideal is that you don’t really perceive a separation between the electronic construction and the person performing it.

Karo: Amorphous itself is a name that implies unstable form. Do you recognise one continuous line running through “Skepticism”, “Devour” and “Mono Substance”, even if you did not necessarily plan it from the beginning?

Gil: Yes, I can see a continuous line running through it, even though I definitely didn’t plan the whole journey from the beginning. With Skepticism, I was looking at systems and the way they shape us. Devour moved closer to the individual and the way those systems can become internalised through consumption and conditioning. With Mono Substance, the question has become more fundamental: if everything is interconnected, can we really talk about the individual as something completely separate? The name Amorphous fits that process quite well, not because the music has no form, but because the form is always capable of changing.

Karo: If boundaries disappear, connection becomes possible, but so do loss of autonomy, contamination and absorption into larger systems. Do you personally experience the idea of “one substance” as liberating, disturbing, or as a contradiction you deliberately wanted to leave unresolved?

Gil: I think it’s both liberating and disturbing, and that contradiction is exactly what interested me. The idea that everything is connected can be comforting because it suggests that nothing exists completely alone. But if there is no real separation, then individuality and autonomy become much more complicated. I didn’t want to resolve that tension on the album. Mono Substance isn’t really arguing that unity is good or bad; it’s asking what happens to the idea of the self if we take that unity seriously.

Karo: What happens now that “Mono Substance” is out? Are you planning live dates or a broader run of shows around the album?

Gil: The first two shows were actually in Brazil, in São Paulo, which was very special to me. The CD was also sold there before it was available elsewhere and before the official release, so being able to present the album first in my own country felt like a huge bonus. I definitely want to continue bringing the album into a live setting. The challenge at the moment is finding organizers in Europe who are interested in having Amorphous perform live. I’ve approached a few people, but some haven’t responded, so I’m still trying to figure out how to make the live side more consistent and sustainable. The live version is also an opportunity to develop the more hypnotic and ritualistic side of the album. I want the set to feel physical, immersive and capable of changing in the moment.

About Amorphous

Amorphous is the solo project of Gil OS, a Brazilian-born electronic producer active since the early 1990s. Gil OS first made his name as the mastermind of Morgue Mechanism, one of the pioneering industrial and EBM acts in South America, released through the German label Off Beat. He later relocated to the United Kingdom, settling in Brighton, and worked under further monikers including Gil Mahadeva and Mukunga Umbura across chill out, freestyle electronics and psytrance before consolidating his electro-industrial work under the Amorphous name.

Amorphous released the album “Shapeshifting” in 2016, followed by the “Behaviourism” EP, “Moth Metaphor” (2020) and “Stigmergy”. Side-Line has covered the project twice before through Karolina Kratochwil’s ‘Click Interview’ series, first in 2017 and again in 2020. The album “Skepticism” followed on Semantics Productions in 2024, previewed through the single “Algorithm“.

On 19 June 2026, Amorphous released the single “Devour” featuring Nora Avant on main and backing vocals, written, produced, mixed and mastered by Gil OS. The track introduced the concerns of the forthcoming album in a club-oriented format. “Mono Substance” followed on 7 August 2026 through Semantics Productions, a ten-track album, Axiom, Devour, Masquerade, Blinding Gold, Domino Effect, Kingdom Fall, Ancestors, Unconditioned, Through The Noise and Maracatu, with Nora Avant providing backing vocals on “Devour”, “Blinding Gold”, “Kingdom Fall” and “Ancestors”, and artwork by Anastase Kyriakos. This interview follows Gil OS’ live performance at Fourscher Festival and marks Amorphous’ first Side-Line feature since the “Skepticism” campaign.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Thirty years is more than enough time for an archive to become a mausoleum. This Morn’ Omina have little interest in building one. Vestiges – 30 Years of Ritual Sound (1996-2026) looks backward, certainly, but it does so according to the same logic that has always driven the project: material remains alive only as long as it can still move, change shape, enter a live set differently or find itself placed beside another piece from a completely different moment in the band’s history.

That is why Vestiges does not behave like a conventional retrospective. Its selection moves through the Hegira and Nyan periods, older EP and vinyl material, pieces that have survived through changing live incarnations, and two previously unreleased versions that longtime concertgoers may already recognize. Mika describes it very precisely during our conversation: Vestiges is not a “best-of,” but a “part-of.” The distinction matters. This is less an attempt to establish an official history of This Morn’ Omina than to show which fragments of that history still carry current through the body of the project.

And the timing sharpens that retrospective gaze. This Morn’ Omina are hardly standing still to admire their own past: Insha has opened another phase, Triptych and Rivers Of The Sea remain ahead, and the latter is intended to complete the Kundalini trilogy. After seeing the band at Castle Party this summer, where rhythm, bodies, light and concentrated physical energy seemed to occupy the same space, I wanted to talk to Mika about what thirty years actually look like from inside the project: memory, ritual, changing technology, old compositions that refuse to become fixed objects, and why the future still matters more than commemoration.

This Morn’ Omina interview

Karo: “Vestiges” is an interesting word for an anniversary release because a vestige is neither the past itself nor a complete record of it; it is what remains after time, change and disappearance have done their work. When you looked back over thirty years of This Morn’ Omina, what made something feel like a genuine vestige of the project rather than an important or successful track? Were you selecting music according to historical significance, personal memory, or according to what still feels alive to you now?

Mika: Selecting these “traces” was based on the importance they have in the context of the past releases. Pierre St. Pierre was instrumental in the first draft of the list, as he listened for which ones might still prick up ears, and then the final list was created from a conceptual point of view so it would make sense on multiple levels.

Karo: The selection does not behave like a conventional career retrospective. It refuses chronology and moves freely between different periods, while a substantial part of the core program comes from the Hegira and Nyan-era material rather than attempting to represent every phase equally. Was the intention less to document what happened over thirty years than to identify certain ideas, rhythms and states of consciousness that have persisted underneath everything else?

Mika: There is also a moral, ethical part at play. The Kundalini trilogy is still available as a physical medium and has not been finished yet. It would be dishonest toward the listener or buyer to try and sell the same tracks twice.

So the focus went toward Hegira/Nyan, but also toward tracks from vinyls or EPs that are no longer available, while plenty of them are still, in rotating ways, part of the live sets.

Karo: This Morn’ Omina has often organized music through cycles and larger conceptual structures, including the Hegira, Nyan and Kundalini sequences. A compilation necessarily removes individual compositions from those original systems and places them beside music that once belonged to another context. What happens to a ritual object when it is removed from the ritual for which it was created? Do these tracks retain their original meaning for you, or does Vestiges inevitably create a new mythology from fragments of the older ones?

Mika: They retain their original meaning, although it could be argued that their closer links to the surrounding tracks on the original releases are missing. But now they are part of Vestiges, which is not a new mythology, just a compendium of different stories.

Karo: There is an unusual tension between preservation and transformation here. Vestiges ostensibly looks backward, yet it opens with a previously unreleased version of “The Nameless Grey” and closes its 12-track core with the previously unreleased “One Eyed-Man (liber III).” Why open an archive with versions the audience did not know from that history? Is there something important to you in refusing the idea that the past can ever be retrieved in one definitive form?

Mika: These versions were always part of our live sets. We made them available for those people who have not been able to see TMO live yet, and for those who have and were asking where they could find these versions.

Karo: That becomes interesting with “One Eyed-Man,” because it is one of those compositions that acquired a life far beyond the circumstances of its creation and became an important point of recognition for This Morn’ Omina. The new “liber III” version means that thirty years are not concluded by preserving the familiar object in glass, but by opening it again. What can you hear in a composition after living with it for decades that its original author could not possibly have heard when writing it?

Mika: “One Eyed-Man,” and other tracks as well, had many iterations because we like to keep the live situation interesting for us and for the returning live audience. They live a sonic life of their own and evolve according to our taste.

Karo: The track titles themselves carry markings such as [ccf], [lcf], “liber II,” “liber III” and “FL.” On Vestiges, those designations become especially conspicuous because different systems and periods suddenly coexist on one tracklist. Rather than asking simply what the abbreviations stand for, I am interested in why classification has remained part of the language of This Morn’ Omina. Are these codes practical version markers, or do they also express the idea that a composition can exist in several states without one becoming the final, authoritative version?

Mika: [CCF] is a term coined by a friend of mine, Paul Willeme, in 2000, when he noticed that the versions played live were shorter than those on the physical releases. He dubbed them “compressed commercial format,” and [LCF] “live commercial format.” These tags stuck throughout TMO history, as they clearly denote what to expect from that musical embodiment of that particular concept when released.

“Liber…” can be seen as different “books,” self-sustaining entities.

Karo: Rhythm presents another fascinating problem when looking back over thirty years. Electronic production technology has changed enormously since the earliest material, but the human body has not changed at anything like the same speed. This Morn’ Omina has always used repetition, percussion and pulse to produce states that are bodily before they become intellectual. When you revisit older pieces now, do you hear production methods that belong unmistakably to their time, or are you more struck by how little the fundamental mechanics of trance actually need technological progress?

Mika: The writing process evolved over the decades, of course. But at its basis always lies the goal of inducing saccadic movement and attaining spiritual transcendence. Access to knowledge of new methods, or simply experimenting with different instruments or gear, old and new, makes rooting new concepts a pleasurable process as well.

Karo: Your work has repeatedly brought archaic or pre-modern symbolic systems into contact with electronic machinery, from “Enuma Elish” and “The World Tree” to “Nuraghi,” while the music itself has moved through tribal percussion, industrial force, EBM and techno-derived repetition. After thirty years, do you still see an opposition between the archaic and the technological? Or has the project gradually demonstrated that both ritual and electronic sequencing rely on something very similar: repetition, pattern, anticipation and the transformation of consciousness through time?

Mika: There has never been an opposition between archaic and technological in our worldview. All sounds work together to make the concept or the story of a piece intelligible and transmutable.

Karo: There is a danger in the language surrounding “ritual industrial” that ritual becomes an aesthetic adjective: drums, symbols, incantatory voices, certain visual codes. This Morn’ Omina has always seemed much more concerned with what rhythm actually does. After three decades, what distinguishes ritual as a real compositional process from ritual as decoration? Is there a point at which repetition ceases to be a musical device and genuinely alters the listener’s state?

Mika: A track is finished when everything has blended into one form that interconnects all elements, whether this is a voice, noise, hand drum or lower frequencies. The whole is ritual, not just one specific element.

Karo: Vestiges also raises the question of memory in electronic music. A photograph or written document tells us something about a past event from a distance, whereas an old rhythm can make a body reproduce an action it performed twenty years earlier. When you hear these tracks together now, is your memory primarily intellectual, remembering studios, people and circumstances, or physical? Can the body remember a piece of music differently from the person who made it?

Mika: I remember all of the circumstances in which these tracks were made. Most of them are good memories; some are tied to lesser ones because of, in most cases, failing gear or erratic musical experiments going off the rails.

Listening to ritual music leaves an imprint on mind and body. That is a personal experience. The creator has no control over that.

Karo: Earlier this year you described Insha as reflective rather than restrained, a necessary return to stability after a period in which This Morn’ Omina had effectively undergone a tabula rasa. That makes the timing of Vestiges intriguing. Does an artist look at his archive differently after having seriously contemplated an ending? In other words, did almost losing the continuity of This Morn’ Omina change your understanding of which parts of those thirty years actually mattered?

Mika: To an extent, yes, because of the necessary turmoil that is part of a tabula rasa. But Insha was not made on a deserted island. It was made on a peninsula, a place that, even though remote, is still firmly connected to the mainland. After Insha, it was with fondness that we looked back upon what had been made before.

Karo: There is also a difficult curatorial question hidden inside every retrospective: exclusion. Eighteen pieces can represent thirty years only by leaving a vast amount outside the selection. Were the omissions harder than the selections? And did you ever reject a track because it was too obvious, too successful or too strongly associated with one historical version of This Morn’ Omina to tell the story you wanted Vestiges to tell?

Mika: Well, blame us for the omissions, hah! It was not hard at all to leave certain tracks out. Vestiges needed to make “sense” to listeners, new and old. Certain tracks did not make it, as otherwise it would have been too long to present in a meaningful way. So we apologize that “your favorite track” was not included.

Karo: You have said recently that stories within This Morn’ Omina matter across past, present and future, and that many different sources can flow toward one larger universal arc. Listening to thirty years compressed into one collection creates an unusual opportunity to test that belief against the work itself. When you place a piece from 1998 beside material conceived many years later, do you discover continuity you consciously planned, or patterns that only became visible retrospectively? Can an artist discover meanings in his own catalogue that the younger version of himself never intended?

Mika: There is continuity. But it is not rigidly planned. In the end, the person or people making it evolved over time, but it is still the same human being at the cradle. The production value definitely went up quite a few notches over time.

Karo: There is a beautiful paradox in releasing Vestiges during what is actually an extremely productive new period for This Morn’ Omina. Insha arrived this year, and you have already said that two further records are in development: Triptych and Rivers Of The Sea, with the latter intended to complete the Kundalini trilogy. Has the process of excavating these thirty years fed back into the music you are making now? I am curious whether an archive can work in both directions: preserving evidence of where you have been while quietly changing where you are able to go next.

Mika: I do not see any paradox at all. Vestiges is a pebble along the same road where Triptych and Rivers Of The Sea will be. We could have waited another 10 years, but we decided not to. This Morn’ Omina has always had a steady output because we feel that there are always new concepts that deserve the light of day, and maybe waiting another 10 years would have made a Vestiges project almost too big and therefore confusing.

Vestiges is not a “best-of.” It is a “part-of.”

Karo: I have to finish with the live side because I have just seen This Morn’ Omina at Castle Party, and it was an extraordinary visual and sonic experience. What struck me was how completely the music occupied the space: rhythm, bodies, light and the almost ceremonial concentration onstage seemed to become parts of the same thing. You still have several dates ahead, including the special 30th-anniversary performance at La Luna Obscura in Ostend, Fourscher Festival in Erfurt, and Schachtfrequenz in Zwickau in February 2027. Are further concerts being planned around the 30th anniversary and Vestiges, and is there anything particular you want these anniversary performances to say about where This Morn’ Omina is now, rather than celebrating where it has been?

Mika: Thank you. We found it a resounding experience as well. A deep connection with the audience was formed through a TAZ. La Luna Obscura is the only real anniversary concert, with a one-off special setlist. The concerts that are lined up, and those not announced yet, will definitely reflect some parts of that, but our aim is the future, with new tracks and new stories to tell.

About This Morn’ Omina

This Morn’ Omina is a Belgian post-industrial and ritual trance project founded in 1996 in Roeselare by musician and producer Mika Goedrijk. Musically the project mixes ritual trance, tribal industrial, power noise and dark ambient, built around polyrhythmic percussion and layered atmospheres. In its early years, the project issued three self-released tapes on the Afterfurcht imprint: “The Future Has Taken Root In The Present” (1996), “Terra Tramuit et Quievit” (1997) and “Decline and Fall of Empires” (1997). These recordings led to the first full-length CD, “Nezeru Enti Sebauem Neterxertet,” on the Italian label Old Europa Cafe in 1997, followed by “Em Sauf Haa Heru” (1998) and “Taiu” (2000), completing the initial Hegira-related cycle.

During the 2000s, This Morn’ Omina released a string of albums on labels including Ant-Zen and Spectre Records, among them “7 Years Of Famine,” “Le Serpent Blanc / Le Serpent Rouge,” “The Drake Equation” and “Les Passages Jumeaux.” The track “One-Eyed Man” became one of the project’s best-known compositions, giving This Morn’ Omina wider recognition beyond its ritual industrial base. In 2017, the project moved to the German label Dependent for the double CD “Kundalini Rising,” followed in 2021 by “The Roots Of Saraswati,” also on Dependent. In 2025, This Morn’ Omina released the four-track digital EP “Omm Of Life” through Zazen Sounds. Beyond This Morn’ Omina, Mika Goedrijk has been involved in several other projects, including Sygo Cries, Nebula-H, Pow[D]Er Pussy, Les Nuits Blanches, Project Arctic, Andraculoid and, more recently, Plan C.

In January 2026, This Morn’ Omina announced “Insha,” released 23 February 2026 as a CD and digital co-release between Cyclic Law and Zazen Sounds, the project’s first new full-length album in five years and its twelfth studio album overall. In June 2026, This Morn’ Omina joined the Dark Dimensions Label Group and announced “Vestiges – 30 Years Of Ritual Sound (1996-2026),” a compilation of known, rare and previously unreleased tracks marking the project’s 30th anniversary, released as a limited edition digipak CD via ProNoize / Dark Dimensions on 26 June 2026. This Morn’ Omina played Castle Party in the summer of 2026 and has further dates ahead, including a 30th-anniversary performance at La Luna Obscura in Ostend, Fourscher Festival in Erfurt, and Schachtfrequenz in Zwickau in February 2027, with two further albums, “Triptych” and “Rivers Of The Sea,” in development, the latter intended to complete the Kundalini trilogy.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Hearing Unter Null in 2026 means hearing two versions of Erica Dunham at once: the young woman who turned rage, grief and instinct into “Sick Fuck,” and the woman who can now look back at that fire without needing either to apologize for it or step back inside it.

When Erica Dunham released “Coming Up To Breathe” in April 2025, it ended more than a decade of release silence under the Unter Null name. “You Made A Monster” followed that July, and in June 2026 Alfa Matrix brought another part of the story back into circulation with “The Rise From Ruin (and the Ritual of Becoming)”, a double-CD revisiting material from the formative The Failure Epiphany period and other early releases.

For anyone who remembers Unter Null from the “Sick Fuck” era, there is something strange about hearing that material again now. The aggression is immediately recognizable, but the person standing behind it has accumulated another two decades of grief, survival, silence, loss and rebuilding. The old songs have not changed; the consciousness looking back at them has. That tension runs throughout this conversation.

Dunham speaks with striking clarity about rage becoming something she can aim rather than explode inside, about distortion functioning simultaneously as armor and confession, about refusing to allow somebody else’s account of her life to become the official version, and about the long silence in which Unter Null had not disappeared so much as become temporarily unreachable. She also talks about Stray as another emotional nervous system, the literal destruction of her studio in the 2008 fire, being a woman inside an aggressively male-coded scene, and why reopening the past has very little to do with wanting to live there again.

For Erica, survival is no longer simply about making it through. It is about deciding what belongs to her after everything that tried to take pieces of her away.

Check her official website at www.unter-null.net .

Unter Null interview

Karo: When you look at the very young Erica who started Unter Null in 1998, and then at the woman who returned with “Coming Up To Breathe”, “You Made A Monster”, and now “The Rise From Ruin (and the Ritual of Becoming)”, do you feel continuity between them, or do you feel that Unter Null had to be broken apart and rebuilt by a different person?

Erica: I don’t think I was ever rebuilt by a different person, just a different version. Erica 2.0 and beyond, and I think I keep surviving just long enough to become more of myself, more authentic without apologies. The same passion and fire that started Unter Null in 1998 is still here, it never left. I’ve always written about grief, love, anger, longing, and trying to understand what it means to be human.

That part has never changed. What changed is the amount of life I’ve lived between then and now. I’ve lost people, and I’ve buried versions of myself that I thought would last forever. I’ve had to start over more times than I ever would have expected, but some things had to be broken apart completely so I could see what was actually worth carrying with me. I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, whether we see it at the time or not.

So, yea, I don’t feel disconnected from that younger version of myself. I love her and she deserves grace and compassion. She was fearless, chaotic, stubborn, and she created something honest with whatever tools she had at the time. But I also don’t romanticize her. She hadn’t yet realized the fires she would be walking through.

“Coming Up To Breathe,” “You Made A Monster,” and this re-release all come from a place of understanding that becoming is a lifelong process. You don’t rise back just once. You do it over and over again until it makes sense. Every loss, every mistake, and every act of survival leaves a mark.

I didn’t bring back Unter Null because I wanted to relive the past. I brought it back because there were still so many things left to say.

Karo: “The Rise From Ruin (and the Ritual of Becoming)” feels less like a standard reissue and more like a full-circle moment. The “Sick Fuck” era comes back, but you are no longer the same person who created it. What kind of circle does this release close for you, and what does it reopen?

Erica: I think it closes a circle with the version of myself who was creating from pure instinct. The Sick Fuck era was chaotic, ugly, emotional, but thoroughly honest. I was young, wild, without much direction, and writing music because I had an intense drive to do so- I didn’t have some grand plan, I was just pulling whatever was inside of me out into sound, whether it was rage, grief, desire, self-destruction, or the need to feel like I existed somewhere. Coming back to that material now is strange because I recognize my younger self completely, but I’m not survive without fully knowing that’s what I was doing. So in that way, this release closes the circle of shame I may have had around some of that early chaos. I don’t feel the need to distance myself from it.

I don’t feel the need to apologize for how intense, imperfect, or unpolished it was. That was my rocky foundation, unforgiving, but the making of who I am now. It also reopens the door to the parts of myself I thought I had buried. Not in a destructive way, but in a way that lets me look back and say, “You made it! I’m still here.” However, this re-issue isn’t about living in the past. It’s about honoring the fact that the past survived me (ha), and I survived it too.

Karo: I remember you from the “Sick Fuck” era, including those earlier visits in Poland, and listening to this material now feels strange in the best possible way. It is the same voice, but it does not feel like the same girl speaking anymore. It feels like a woman looking back at her own fire. When you hear those songs now, do you recognize yourself immediately, or do you hear someone you had to survive becoming?

Erica: I recognize myself immediately, but I feel detached in some ways, almost like it was another lifetime. There are moments in many of those songs where I can hear exactly who I was at the time of writing. I can hear the anger, the ferocious hunger, the lack of fear, the chaos, and the need to purge something out of myself and make it real. I don’t listen to it and feel disconnected from my younger self. I know her now, and I understand her, which is all she needed, but I also hear someone who had no idea what was coming. I can hear the beginning of survival in those songs before I even knew what survival was going to cost me. I hear someone becoming, but not yet understanding the price of becoming. I hear someone playing with fire before knowing how badly it would burn.

So yes, it is the same voice, but it carries differently now. Back then, it was instinct. Now, there is memory behind it. There is grief behind it. There are teeth of steel, but also a lot more clarity. I don’t think I had to survive becoming who I am- I think I had to survive everything that tried to take her from me. When I hear those songs now, I don’t feel ashamed of the chaos. I feel protective of it. That fire was real, and I’m grateful it never fully went out, it just transformed.

Karo: The title joins two very different ideas: ruin and becoming. Ruin suggests destruction, while ritual suggests transformation, repetition and meaning. Was revisiting this early material emotionally difficult, or did it feel like taking control of a story that had been waiting for you?

Erica: It was both. Revisiting this material was emotionally difficult in ways I didn’t fully expect. Not because I’m ashamed of it, but because old work has a way of dragging old versions of you back into the room. You remember what your voice sounded like before certain losses. You remember what anger felt like before it became grief. You remember who you were before life took a sledgehammer to everything – but it also felt like taking control of something that had been waiting for me. Ruin and becoming have always been connected for me. I don’t think transformation happens in some clean, beautiful, peaceful way most of the time. Sometimes it starts in the wreckage. Sometimes you don’t get to choose the fire, but you do get to choose what you build from the ashes. That’s what this release feels like to me. It isn’t just looking backward. It’s returning to the scene with a different kind of strength. I can hear the damage, but I can also hear the beginning of something that refused to die (which would be me). So yes, it felt necessary, like putting my hands on an old wound and realizing it doesn’t dictate my life anymore.

Karo: “Coming Up To Breathe” felt less like a comeback single in the usual sense and more like the first moment after a long submersion. What exactly were you coming up from? Artistic silence, personal exhaustion, trauma, survival, disillusionment, or something harder to name?

Erica: I was coming up from all of it. Artistic silence, personal exhaustion, trauma, grief, survival, disillusionment. All of those things were tangled together. I don’t think there was one clean, singular reason I disappeared or went quiet. Life just kept piling on until I didn’t recognize the surface anymore. I was coming out of years of being in survival mode; from losing parts of myself I thought were permanent, from carrying more than I knew how to carry, from being so emotionally and physically exhausted that creating didn’t feel possible for a long time. There also is the harder-to-name part: that moment when you realize you have been underwater for so long that you forgot what breathing even felt like beyond short gasps of air. “Coming Up To Breathe” wasn’t written as a polished comeback statement. It was more like proof of life. It was the sound of me breaking the surface after being submerged in so many things that had tried to bury and silence me. It wasn’t triumphant in some clean, cinematic way. It was messy. It was human. It was the first inhale after a long period of slowly drowning quietly.

Karo: A lot of Unter Null’s music has always dealt with survival, but survival can mean very different things. Sometimes it means staying alive. Sometimes it means keeping your voice. Sometimes it means refusing to let someone else’s version of events become the official story. When you write now, what kind of survival are you writing from?

Erica: I think I now write from the type of survival that comes after staying alive. There is the immediate kind of survival where you are just trying to make it through the day, through the night, through the next hour, through whatever is happening without completely disappearing inside of it, and I know that version very well. The type of survival I write from now is very different- it is the aftermath of pure emotional exsanguination. It is what happens when you are still here, but you have to figure out what parts of you made it through and what parts need to be rebuilt from nothing.

I write from the survival of keeping my voice, of not feeling that I have to shrink anymore to keep the peace, of not letting someone else’s version of me become the truth, of refusing to let the worst things that happened to me be the only things that define me. There is a lot of anger in that, but there is also clarity. I am not necessarily writing as a wounded version of myself anymore, I am writing from the scars that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. So, when I write now, it is still about survival, but it is also about ownership. I am not asking for permission to tell my story, I am simply taking my power back.

Karo: In your earlier work, anger often felt explosive, almost feral, as if the only honest language was attack. In the newer songs, the anger feels more precise, more conscious, more controlled. Has your relationship with rage changed over the years?

Erica: Oh, for sure. Absolutely. When I was younger, rage was immediate- it was reflexive. It was the only language I had for things I didn’t know how to process yet. A lot of the earlier material came from that place where the feeling hits and you just throw it against the wall as hard as you can. There was honesty in that, but there was also a lack of distance from it. I was inside the fire. My relationship with rage has definitely changed. I don’t think I’m less angry now. I think I understand my anger better. I know where it lives in my body. I know what it is protecting. I know when it is useful, and I know when it is just trying to keep me from falling apart.

The newer songs still have teeth, but the bite is different. It’s more deliberate. I don’t need to burn the whole room down just to prove that I was hurt. I can point directly at the thing. I can name it. I can turn it into something controlled, focused, and still very dangerous. Rage is not something I want to erase from Unter Null. It belongs there. It has always belonged there. But now it feels less like an explosion and more like a weapon I actually know how to hold. I think that is the difference. The anger is still feral, but it has learned how to aim.

Karo: “You Made A Monster” is such a powerful title because it shifts responsibility. It does not say, “I became this by accident.” It says, “Look at what was done, look at what was enabled, look at what you helped create.” Was that song written as a personal exorcism, a confrontation, or a document of something many people silently recognize?

Erica: I think it was all three. “You Made A Monster” was definitely personal. It came from that place where you finally stop absorbing everything and start handing it back. There is a moment when you realize you have been carrying the weight of someone else’s damage, someone else’s choices, someone else’s cruelty, and somehow you are the one expected to stay soft, quiet, graceful, and forgiving. That song is me saying no. It is an exorcism because I needed to get it out of my body. It is a confrontation because I wanted to point directly at the source and say, “You don’t get to act surprised by what I became after what you did.” But I also think a lot of people recognize that feeling.

That moment where you are no longer willing to be the only one held responsible for how you survived. I don’t mean “monster” as something evil. I mean it as something altered. Something created under pressure. Something that grew teeth because it had to. It is not about avoiding accountability for myself. It is about refusing to carry everyone else’s. There is power in saying: I did not become this in a vacuum. I was shaped by love, loss, betrayal, survival, and the things people thought I would never say out loud. And now I am saying them.

Karo: The early Unter Null material returns after “Coming Up To Breathe” and “You Made A Monster”, which changes how we hear it. Do you feel the new songs explain the old ones in any way, or do they complicate them?

Erica: I think the new songs complicate the old ones more than they explain them. I don’t really want to explain the early material too neatly. Those songs came from a very specific place in time, and part of their power is that they are messy, instinctive, and unresolved. I don’t want to go back now and clean them up with adult language just to make them easier to understand. But I do think the newer songs change the way the old ones are heard. “Coming Up To Breathe” and “You Made A Monster” come from someone who has lived long enough to understand the patterns more clearly. The early songs were me inside the fire. The newer songs are me standing in the aftermath, looking at what burned, what survived, and what I refuse to lose again. So no, I don’t think the new songs explain the old ones like an answer key. They give them more context. They show that the rage, the grief, the chaos, and the survival were not separate phases. They were part of the same long thread. The old songs were the warning signs, the wounds, the instinct. The new songs are the scar tissue, the language, and the refusal to disappear. So maybe they don’t explain the past. They prove I made it through it.

Karo: The voice in Unter Null is still distorted, still violent in texture, but in the new material it feels emotionally clearer. Do you feel that distortion protects the truth, exposes it, or allows you to say things that would be unbearable in a clean voice?

Erica: I think distortion does all of those things. It protects the truth, but it also exposes it. There are certain things I can say through distortion that would feel almost too naked in a clean voice. Not because the clean voice is weaker, but because some emotions don’t feel clean when they come out of you. Some things are jagged. Some things are ugly. Some things need to sound like they clawed their way through your chest to get into the room. Distortion gives me a place to put the violence of the feeling. It lets the voice become something more than just a human voice. It becomes armor, static, teeth, machinery, grief, panic, rage – all of it layered together. And sometimes that is the only honest way to deliver something. If I’m writing about survival, betrayal, dependency, anger, or the parts of myself that are hardest to look at, a clean voice doesn’t always feel truthful enough. But I also think the emotional clarity comes from knowing what I’m saying now. I’m not hiding behind the distortion. I’m using it as part of the language. The newer material feels clearer because I understand the source of the feeling more than I used to. So yes, distortion protects me. But it also tells on me.

Karo: “The Rise From Ruin” brings back “The Failure Epiphany”, “Sick Fuck”, and material from “Sacrament” and “Absolution”. How does it feel to reopen that specific period from this distance? Do those songs still feel like yours, or do they feel like preserved evidence from another life?

Erica: It feels like opening a box I buried a long time ago and realizing everything inside still has a pulse. Those songs still feel like mine, but they also feel like evidence. They are pieces of a life I lived, a mind I had, a body I was in, and emotions I didn’t always know how to survive. I can hear who I was in them so clearly. I can hear the chaos, the instinct, the damage, the defiance, the hunger to create something that felt real. But from this distance, I don’t hear them the same way anymore. When I was making that material, I was just inside it. I wasn’t thinking about what it would mean decades later. I wasn’t thinking about legacy or revisiting it or having to explain it.

I was just making sound out of whatever was eating me alive at the time. Now, reopening that period feels less like returning to it and more like witnessing it. I can hold it differently. I can respect it without being consumed by it. I can see the beauty in the ugliness and the strength underneath the chaos. So yes, they are still mine. Completely. But they are also preserved evidence of someone trying to become, even when she had no idea what she was becoming. And I think that is what makes this release feel so strange and powerful to me. It is not just nostalgia. It is proof that something survived.

Karo: “Sick Fuck” became one of those tracks people remember almost physically: club impact, aggression, shock, adrenaline. But when a song becomes an anthem, it can also flatten the person behind it into one image. Did you ever feel trapped by that song, or by the version of Erica people projected onto it?

Erica: Yea, I think I did feel trapped by it at certain points. “Sick Fuck” became bigger than I ever expected it to become. I understand why people connected to it the way they did. It has that immediate impact. It is aggressive, ugly, confrontational, and it hits the body before the brain has time to catch up. I’m grateful that it had that life. But when a song becomes that recognizable, people sometimes start treating it like the entire definition of who you are. They see the aggression, the shock, the distortion, the title, and they build a version of you around it. And that version can be very flat. I was never just that song. I was never just rage, or provocation, or violence in a club track.

was always vulnerability underneath it. There was always grief underneath it. There was always a human being trying to turn something unbearable into sound. So yes, I think I pushed against being reduced to that one image. But I also don’t reject the song. I don’t look at it like something I need to escape from. It was honest. It came from me. It still belongs to me. The difference now is that I can hold it without letting it define the entire room. “Sick Fuck” is part of the story, but it is not the whole story. It is one huge scream from a much larger body of work.

Karo: Unter Null emerged in a scene that was often aggressive, male-coded, confrontational, and not always generous to women who sounded angrier than people expected them to be. Did you feel you had to become harder, louder, or more extreme to be heard, or was that intensity simply your natural language?

Erica: I think intensity was always my natural language. I feel loudly. I don’t think I sat down and decided I needed to become harder or louder to survive in a male-coded scene. I was already angry and emotional. I was already drawn to violent sound, distortion, confrontation, and the kind of music that felt like it could rip something open. But I also think being a woman in that space meant people read that intensity differently. When men are aggressive, it is often treated as power, confidence, or authority. When women are aggressive, people want to explain it, soften it, sexualize it, or turn it into some kind of novelty. I was never interested in being a novelty.

wasn’t there to be the “angry girl” in the room. I was there because that sound was mine. So no, I don’t think I became extreme just to be heard. But I do think I refused to become smaller so people could feel more comfortable with me. The intensity was real. The anger was real. The damage was real. The need to make something beautiful and ugly at the same time was real. If anything, Unter Null gave me permission to stop translating myself into something easier to digest.

Karo: The “Sick Fuck”, “Sacrament” and “Absolution” period almost reads like a dark religious sequence: sickness, ritual, confession, punishment, release. Was that language accidental at the time, or were you already building a kind of personal mythology around damage and cleansing?

Erica: I don’t think it was fully conscious at the time, but I also don’t think it was accidental. I’ve always been drawn to language that feels ceremonial, violent, sacred, and ruined all at once. Words like sacrament and absolution carry weight. They imply guilt, cleansing, punishment, forgiveness, devotion, and the need to be released from something. Looking back, I can see that I was building my own kind of mythology around damage before I even had the language to explain it. At the time, I was probably just following instinct. I liked the ugliness. I liked the contradiction of something sacred being dragged through something filthy. That tension made sense to me. It still does.

think a lot of Unter Null has always lived in that space between confession and exorcism. There is shame there. There is rage there. There is a need to purge something from the body and turn it into sound before it poisons you. So no, I wasn’t sitting there with some perfectly formed concept. But I do think I was already circling the same themes that still haunt the work now: damage, survival, ritual, guilt, transformation, and the strange kind of cleansing that can happen when you finally say the ugly thing out loud. Maybe I didn’t know I was building a mythology then. Maybe I was just trying to survive the one I was already living inside.

Karo: You have Stray as another part of your artistic identity, and that project has often seemed like the aftermath of impact rather than the impact itself: sadness after rage, reflection after damage, breath after violence. How do you now understand the relationship between Unter Null and Stray?

Erica: I’ve started to understand Unter Null and Stray as two different nervous systems in the same body. Unter Null is the impact. It is the violence, the confrontation, the thing that happens when the feeling is too big to come out gently. It is rage with machinery around it. It is the scream, the static, the teeth, the part of me that refuses to be quiet. Stray is what happens after. Stray has always felt more exposed to me. It is less armor and more bruising. It is sadness after the adrenaline wears off. It is reflection, longing, grief, tenderness, and the strange quiet that comes after you survive something and don’t know what to do with your hands.

don’t see them as separate identities as much as different ways my body processes emotion. Unter Null fights. Stray mourns. Unter Null spits blood. Stray sits with the stain and tries to understand what happened. They both come from the same place. They just speak in different temperatures. And honestly, I think I need both. I need the violence and I need the breath after the violence. I need the weapon and I need the wound. They explain each other in ways I’m still figuring out.

Karo: There is a long silence between “Moving On” and the new Unter Null material. Silence is often described as absence, but sometimes it is full of work nobody sees. What was happening inside that silence? Did you stop being Unter Null during those years, or was Unter Null waiting somewhere under the surface?

Erica: I don’t think I ever stopped being Unter Null. I think I just stopped being able to reach that part of myself for a while. That silence was not empty. It was full of life happening very loudly behind the scenes. Grief, caregiving, loss, survival, burnout, trying to hold everything together, trying to be a functioning human being when a lot of me was falling apart. There were years where music felt very far away, not because I didn’t love it anymore, but because I didn’t have enough of myself left to give to it. I think people see silence from the outside and assume nothing is happening. But sometimes silence is where the heaviest work is happening. it is where you are breaking down.

Sometimes it is where you are learning how to stay alive. Sometimes it is where you are being stripped down to whatever is actually real. Unter Null was still under the surface. I just couldn’t hear it clearly for a long time. And maybe it needed to be quiet. Maybe I needed to live more, lose more, survive more, and become someone who could return to it with a different kind of honesty. So no, I don’t see those years as absence. I see them as the space where the next version of me was being formed, even when I didn’t know it yet.

Karo: After the studio fire in 2008, part of the story around Unter Null became literal loss: equipment, recordings, physical tools, the material body of music. Did that event change your relationship with control, memory, and the idea that art can be destroyed but still somehow return?

Erica: Yea, absolutely. The fire changed my relationship with control in a very real way. When you lose equipment, recordings, files, tools, and the physical things that helped you make the work, it forces you to understand how fragile all of it really is. You think you have things preserved because they exist somewhere outside of you, and then suddenly they are gone. That kind of loss is brutal because it is not just “stuff.” It is time. It is memory. It is versions of songs. It is unfinished ideas. It is pieces of a life and a creative process that you can’t fully recreate. But it also taught me that art doesn’t only live in objects. The machines can burn. The files can disappear. The room can be destroyed.

But if something was real enough, some part of it stays in you. It changes shape. It waits. It comes back through a different door. I think that fire became part of the mythology of Unter Null in a way I couldn’t have planned. There is something almost too literal about it: ruin, loss, destruction, and then years later, the work finds its way back into the world anyway. It definitely made me less trusting of control, but maybe more trusting of return. Some things are destroyed, some things are transformed, and inevitably there will be things that haunt you until you are ready to rebuild them.

Karo: You returned not only with new music, but with a sense of purpose. The new Unter Null does not feel nostalgic, even when the old catalogue is being revisited. What did you refuse to bring back from the past, and what did you know had to remain untouched?

Erica: I refuse to bring back anything that feels like performance for the sake of being extreme. The anger, the honesty, the distortion, those things have to remain untouched because they are the core of Unter Null. But I don’t want to drag the past forward just to recreate it. I’m not interested in nostalgia or trying to sound like a younger version of myself. What had to remain was the truth of it. The emotional violence, the melody, the vulnerability under the noise, the refusal to be quiet. What I refuse to bring back is the need to prove anything.

Karo: You have classical training, and even in the harshest Unter Null material there is often a hidden sense of structure beneath the violence. How much of your writing is instinct, and how much is architecture? Do you build chaos, or do you discover order inside it?

Erica: It’s a combination of instinct and architecture. The emotional part usually comes first. I follow the feeling, the melody, the tension, and whatever hits my nervous system before I fully understand it. But the classical training is always underneath, whether I’m thinking about it or not. It gives the chaos a spine. I don’t think I build chaos just to be chaotic. I’m usually trying to find the shape inside it. Even the harshest material has to move, breathe, and resolve in some way. So maybe I discover the disorder first, and then I build a structure strong enough to hold it.

Karo: In 2026, many artists are speaking more openly about burnout, survival, mental health, and the cost of keeping a creative identity alive over decades. What does it cost you now to write honestly? And has that cost changed since the early Unter Null years?

Erica: It costs me less now because I’m not afraid of my truth as I’ve grown older. Early on, I think brute honesty came out like a reflex, but now it comes with aim. I know what I’m saying, I know why I’m saying it, and I’m not interested in softening it for anyone. The cost is vulnerability, but the reward is power..

Karo: If “The Failure Epiphany” captured Unter Null as rupture, “Coming Up To Breathe” captured the first breath after silence, and “The Rise From Ruin” marks the ritual of becoming, what kind of emotional place is the next Unter Null chapter coming from?

Erica: The next chapter is coming from the part of me they couldn’t take. It’s still rage, grief, and survival, but now it’s sharpened by clarity. Some people will empty the room, steal the furniture, and then swear you burned the house down. I’m not living inside their version of the story anymore. This next chapter is feral, focused, and very much alive.

About Unter Null

Unter Null is the solo project of Erica Dunham, launched in 1998 in Seattle, Washington, when Dunham was 17. Classically trained in piano, cello and guitar, she began writing under the name as a powernoise-leaning project influenced by artists including Noisex, Converter and P.A.L. A self-titled debut album followed in 2001, and in 2002 she signed to Leech and NTT/Annihilvs Records for the web-exclusive second album, “Neocide.”

In 2005, Dunham signed to Belgian label Alfa Matrix. Her debut for the label, “The Failure Epiphany,” peaked at number four on the German Alternative Charts (DAC) and ranked 43rd on the DAC’s albums of the year for 2006; that same year, the “Sacrament” EP reached number six on the DAC singles chart. The “Sick Fuck” and “Absolution” EPs followed from the same period, cementing Unter Null’s confrontational, distortion-heavy sound within the mid-2000s EBM and aggrotech scene. Unter Null toured the United States and Europe in support of the material, including a short 2005 run and a longer European tour in 2006.

In early 2008, Dunham launched a side project, Stray, releasing a self-titled two-CD album with contributions from Mothboy, Detritus and Testube, among others. On December 25, 2008, a fire destroyed the studio housing her musical, recording and electronic equipment; her next album, “Moving On,” was feared lost but was ultimately recovered from a damaged hard drive and released. In 2012, Dunham relocated to Hamburg, Germany.

A long period of reduced activity followed. Unter Null resurfaced in January 2025 with news that Dunham was back in the studio, followed in March by a collaboration, “Hollow,” with Frontal Boundary. In April 2025, Unter Null released the free download single “Coming Up To Breathe,” its first new material in over a decade, followed that July by the EPCD “You Made A Monster” on Alfa Matrix. In September 2025, Unter Null headlined Das Bunker’s 29th anniversary show at Catch One. In April 2026, Alfa Matrix announced “The Rise From Ruin (and the Ritual of Becoming),” a limited double-CD compiling “The Failure Epiphany” era alongside the “Sick Fuck,” “Sacrament” and “Absolution” EPs and remixes by Noisuf-X vs. X-Fusion, Manufactura, T3chnophobia, Aslan Faction, Grendel, KiEw, Terrorfakt and C-Drone-Defect; the collection was released on June 26, 2026.

Erica Dunham speaks about all of it in the interview above: the two decades between “Sick Fuck” and “The Rise From Ruin,” the 2008 fire, the long silence after “Moving On,” and what the next Unter Null chapter is coming from.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Carpenter Brut and HEALTH will reunite this autumn for “Conflict: Europe 2026”, the European continuation of their co-headlining partnership following the North American “Conflict: Leather Tour” earlier this year. The European run begins in Utrecht on November 3 and moves through the UK, Germany, Poland, Hungary and Italy, with VOWWS joining as special guests on the joint dates.

The pairing works because the two headliners arrive at heaviness from different directions. Carpenter Brut builds it through darksynth, metal dynamics, huge synthesizer hooks and cinematic excess, while HEALTH combine industrial electronics, distorted guitars, noise and vulnerable melodic songwriting. On the same bill, these approaches should make for a physical evening without repeating the same musical language twice.

For Polish audiences, the tour brings two consecutive shows:

• November 16, 2026 – Kraków, Klub Studio – Carpenter Brut + HEALTH + VOWWS
• November 17, 2026 – Wrocław, Centrum Koncertowe A2 – Carpenter Brut + HEALTH + VOWWS

The Polish concerts are promoted by Knock Out Productions.

The European dates come after Carpenter Brut and HEALTH spent spring 2026 touring North America together, making this less of a one-off package and more of an ongoing collaboration between two acts whose audiences overlap across industrial, dark electronic, alternative and heavier scenes.

‘Conflict: Europe 2026’ tour dates

Carpenter Brut, HEALTH and VOWWS play the following joint dates:

• November 3 – Utrecht, Netherlands – TivoliVredenburg
• November 4 – Bristol, UK – O2 Academy Bristol
• November 5 – Glasgow, UK – SWG3 Galvanizers
• November 6 – Wolverhampton, UK – Wulfrun Hall
• November 11 – Hamburg, Germany – Große Freiheit 36
• November 13 – Leipzig, Germany – Täubchenthal
• November 16 – Kraków, Poland – Klub Studio
• November 17 – Wrocław, Poland – Centrum Koncertowe A2
• November 19 – Budapest, Hungary – Barba Negra
• November 20 – Milan, Italy – Alcatraz

About HEALTH

HEALTH is an American industrial rock band formed in Los Angeles in 2005 by vocalist and guitarist Jake Duzsik and bassist John Famiglietti, who met while Duzsik was working at a Guitar Center store. Guitarist Jupiter Keyes and drummer BJ Miller joined soon after, giving the band its early lineup; Keyes left in 2015, and the group has continued as the trio of Duzsik, Famiglietti and Miller. HEALTH drew early attention with a remix of Crystal Castles’ “Crimewave” before releasing its self-titled debut album in 2007, followed by “Get Color” in 2009 and “Death Magic” via Loma Vista Recordings in 2015. “Vol. 4 :: Slaves of Fear” followed in 2019, and the band released the collaborative “Disco4” project across two volumes in 2020 and 2022. HEALTH issued “Rat Wars” in 2023, and its sixth studio album, “Conflict DLC”, followed via Loma Vista Recordings on December 11, 2025, preceded by the singles “Ordinary Loss”, “Vibe Cop”, “Thought Leader”, “You Died”, “Shred Envy” and “Antidote”. Los Angeles-based HEALTH have spent years developing a sound in which industrial electronics, noise, metal and pop melody are allowed to coexist without softening one another. One of the band’s most distinctive qualities remains the contrast between the enormous physical weight of the production and Duzsik’s comparatively restrained, vulnerable vocal delivery, which gives the music an emotional character very different from straightforward industrial aggression. The current touring cycle follows “Conflict DLC”, continuing the darker and heavier direction explored on “Rat Wars”. Live, that combination of mechanical rhythm, distortion and unexpectedly intimate vocals gives HEALTH a physical and emotional presence that carries directly into the “Conflict: Europe 2026” dates.

About Carpenter Brut

Carpenter Brut is the project of French producer Franck Hueso, born in 1977 in Poitiers, who has cultivated anonymity as a deliberate artistic choice since starting the project in 2012 to mix horror-film scoring, metal, rock and electronic music. He first released three EPs, “EP I” (2012), “EP II” (2013) and “EP III” (2015), later compiled as the debut album “Trilogy” (2015). “Leather Teeth” followed in 2018, drawing on 1980s metal and glam rock and opening the fictional story of anti-hero Bret Halford. Hueso then scored the animated feature “Blood Machines” in 2020 before continuing the narrative with “Leather Terror” in 2022. He closed the trilogy with Leather Temple, released on February 27, 2026, which continues Bret Halford’s story into a cryogenic, cyberpunk-inflected future and closes out the “Leather” arc that began with “Leather Teeth”. Carpenter Brut approaches electronic heaviness from another angle than HEALTH. His music draws from synthwave, metal, horror cinema and 1980s pop culture, but over the years the project has moved far beyond simple retro aesthetics, developing into something much more aggressive, theatrical and designed for large live spaces. “Leather Temple” continues Carpenter Brut’s mixture of cinematic electronics, darksynth and metal while expanding the fictional world that has accompanied this chapter of the project, material that now anchors the “Conflict: Europe 2026” set.

With VOWWS opening and two headliners whose methods of creating tension are so different, “Conflict: Europe 2026” looks like one of the more interesting dark electronic touring packages of the autumn, including the two Polish dates in Kraków and Wrocław.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

After several false starts, Zeromancer are finally returning to Germany. The Norwegian industrial-rock band have announced six exclusive headline concerts for February and March 2027 under the banner Testimonial Tour 2027, with Lakeside X joining them as special guests.

Zeromancer describe the concerts as their first German shows in eight years. Their last documented appearances in the country took place in Oberhausen and Berlin in November 2019, making the forthcoming run their first return to German stages across eight calendar years.

Several earlier attempts to bring Zeromancer back to Germany did not go ahead. A planned Clone Your Lover anniversary concert at Hamburg’s Markthalle was postponed in 2020 while vocalist Alex Møklebust recovered from surgery. The rescheduled performance was eventually cancelled in 2022 after the band reported that its members had been severely affected by COVID-19. Following medical advice, both Zeromancer and Seigmen suspended their live activities for the remainder of that year.

More recently, Zeromancer were due to appear at the Unity 2026 events alongside VNV Nation and IAMX. Those concerts were cancelled as VNV Nation’s Ronan Harris underwent a medical procedure addressing severe back pain and required recovery and physiotherapy. The Unity dates could not subsequently be reorganised because of the other bands’ commitments.

The newly announced headline tour will now take Zeromancer to six German cities The tour opens on February 26, 2027, in Leipzig and closes on March 13, 2027, in Hamburg. Tickets are available through Eventim Germany.

Zeromancer tour dates for 2027

• February 26, 2027 – Leipzig, Germany – Täubchenthal
• February 27, 2027 – Dresden, Germany – Reithalle
• March 5, 2027 – Frankfurt, Germany – Das Bett
• March 6, 2027 – Oberhausen, Germany – Kulttempel
• March 12, 2027 – Berlin, Germany – Columbia Theater
• March 13, 2027 – Hamburg, Germany – Markthalle

About Zeromancer

Zeromancer is a Norwegian industrial rock band whose members also play in Seigmen and Ljungblut. The band returned in February 2021 after an eight-year absence with the single “Damned le Monde,” followed by two further EPs the same year, “Mourners” in April and “Terminal Love” in July.

The album “Orchestra of Knives” followed in September 2021, described by the band in a Side-Line interview as an album that “differs from previous albums” after the long gap since its predecessor. Member Alex Møklebust has also discussed Seigmen and remixing alongside Apoptygma Berzerk’s Stephan Groth in past Side-Line interviews. “Testimonial Tour 2027” follows the band’s comeback shows earlier in 2026 and marks its return to full headline production in Germany.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Ministry will release its final studio album, “Hate To Go (Take Out Or Delivery),” on 30 October 2026 via Cleopatra Records. The band shares the first single, “Burned Out,” alongside a farewell tour billed as the “Goodbye” tour.

Frontman Al Jourgensen confirmed that this will be the band’s 17th and last studio album, closing out a project he formed in Chicago in 1981. A press release describes the closing chapter as Jourgensen having “a few final things to say about the state of the world, those in charge and how we should all collectively move forward.”

The current lineup features Jourgensen alongside guitarists Monte Pittman and Cesar Soto, bassist Paul D’Amour, sampler and synth player John Bechdel, and drummer Pepe Clarke Magaña. Former member Paul Barker returns as a guest on the closing track, “We’re Still Here.”

“Burned Out” is an industrial-metal track released on Bandcamp on 24 July 2026. Its accompanying music video mixes live action and animation, created by Joshua Bradford, Jourgensen’s former Revolting Cocks bandmate. The lyrics reference the Epstein files, ICE and the Russia-Ukraine war.

“Hate To Go (Take Out Or Delivery)” arrives on vinyl, CD, cassette and digital formats. The tracklist is:

1. Crickets
2. Voices of Hate
3. Clown Car
4. We Hate
5. Delete
6. Grifter
7. The White Man Lied
8. Singularity
9. Burned Out
10. We’re Still Here (feat. Paul Barker)

Ministry will play a handful of previously announced US shows this fall, then open the international “Goodbye” tour in Europe next spring with support from Die Krupps.

Ministry 2026 US tour dates

• 15 September – Morrison, CO – Red Rocks (with Acid Bath)
• 20 September – Louisville, KY – Louder Than Life
• 3 October – Chicago, IL – Salt Shed (with Acid Bath)
• 24 October – Fort Worth, TX – Sick New World Texas

Ministry ‘Goodbye Europe’ tour dates 2027

• 2 April – Utrecht, Netherlands – Ronda (with Die Krupps)
• 3 April – Saarbrücken, Germany – Garage (with Die Krupps)
• 4 April – Brussels, Belgium – Ancienne Belgique (with Die Krupps)
• 6 April – Manchester, UK – O2 Victoria Warehouse (with Die Krupps)
• 7 April – Dublin, Ireland – 3Olympia (with Die Krupps)
• 9 April – Nottingham, UK – Rock City (with Die Krupps)
• 10 April – London, UK – Troxy (with Die Krupps)
• 12 April – Paris, France – Bataclan (with Die Krupps)
• 14 April – Madrid, Spain – La Riviera (with Die Krupps)
• 15 April – Barcelona, Spain – Paral·lel (with Die Krupps)
• 17 April – Lausanne, Switzerland – Docks (with Die Krupps)
• 18 April – Munich, Germany – Tonhalle (with Die Krupps)
• 19 April – Vienna, Austria – Gasometer (with Die Krupps)
• 21 April – Prague, Czech Republic – Forum Karlín (with Die Krupps)
• 22 April – Warsaw, Poland – Progresja (with Die Krupps)
• 24 April – Berlin, Germany – Columbiahalle (with Die Krupps)
• 25 April – Hamburg, Germany – Grosse Freiheit 36 (with Die Krupps)
• 26 April – Copenhagen, Denmark – Amager Bio (with Die Krupps)
• 27 April – Oslo, Norway – Rockefeller (with Die Krupps)
• 29 April – Stockholm, Sweden – Fållan (with Die Krupps)
• 1 May – Helsinki, Finland – House of Culture (with Die Krupps)

A full US leg of the farewell tour has not yet been announced.

About Ministry

Ministry was formed in Chicago in 1981 by Al Jourgensen, initially releasing synth-pop material before shifting toward the industrial and EBM-influenced sound that defined the band’s breakthrough releases on Wax Trax! Records. The band’s catalog includes “The Land of Rape and Honey” (1988) and “Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs” (1992), releases that helped shape the industrial metal genre through the following decades. Ministry has continued releasing new material and revisiting its catalog in recent years: the band issued its 16th album, “Hopiumforthemasses,” in March 2024, and in 2025 released “The Squirrely Years Revisited,” a reworking of its early synth-pop material, via Cleopatra Records. Ministry followed with first-ever official music videos for older tracks “Everyday Is Halloween” and “I’ll Do Anything For You,” and a Jurgen Engler remix of the live track “Dancing Alone” in March 2026. “Hate To Go (Take Out Or Delivery)” is billed as Ministry’s 17th and final studio album, closing the band’s catalog with contributions from its current touring lineup and a guest appearance from former bassist Paul Barker.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Castle Party 2026 ran from 16 to 19 July at Bolków Castle in Poland. Side-Line freelancer Karo Kratochwil attended all four days of the festival, from the Thursday opening on the Park Stage to the Sunday closing sets on the Castle Stage. This report covers her route through the weekend, band by band.

This year I did something I had slowly stopped believing I would do again: I took on all four days of Castle Party.

For several years, my festival visits had become more selective. I would arrive later, leave earlier, choose the concerts that mattered most and protect whatever energy remained for photography, writing and the unavoidable logistics of moving through Bolków with far too much equipment. This time, I decided to give the festival the full stretch from Thursday to Sunday.

Four days sound manageable when reduced to a programme. In reality, they mean repeated climbs towards the castle, fast decisions between two stages, batteries, lenses, weather forecasts, missed meals, conversations that begin unexpectedly and continue much longer than planned, clothes that never quite dry, and the growing suspicion that the person who packed the suitcase several days earlier was operating under deeply questionable assumptions.

They also allow Castle Party to become a temporary reality rather than a sequence of concerts. By the final day, the town, the stages, the people and the music had begun to overlap in a way that could never be reconstructed from the running order alone.

My route through Castle Party 2026 was inevitably personal. I did not see everything and would never pretend otherwise. I followed the bands that mattered to me, ran between stages when the programme became impossible, missed concerts I genuinely wanted to see and discovered others that rearranged my entire hierarchy of the weekend.

Thursday: entering the festival through Denuit and A Projection

My Castle Party began on Thursday evening with Denuit, and it was a beautiful way to enter the festival. Their concert had something dreamlike without becoming fragile or vague. The music carried a strong pulse, yet seemed to move through layers of light and atmosphere rather than simply pushing forward.

The visual side was astonishing. Saturated colours altered the apparent dimensions of the stage, sometimes opening a wider space around the musicians and then suddenly enclosing it again. The lighting never felt like a decorative screen placed over the music. It created new rooms inside the songs and gave the performance an almost unreal depth while keeping the connection with the audience intact.

There was elegance in the show, but there was also force. The melodies remained clear, while the electronics carried enough physical weight to hold the Park Stage. Denuit created a world remarkably quickly, and the audience entered it without needing much persuasion.

A Projection followed and changed the temperature immediately. I had already seen them at Castle Party in the Club in Wrocław, where they made an excellent impression, and the Bolków performance confirmed how naturally their music expands on a larger stage.

The guitars cut through the electronic pulse, and the whole set had a kinetic quality, as though every darker emotion had been pushed through a faster, more volatile circuit. Melancholy remained present, but the music refused to let it become passive.

Even the Girls Under Glass cover felt fully absorbed into A Projection’s own language. It carried recognition, certainly, but it never became a museum piece offered politely to the scene. They respected its origin, then pulled it into their own speed and physical tension.

Denuit and A Projection gave Thursday exactly the balance it needed. One created an immersive, almost enchanted atmosphere; the other sharpened it into motion.

Later came another core part of Castle Party: the people. I had proper conversations with friends and acquaintances I had not seen for months, sometimes years, rather than rushed greetings exchanged while checking the time and calculating the distance to the next stage.

Friday: the castle and an almost impossible lineup

Friday was the day I had been waiting for most. The Castle Stage lineup was so strong that I remained there almost entirely, and it became my first real meeting with the castle during this edition.

I arrived too late for The Last Digital Angel, which I regret, particularly because supporting the Polish representation was an important part of my festival plan. I did, however, reach the courtyard in time for She Pleasures Herself.

They offered an engaging mixture of post-punk, gothic rock and darkwave without treating any of those references with excessive reverence. There was humour in the performance, good contact with the audience and a deliberate looseness that suited the afternoon slot very well.

Rotersand

Then came one of my major priorities: Rotersand.

I had initially believed this was their first concert in Poland, but Krischan later corrected me. They had already played at Progresja in Warsaw many years ago, making Castle Party their second Polish appearance.

Rotersand possess a particular kind of stage energy. It does not come from frantic movement or from trying to persuade the audience that every second is historic. Rascal and Krischan understand exactly how their songs function inside a crowd, and that confidence gives the music enough space to work without additional exaggeration.

The set felt close to the best of what Rotersand can offer. The songs were immediate, sharp and immensely satisfying, with hooks that arrived quickly without ever feeling disposable. Rascal’s contact with the audience was direct and energetic, while Krischan held the electronic architecture together with precision. The audience had clearly been waiting for this concert. Rotersand delivered completely.

Empathy Test

Empathy Test changed the atmosphere without losing the audience’s attention. Isaac Howlett remarked that he had finally reached Castle Party, and seeing him on that stage genuinely felt right.

His voice is central to the identity of the project, and the castle presented it with an interesting challenge. Empathy Test’s songs often feel private, close and emotionally exposed, while the courtyard is large and visually imposing. The performance found the right scale: drums and electronics gave the songs greater physical breadth, while Isaac’s voice remained intimate and immediately recognisable. It was a genuinely moving Castle Party debut.

Hocico

Then Hocico arrived, and the stage became a different organism.

Hocico perform with the energy of a thunderstorm that has somehow developed intent. Erk entered wearing his familiar bone-like mask and began moving across the stage with reserves of physical energy that remain astonishing no matter how many times one witnesses them. Nothing about the performance felt cautious.

The audience responded immediately. The courtyard became louder, rougher and less orderly, which was exactly what the music demanded. Hocico took possession of the crowd, and the crowd gave itself over willingly.

Diary of Dreams: the forces of music and nature

What a night.

Diary of Dreams have occupied a very particular place in my life for more than 20 years. These songs have become part of the internal soundscape of many listeners, connected to losses, relationships, periods of solitude and private turning points.

Diary of Dreams had already returned to Castle Party repeatedly, playing in 2003, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2017 and 2021. Their seventh Bolków appearance carried the weight of that long relationship. The music expanded inside the courtyard: electronics accumulated against the stone instead of disappearing into open air, while the guitars struck the walls and seemed to return enlarged, rougher and more physical. Adrian Hates’ voice retained its intimacy inside that scale.

Then the forces of nature entered the same space as the forces of music. Rain swept across the courtyard, the wind cut through the stage, and some of the equipment had to be moved farther back before the concert could continue safely. Everyone was wet, cold and trying to protect cameras, clothes and whatever had not yet been soaked.

Still, once the performance continued, the weather became inseparable from its image. Rain travelled through the lights, wind caught Adrian’s hair and threw it across his face, and the sound moved through the storm, struck the castle walls and returned to the people standing below.

Then came “She and Her Darkness,” a complete heartbreaker every time. More than two decades of familiarity have produced no immunity whatsoever. Despite the profoundly cold circumstances, the welcome from Bolków was as warm as ever.

Covenant: exactly the right band to inherit the night

Covenant arrived in Bolków under circumstances nobody had wanted. VNV Nation had been forced to withdraw because of Ronan Harris’ health, leaving another band to enter a headlining slot already filled with expectation. Covenant were exactly the right band to inherit it.

Every time I see Covenant, I am reminded how little they actually need around them. There are no fireworks and no enormous theatrical concept designed to make the concert appear larger than it is. Eskil Simonsson, Daniel Myer and Daniel Jonasson take their places, the music begins, and the scale establishes itself naturally.

The set felt close to the best-of selection one secretly hopes to receive at a festival. The lighting was spectacular, among the most beautiful of the entire festival. Eskil has a rare way of speaking between songs – kind, intelligent, slightly poetic and occasionally philosophical – that makes a huge festival audience feel unexpectedly close.

The encore gave Friday night the grand finale it needed. Covenant had entered a difficult position and transformed it into a complete Covenant concert: powerful, warm, intelligent and musically assured.

Saturday: between the castle and a miniature industrial festival

Saturday demanded more movement. I began at the Castle Stage, then ran towards the Park Stage, where the afternoon and evening gradually turned into a miniature industrial festival concealed within Castle Party.

Her Own World

My day began with Her Own World, and once again the band surprised me in the best possible way.

The projections, costumes, choreography, lighting and music operated as one complete structure. Yu has grown enormously as a frontperson – she no longer seems to be negotiating with the scale of the production around her; she owns its centre. The heavier passages had genuine impact, guitars and electronics creating a solid foundation while melodic lines kept the music open and emotionally accessible.

Among the Polish acts appearing at Castle Party this year, Her Own World delivered one of the most mature and fully realised performances.

The Silverblack

The Silverblack followed with an immediate visual statement: black-and-white makeup, a strongly metallic appearance and a presentation that suggested industrial gothic metal before the first song had fully settled. The musicians had very good contact with the audience, direct, energetic and often playful.

Long Night

The Norwegians from Long Night brought a different kind of darkness. The vocals were deep, dark and beautifully controlled, giving the songs a weight that required no additional theatre. Long Night’s strength came from tone, voice and the internal atmosphere of the material.

In Slaughter Natives

By the time I reached In Slaughter Natives, Saturday had begun to resemble a compact industrial festival hidden inside the larger Castle Party programme.

Jouni Havukainen’s voice was astonishing. To say that he sang would describe only part of what occurred. The sound seemed to involve his whole body: breath, chest, posture, the contraction of his torso and the visible effort required to force each phrase outward. There was nothing easy in this performance: no attempt to charm the crowd, no softening of the material for a festival afternoon.

XOTOX

Then came XOTOX, and people, that was a fucking show – one of the strongest performances I saw at Castle Party.

Andreas Davids performed with his wife, Claudia, and they needed remarkably little around them. Two tall structures carrying the XOTOX imagery, crosses, hard light, two people and the full physical force of the sound proved entirely sufficient. We also heard two brand-new pieces, both performed live for the first time.

The most impressive part was the physical change in the audience. People began moving as one mass, responding immediately to each new impact. XOTOX were a fucking knockout.

This Morn’ Omina

I had not seen This Morn’ Omina in many, many years. The musicians stood behind electronic stations and drums arranged along long illuminated structures that looked almost like altars, while Mika Goedrijk occupied the centre – not simply fronting a band, but becoming the axis around which rhythm, movement, light and physical pressure were organised.

It was a fucking blast. Percussion did not accompany the music; it set the conditions under which the audience experienced it. Visually, the whole thing stood out: blue, red and purple light travelled across the altar-like stations, drums, bodies and props, giving the stage a ceremonial quality without turning the concert into empty ritual theatre.

Hybryds

Hybryds brought my Saturday to a close by changing the state of attention completely. After the physical force of XOTOX and This Morn’ Omina, the performance slowed the nervous system without allowing it to relax fully. It was poetic, ritualistic and visually beautiful, an intelligent conclusion to Saturday.

Sunday: Polish machinery, illuminated flowers and one enormous discovery

Sunday was shorter for me, although it produced one of my greatest discoveries of the entire festival.

Agonised Too

I began with Agonised Too, and the immediate thought was: what a machine.

Rafał Tomaszczuk’s delivery retained the damage, longing and inward tension present in the recorded material, met with impressive authority against a much larger sonic field. Bartosz Hervy constructed the electronic environment and controlled the visualisations behind them, among the most carefully integrated of the weekend. Rafał carried the exposed human centre, while Bartosz constructed the surrounding space.

White Ritual

White Ritual followed with a stage covered in illuminated flowers and carefully arranged decorations. The interaction between male and female vocals created the central tension of the set, with softness, desire and darker force passing through the same songs.

HORSKH

Then HORSKH happened.

I had never seen them before, and I was completely unprepared for what their music would do to me. Live drums, electronics and guitars tore into one another like parts of the same overloaded machine. It was wild without becoming shapeless, ferocious without losing internal control.

Then came The Prodigy cover. Hell yes. I entered the concert knowing almost nothing about HORSKH. I left with my ears, body and entire emotional system thoroughly ground through, yet somehow returned sharper, more awake and desperate to experience it again. They were one of my greatest discoveries and one of the defining performances of Castle Party 2026.

Rue Oberkampf: my ending

My Castle Party ended with Rue Oberkampf, one of my long-standing favourites. After HORSKH, their entrance did not reduce the intensity; it redirected it.

They opened with “Hope and Fear,” the perfect beginning for my final concert. Onstage, the project understands the value of restraint: movement is limited enough for every gesture to register, while the lighting picks out the figures and then partially removes them again.

Four days later

Castle Party 2026 was never going to become a neat chain of perfectly witnessed concerts. There were unavoidable overlaps, bands I missed, rain, wind, technical interruptions, running between stages, cold clothes, physical exhaustion and constant decisions about where I needed to be next.

Giving Castle Party all four days brought back something I had been missing. Thursday’s conversations remained present throughout the weekend, and people in the audience became recurring figures rather than anonymous faces. Bands that have lived with me for decades stood beside projects I encountered for the first time.

I had also done the thing I thought might no longer be possible: I had taken all four days of Castle Party, and I am very glad that I did.

About Castle Party

Castle Party began on 20 August 1994 at Grodziec Castle. The first edition brought together around 300 people and five Polish bands near the beginning of their careers: Moonlight, Daimonion, T.R.H., Pornografia and Fading Colours.

The festival grew quickly: around 800 people attended the two-day 1995 edition, and roughly 1,000 attended in 1996 with a larger programme. Grodziec could no longer comfortably contain the audience, so the fourth Castle Party moved to Bolków Castle in 1997, the setting with which it has remained identified since: an enclosed medieval courtyard, stone walls that alter the physical scale of the sound, and a small town temporarily taken over by the dark alternative scene.

Attendance reached roughly 2,000 in 1998 and around 4,000 in 1999, when Clan of Xymox headlined a programme drawing visitors from Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic. Castle Party became a three-day event in 2000, presenting 34 bands from across Europe and opening a second stage for the first time.

Side-Line reported on the full 2026 timetable when it was announced in May, ahead of this year’s four-day edition at Bolków from 16 to 19 July.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

German electronic duo Klangstabil played Markthalle Hamburg on July 11, 2026, in a show presented by Living Dead Production. Karo Kratochwil, who interviewed the band about their live return earlier this year and previewed the Hamburg date in June, was in the room and filed this review.

There are weekends when music forces you to declare your priorities. While The Cure were occupying Berlin’s Wuhlheide three nights in a row, I travelled farther north to see Klangstabil in Hamburg. This was not a judgement on which band mattered more. It was simply one of those decisions that had already been made somewhere below the level of reason. Some concerts are tempting possibilities. Others feel like places where you are supposed to be.

Klangstabil are one of my favourite bands, although I do not see them live nearly as often as I would like. Perhaps that is partly why their concerts retain such force for me. Yet rarity alone cannot explain it. I have seen many beloved artists after long intervals without experiencing this particular loss of distance.

With Klangstabil, it always happens.

I cannot say precisely at which point. At first, I am still listening in the usual way: noticing the construction of the sound, the tension between its elements, the way a sequence develops or a vocal line enters. Then, somewhere along the way, that analytical position becomes impossible to maintain. I stop observing the concert from the outside and realise that the music has already found its way underneath whatever protection I brought into the room. This is one of Klangstabil’s strangest achievements.

Their music is intelligent, sometimes extraordinarily so, but it never demands to be admired from a safe intellectual distance. Its formal precision is not there to demonstrate sophistication. It creates the conditions in which something much less orderly can be released.

Their songs are full of pain, but pain is an easy material to mishandle. It can be aestheticised, exaggerated or made so attractive that it loses contact with the experience it supposedly represents. Klangstabil resist that temptation. Their sadness is shaped, certainly, but it is never made harmless. It retains the confusion and physical pressure of something that has actually been lived through. That honesty is not comfortable. Nor should it be.

Klangstabil at Markthalle: the room and the material

The Hamburg concert, presented by Living Dead Production at Markthalle on 11 July, carried exactly this emotional weight. Markthalle was a very good place for it. There is history in the room, but it does not impose itself on the performance. The venue is large enough to give the sound space and physical force, yet close enough for the musicians never to become remote figures trapped behind lights and equipment. That closeness mattered. Klangstabil’s concerts depend on contact.

The familiar material did not feel preserved or ceremonially presented. There was no sense of being invited to admire a catalogue from the proper historical distance. The songs remained open, unsettled and capable of hurting in the present tense. They were not memories of emotions. They were emotions happening again.

Boris May’s vocal performance stood at the centre of that experience. There are singers who represent pain convincingly and singers whose voices seem to carry its actual consequences. Boris belongs to the latter group. Even when the delivery is controlled, one hears the pressure beneath that control. The voice can sound restrained and close to breaking at the same time, as though each line has to pass through resistance before it can be released. Nothing about it feels like emotional exhibitionism. That distinction is important. He does not appear to expose himself in order to be watched. He gives the songs to the audience because the act of giving them seems necessary.

This is why the performance feels addressed rather than merely delivered. Klangstabil do not seem to sing towards an anonymous mass of listeners. They sing to the people in front of them. The difference may sound small on paper, but inside a concert it changes everything. It removes the protective layer between performer and audience.

Maurizio Blanco provides another kind of presence. His command of the electronic structure is exact, but the precision never becomes clinical. He holds the architecture together while allowing the emotional material inside it to remain unstable. When his voice joins Boris’s, it does not simply add another vocal layer. It changes the balance of the room. One voice carries exposure; the other gives it weight, contrast and a different human temperature. Together, they embody the tension that has always made Klangstabil so compelling: discipline and emotional excess existing not as opposites, but as conditions for one another. The music is controlled because what it contains is not.

An audience that did not look away

Yet the most affecting element of the Hamburg show was not located solely onstage. It existed in the movement between the band and the audience. The people in Markthalle were not passive recipients waiting for favourite moments to recognise and applaud. They listened with the concentration of people who understood what was being entrusted to them. The emotional force coming from the stage did not disappear into the room. It was received and returned.

That exchange is difficult to describe without making it sound sentimental. It was not sentimental. It was intense, at moments almost painfully so, but there was nothing soft or vague about it. Klangstabil placed something raw in front of the audience, and the audience did not look away.

I am often suspicious of describing concerts as cathartic. The word is used too easily, as though a few powerful songs could cleanse pain and send everyone home repaired. Klangstabil offer no such convenient transformation. Their music does not make difficult feelings disappear. It does something more honest: it allows them to exist openly for a while, without disguise and without isolation. The weight remains. What changes is that it is no longer carried alone. Perhaps this is why I repeatedly leave Klangstabil concerts shaken rather than simply impressed.

I do not come away thinking only about the quality of the compositions or the power of the performance, although both are undeniable. I leave with the unsettling sense that something private has been recognised without having to be explained.

That happened again in Hamburg. At some point, I stopped thinking about how I would later describe the concert. The part of me that normally records, compares and arranges impressions had gone quiet. There was only the sound, the two people producing it and the strange collective understanding forming in front of them. The show was beautiful, but beauty is not quite the right measure. Beauty can be observed without consequence. This could not.

Klangstabil do not merely communicate emotion. They create the conditions in which emotional distance becomes difficult to maintain. They find the unguarded place, not through manipulation or theatrical excess, but through an honesty so concentrated that resistance begins to feel pointless. Some musical choices are not really choices between what is greater and what is smaller. They are choices between the event everyone is talking about and the one that feels personally necessary. On that July evening, thousands of people were gathered around The Cure in Berlin. I was standing inside Markthalle in Hamburg, watching Klangstabil remove the distance between themselves, their music and the people who had come to meet them there.

For me, there was nowhere else to be.

Review by Karo Kratochwil.

About Klangstabil

Klangstabil is the German electronic duo of Maurizio Blanco and Boris May, formed in 1994. The project began as private studio research rather than material intended for release, with the first vinyl following in 1995; more than a dozen records have appeared since, on vinyl, CD and successive digital formats. In 1998, the duo founded their own label, MHz Records, releasing their own work alongside artists spanning delicate electronics to grindcore. Klangstabil’s catalogue has moved from experimental sound collage and abstract electronics toward the emotionally direct electropop of recent releases, guided by what the band describes as its working method: “one step back, two steps forward.”

After a seven-year absence from the stage, Klangstabil returned to live performance in 2026, a comeback Karo Kratochwil covered for Side-Line in an interview with the band. The July 11 Markthalle Hamburg date, presented by Living Dead Production, was part of that live return.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

For nearly three decades, Alexander Kaschte has made Samsas Traum one of the German dark scene’s least containable projects: a body of work that repeatedly changes its musical language without surrendering its obsessive internal logic. “Vota Tenebris I” introduces an unusual reversal. Its starting points came from the listeners, yet the resulting album remains governed by Kaschte’s uncompromising authorship. In this extensive conversation, he discusses fan requests, artistic dominance, the burden of being permanently interpreted through one’s past, the emotional violence behind SAMSAS TRAUM’s darkness, the exhaustion of provocation, and the uneasy relationship between artistic integrity and control. His answers are characteristically direct; sometimes funny, sometimes abrasive, occasionally chilling, but never evasive.

Samsas Traum interview

Karo: Samsas Traum has never felt like a project interested in fitting neatly into one scene, genre, or audience expectation. At different moments, it has seemed to seduce a scene, attack it, mock it, outgrow it, and then return to it from a different angle. After nearly three decades, do you still need friction with the outside world in order to create, or has opposition itself become too predictable?

Alex: That’s a good question. Generally speaking – with a few exceptions, most notably my comic TEARS OF BLOOD, which satirizes the German Gothic scene – I have never set out to provoke or be confrontational. By nature, I am a very friendly and peaceable person, though I severely lack social skills; and the presence of people who do not obviously submit makes me aggressive. The outside world has never really interested me and was completely irrelevant to my artistic decisions – especially for an album like VOTA TENEBRIS I, which is based entirely on fans’ wishes.

Karo: “Vota Tenebris I” is connected to fan requests, which is an interesting idea for an artist often associated with strong authorial control. When listeners give you a starting point, do they genuinely enter the creative process, or do they simply provide raw material that you then reshape until it belongs to your own system of thought?

Alex: In the case of VOTA TENEBRIS, fan suggestions focused primarily on the musical history of SAMSAS TRAUM; for instance, I received requests like, “Why not write another song like ‘Blut ist in der Waschmuschel’?” Other fans offered ideas regarding content – one person, for example, wanted a song that took the current political situation in my supposed home country, Germany, to task. I wouldn’t have been capable of actual collaboration with fans; I am not cut out for artistic equality. I either deliver total musical dominance or total submission in the service of a project – a mix of the two rarely yields good results.

Karo: The name Samsas Traum still carries Kafka in it, and Kafka’s Gregor Samsa is not only transformed; he is interpreted, judged, reduced, and made unbearable by the people around him. Has the experience of being misread, projected onto, or simplified by others become part of the project’s identity over the years?

Alex: Unfortunately, yes – and it doesn’t just bother me a great deal; it’s also particularly evident with the current album, VOTA TENEBRIS I. It isn’t performing very well on streaming platforms right now, and it apparently lacks the pulling power to propel the band into more successful territory. The German Gothic scene, in particular, is an environment that stifles one’s career – a place where people hold grudges forever over things like an album featuring spoken-word vocals about child euthanasia, a confrontation on Facebook back in 2013, or acting like an asshole in an interview in 1999. I’m a completely different person today than I was 30, 20, or even 10 years ago, but people only ever see what they want to see in you. It’s probably just part of the job.

Karo: Your work often uses theatricality, pathos, violence, literary references, grotesque images, and emotional extremity, yet the best moments avoid becoming decorative darkness. How do you recognise the point where intensity still serves truth, and where it begins to collapse into self-parody?

Alex: Thank you so much for such a wonderful compliment; your words mean a lot to me – especially since I love kitsch myself and am therefore prone to stumbling artistically into the trap of over-sentimentality. In the past, I let myself be guided entirely by my feelings and poured out my emotions unfiltered; today, I try to leave some room for the listener’s own interpretation. I suppose I simply know myself better now and can express myself more effectively. Unfortunately, I am highly sensitive and – much to my own distress – perceive a great deal (visually, aurally, and emotionally); perhaps that is why I have a knack for the varying degrees of intensity found in different words.

Karo: Many artists use darkness as atmosphere. In Samsas Traum, darkness often feels more like a test of perception: what a person is willing to admit, where tenderness turns into cruelty, where beauty becomes suspicious, where love begins to resemble possession. Do you see darkness as an aesthetic field, or as a method of moral interrogation?

Alex: Oh, there are certainly moments where I’ve drawn on good old Gothic horror clichés, but fundamentally, darkness in the SAMSAS TRAUM cosmos signifies emotional violence, emotional rape, and emotional sadism. I grew up in a world where parents beat their children, classmates weren’t respectful or kind, and teachers would hurl heavy bunches of keys at you – that likely left its mark. My father – with whom I have a good relationship again today – wasn’t exactly the kindest person during my childhood either; I was frequently humiliated and belittled, which is why I developed violent fantasies of omnipotence at an early age. It took me decades to heal myself through art – a process I wouldn’t wish on any child.

Karo: Across your discography, Samsas Traum has moved through black metal, gothic theatre, industrial harshness, acoustic vulnerability, orchestral drama, fairy-tale structures, and almost narrative forms of songwriting. Do these shifts represent different artistic phases, or are they different masks for the same core wound?

Alex: I’ve commented on this subject several times elsewhere, and the answer is shockingly rational: I’ve always viewed myself more as a composer and producer than as an artist, and I simply have an interest in the production methods of various musical styles. In other words: I’m interested in systems and patterns. Of course, personal tastes and inclinations played a role too, but that explains why there are so many stylistically diverse SAMSAS TRAUM albums. Now that I’ve let off steam in various musical playgrounds, I’ve realized what I do best within the SAMSAS TRAUM universe – and I could actually pick up right there – but I won’t, because the German Gothic scene isn’t even dying anymore; it’s already dead. Tragic, but… probably good for me. I’m currently pitching a few albums to K-pop bands; maybe they’ll use some of the songs.

Karo: Your lyrics often refuse emotional politeness. They can be direct, offensive, wounded, intelligent, grotesque, romantic, and cruel within the same universe. Do you write from the belief that human beings are contradictory by nature, or do you use contradiction as a way of protecting the work from easy interpretation?

Alex: The only sensible answer I can give to this question is that I am probably a contradictory person. I mean everything I write and sing, and I feel that it all makes sense and fits together. I haven’t shielded myself from valid interpretations with vague language for decades, so I am probably… crazy.

Karo: Provocation has become a very cheap currency in contemporary culture, because outrage is now almost automated. What still makes provocation artistically valid for you? Does it need wit, consequence, risk, precision, or simply the courage to be disliked for the right reasons?

Alex: Well, I see things differently there. I think the scope for provocation has largely been exhausted – German rap, TikTok, and Telegram have done an astonishing job among youth internationally; the juvenile, crude lyrics heard at festivals like Mera Luna impress, at most, people over 50; and nobody cares about the messages put out by guys like Till Lindemann or Marilyn Manson anymore. Back in my childhood, you could still cause a stir with arson, but even that is a thing of the past. To be truly provocative nowadays, one would have to commit acts that are criminally punishable and venture into the realm of absolute bad taste and depravity. Several things come to mind right away that I’d like to do, but then my family and I would need police protection in Germany – and that’s not the kind of life I want.

Karo: Samsas Traum has always had a complicated relationship with its audience: loyalty, intensity, expectation, devotion, resistance, misunderstanding. Do you feel any responsibility for what listeners take from your work, or does the song become their problem once it leaves your hands?

Alex: I have held the same position on this for decades: Can you hold a lighter manufacturer responsible if someone uses their product to set fire to someone else’s house instead of lighting a campfire or a cigarette? Probably not. Can you hold a weapons manufacturer responsible if their products are used to raze entire nations to the ground? You probably can. Can a songwriter be held accountable if a listener – inspired by a song – goes out and shoots people? Ask yourself how big a difference there is, in your opinion, between a manufacturer of tanks, for example, and a songwriter, and you have my answer.

Karo: You are often described as difficult, uncompromising, or demanding, but those words can become lazy shortcuts. Anyone can reject compromise; far fewer people can build something coherent out of refusal. What is the difference, for you, between artistic integrity and the mere pleasure of control?

Alex: The world is full of people who make music but aren’t true artists. I am – if I am anything at all – first and foremost a true artist. For me, everything is in the service of art, including control.

Karo: The title “Vota Tenebris I” already suggests a larger structure, perhaps even a sequence. Does the “I” mean that this album is only the first visible part of a larger conceptual body, or is it also a way of refusing the comfort of closure?

Alex: We’ve accepted 25 requests from our fans, so there will be a second VOTA TENEBRIS album and, very likely, an accompanying EP. The entire album is a highly complex undertaking; a few tracks have turned out longer than expected. I am completely unpredictable – even to myself.

Karo: The album includes pieces with very blunt titles next to titles that seem more mythic, literary, or symbolic. How important is that collision between the vulgar and the elevated in Samsas Traum? Is it a way of preventing beauty from becoming too clean?

Alex: Well, I’ve simply never shied away from exploring various aspects of the human experience in my music – after all, I don’t sit around all day spouting nothing but profound insights. So, it wasn’t a problem for me to take on widely different fan requests for VOTA TENEBRIS: one song might be about a tragic figure akin to Captain Ahab, while another celebrates the friendship between two girls who used to drink hard and rock out together, and who would find life without each other poorer and utterly shitty. Life is, after all, a multidimensional rollercoaster ride.

Karo: You have often built worlds rather than simple collections of songs. But every world can become a prison if people begin to expect the same architecture from it. What part of Samsas Traum must still remain unstable, even for you, so the project does not become its own museum?

Alex: I think that stability is less important here than intelligence, authenticity, and the ability to emotionally connect with the audience. Furthermore, the material I’ve developed with DIE LIEBE GOTTES, TINEOIDEA, and A.URA is anything but ready for a museum; these worlds offer enough material for at least three more albums each without ever coming close to becoming boring. It’s just a shame for people that it’s no longer 2005 and my job pays extremely poorly these days, so… the world is probably just out of luck here.

Karo: In an era when many artists simplify themselves for faster consumption, your work still expects the listener to deal with language, references, emotional density, long histories, and uncomfortable theatricality. Do you see difficulty as a form of respect toward the audience, or as a necessary filter?

Alex: I am unable to lower my level of education for the sake of entertaining others. It’s as simple as that.

Karo: Looking back from the early material to “Vota Tenebris I”, what has actually survived most stubbornly: the anger, the romanticism, the sarcasm, the hunger for beauty, the refusal to belong, or something more private that listeners may have sensed but never named correctly?

Alex: You should know that if there were a button that would allow me to kill everyone except my own family, I would very much like to be the person who pressed it.

Karo: If “Vota Tenebris I” began partly with what listeners asked of you, what would you ask of them in return: patience, intelligence, contradiction, surrender, or the willingness to stop treating music as something that should immediately make itself comfortable?

Alex: I would like to ask my listeners for something very modest and simple: to share my music with others and explain to them what it is about it that fascinates them. We used to make mixtapes for each other, burn CDs, and listen to new records together – but as we’ve gotten older and become more isolated, all of that has faded into the background. Thank you for your effort and support!

About Samsas Traum

Samsas Traum began in Marburg, Hessen, Germany, in 1996, when Alexander Kaschte released his first solo demo tape. Three years later the project expanded into a trio for its official debut, “Die Liebe Gottes – Eine märchenhafte Black Metal Operette,” released via Trinity in 1999. The album divided listeners on arrival, and Kaschte followed it with the more polished, choir-driven “Oh Luna Mein” in 2000, the album that began his long-running relationship with Trisol Music Group. Around the same period, Kaschte created the darker, noise-based alter ego Weena Morloch, built on horror-film samples. The band’s name is drawn from Gregor Samsa, the protagonist of Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.”

Samsas Traum’s sound mixes gothic metal, symphonic metal, industrial metal and black metal, delivered across concept-driven albums such as “Utopia” (2001), “Tineoidea oder: Die Folgen einer Nacht” (2003), “a.Ura und das Schnecken.Haus” (2004), the paired “Heiliges Herz – Das Schwert Deiner Sonne” and “Wenn schwarzer Regen” (2007), “Vernunft ist nichts – Gefühl ist alles” (2010), “Anleitung zum Totsein” (2011), “Asen’ka” (2012), “Niemand, niemand anderem als dir” (2013), “Poesie: Friedrichs Geschichte” (2015) and “Scheiden tut weh” (2018). The current line-up is Kaschte on vocals and programming alongside drummer Michael “Cain” Beck.

“Vota Tenebris I,” the band’s fourteenth studio album, was written and produced by Kaschte, mixed by Scott Atkins (Cradle of Filth) and mastered at Abbey Road Studios by Alex Wharton (Bring Me the Horizon, Bullet for My Valentine). Its eleven tracks were built from fan-submitted song requests, and Kaschte has confirmed a second “Vota Tenebris” album, along with a likely accompanying EP, is already in progress from the requests the band did not use.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

SINE is the solo project of Rona Rougeheart, an Austin, Texas drummer, vocalist and producer who describes her industrial-edged electronic music as “electronic boom”. Her album “La Mordre” arrived on Metropolis Records on 22 May 2026, collecting earlier singles alongside new recordings. Rougeheart spoke to Side-Line’s Karo Kratochwil about the record, her background as a drummer, her use of vocal distortion, and running SINE largely on her own.

SINE interview: Rona Rougeheart on ‘La Mordre’

Karo: SINE began with a drummer and multi-instrumentalist gradually taking control of vocals, programming, production and image. Looking back at that evolution from the first self-released material to Metropolis Records, which part of the project had to be learned technically, and which part was already present in your body before it had a name?

Rona Rougeheart: I grew up with a musical background because my father was a musician and taught me how to play, so it’s a big part of who I am. It wasn’t until I discovered Depeche Mode and other electronic bands, that I was really inspired to pursue it as a career. I played drums in a couple of bands, which was fun, but I wanted the ability to take opportunities and make my own decisions, so I created SINE. Starting a band from nothing was definitely a learning experience. I had to learn how to use Ableton and learn how to produce my own music. I’m still learning things today. This latest album has the most self-produced tracks on it compared to my other albums. I’m pretty proud of that and I really like the album it became.

Karo: A drummer understands music through impact, timing, resistance and breath. Many electronic producers build rhythm visually, through grids and screens, while your relationship with rhythm seems much more physical. How does that bodily knowledge shape the way SINE moves, especially when the music becomes heavier, more seductive or more confrontational?

Rona Rougeheart: Since I grew up with music, I naturally gravitated towards dancing. When I was a child I took jazz, tap and ballet. I loved it! It’s one of the main reasons why I learned to play drums. I like movement with feeling. When I create rhythms and beats it’s all about that feeling deep in your heart – that boom. When I create songs, I don’t necessarily set out to create one certain beat or another, I try things and whatever hits me and feels good, is usually what stays in the track. The beats and grooves in SINE’s music is what gives the songs that heavier, more seductive confrontational feeling. It’s that primitive beat inside of us. I like digging into that, feeling you from the inside with subs and low rumbles.

Karo: Earlier SINE releases already dealt with desire, denial, obsession, compulsion and emotional danger. With “La Mordre”, those themes seem more theatrical and more controlled, as if the project has learned how to sharpen its own appetite. Does the new album feel like an expansion of older instincts, or like a more disciplined version of them?

Rona Rougeheart: I would say this album has more defined vampiric themes. And I don’t necessarily mean vampires in the literal bloodsucking way, it’s more about other types of vampirism like emotional, mental, and psychological – it’s dangerous, but intriguing. If you listen to the album in its sequence, you will start to notice that it’s a bit of a story that has been described by some as kind of a sexy horror movie. It has that flash of wanting fame and stardom at any costs, but then has a dramatic emotional ending. It’s a fun little roller coaster that will keep your bpms on the move in the most thrilling way with hope, love, obsession, seduction, control and lust. I would love to make a short movie of it.

Karo: The phrase “electronic boom” suggests immediate force, but SINE has never been only about impact. There is groove, darkness, sarcasm, glamour, industrial texture and a strange emotional intelligence beneath the bass pressure. At what point does a track stop being simply electronic music and become unmistakably SINE?

Rona Rougeheart: I think my music has a common thread of sarcastic humor mixed in with the hard truth. All set to dance music! I like creating a dark mood and writing from the perpetrators angle. I like using vocal effects to make the vocals sound more monstrous. The music is meant to enchant and seduce, the lyrics are meant to evoke thought and possibly terrify you.

Karo: SINE’s live identity combines drums, synths, vocals, visuals and fashion aesthetics. That creates a space where sound and image do not simply support each other, but negotiate power. During a show, which element usually leads the room first: rhythm, voice, body language, light, or the audience’s reaction?

Rona Rougeheart: I love using backing video that’s synced to my music. I created all of the backing videos you see when I play live to be the main focal point when I’m on stage. I like using the visuals to tell a story as well as being colorful backdrops. I would say that is the leading element and following that would be my costumes and wardrobe.

Karo: Touring with acts connected to Clan of Xymox, PIG and Nitzer Ebb must have placed SINE inside very different histories of dark music: gothic atmosphere, industrial theatre, EBM discipline. What did those tours teach you about your own project that studio work alone could not have revealed?

Rona Rougeheart: I am very fortunate to have been on those tours and all of those bands have become really good friends. I learned a lot from each one, but they were all different and had their own unique set up and way of touring. I think what really helped me most is hearing their stories of their careers and learning about how they create music. Plus, it’s always interesting seeing bands of higher levels work, in general. There’s always something to learn from someone!

Karo: Collaboration has been a recurring part of the SINE story, from remixes and production work to connections with figures from industrial, dub, post-punk and experimental music. When another artist enters your world, what is the first thing that must remain protected: the emotional temperature, the rhythmic identity, the visual language, or the sense of danger?

Rona Rougeheart: I’m pretty open when collaborating with other artists because I don’t want to hinder their creativity or influence it. Several times, I sent a demo with no particular directions to a collaborator and what came back was absolute magic! I like seeing what people come up with. I’m like that with remixes, too. When someone remixes a SINE song, I let them do what they wish. It’s all about sharing each other’s art and allowing someone to be free to create!

Karo: The move from early self-released work to label releases and now Metropolis Records also changes the scale of attention around the project. Has wider visibility made SINE more ambitious, more careful, more fearless, or more aware of the performance of control?

Rona Rougeheart: I would say that I’ve always been pretty ambitious. I’m very proud of everything that I have accomplished so far and am very thankful for Metropolis records. It feels really good when someone believes in you and is willing to support you and your art. I am thankful for the people who understand my music and like it. I’m also very thankful that they have shared it with their friends because word-of-mouth helps tremendously. I hope to continue to grow and make my career sustainable.

Karo: Much of your work seems interested in attraction and unease existing at the same time. The listener can dance to it, but the songs often contain something sharper underneath. Is the dancefloor, for SINE, a place of escape, exposure, seduction, confrontation, or all of those at once?

Rona Rougeheart: I think it’s definitely all of those!

Karo: Sarcasm appears in your lyrics and public voice, but it never feels like a cheap shield. It often reveals the violence, absurdity or manipulation inside a situation more precisely than confession would. Is humour a weapon in SINE, a survival tool, or a way to tell the truth without making it too obedient?

Rona Rougeheart: Yes to all of that. I use humor to show the absurdity of the things that we will accept in life. I also use humor to warn the listener at times or poke fun at the perpetrators. I like using wordplay, too.

Karo: After years of building SINE across albums, EPs, remixes, videos, touring and collaborations, which illusion about being an independent electronic artist has disappeared for you, and which one do you still need in order to keep creating?

Rona Rougeheart: The illusion that you need a big record deal and a big team around you to make it has definitely disappeared. While I’ve been building this body of work as SINE, I realized that you can do a lot on your own. I currently do quite a lot on my own and I’ve gotten a lot accomplished, including booking my own tours. As for the illusion that helps me continue creating, I truly believe that my music is different and that it only takes one person to understand it to help open doors to the opportunities I’ve been working toward.

Karo: If “La Mordre” opens a more expansive chapter for SINE, what part of the project should remain unstable? What should never become too polished, too predictable or too easily understood?

Rona Rougeheart: I don’t really have a formula to what I do. A lot of my music happens from random ideas. I usually just go with what inspires me in the moment. That’s why my music has different twists and turns. It’s authentically me because I don’t know how to be anyone else. I don’t know that I will ever become too polished, predictable or easily understood. Maybe that’s a good thing. Keep the mystery alive.

About SINE

SINE is the solo project of Rona Rougeheart, a drummer, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and producer based in Austin, Texas. Raised in a musical family, she trained on drums and played in bands before starting SINE to write and release on her own terms, learning production in Ableton as the project developed.

After early self-released material, SINE signed to Metropolis Records. The label issued the singles “Succumb To Me” in September 2025, “Blood + Wine” in February 2026 and “Cruel” in April 2026, following the earlier “Trauma Bondage” video from 2024. Those tracks fed into the ten-song album “La Mordre”, released on 22 May 2026. Several tracks were self-produced, with others co-produced by Curse Mackey and AwareNess, and the album was mastered by Mark Pistel of Consolidated. SINE has toured alongside acts connected with Clan of Xymox, PIG and Nitzer Ebb, and Rougeheart continues to handle much of the project’s production, visuals and booking herself.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Miranda Cartel is the electronic project of Polish artist Emmanuella Robak, who released the 14-track album “Amethyst” on 21 March 2026. In this Miranda Cartel interview for Side-Line Magazine, Robak speaks with Karo Kratochwil about the decade between her 2015 debut “Divert” and “Amethyst”, the crystal that gives the album its name, the voice training and literary study she pursued during a long recording gap, the Polish dark alternative scene, and her return to live performance.

Robak writes, produces and sings the material herself, and also fronts the Polish darkwave band Lily of the Valley. She holds a PhD in literature and a master’s degree in English with a translation specialisation, and worked through academia, dubbing, acting and the Warsaw music scene during the years between records. Kratochwil photographed her in Dresden in 2025. The album followed the 2025 single “Andromeda”, which reopened the project after a long pause.

Miranda Cartel interview

Karo: Miranda Cartel returned after a long silence connected with academic and literary work. Did that break change the way you understand electronic music itself, or mainly the way you understand your own reasons for making it?

Miranda Cartel: That break from releasing music ultimately confirmed one thing for me: I really did want to keep making music. It also gave me time to understand which direction I wanted to take and how I wanted to continue telling my musical story.

During that period, I moved to Warsaw and immersed myself in the music scene. I went to countless concerts, discovered new genres, and had the chance to observe how different artists create and work with music. I also became involved in various musical, vocal and acting-related projects. I took dubbing classes at Katarzyna Łaska’s dubbing academy, studied vocal performance with Magdalena Hamer, performed in karaoke competitions, and played in the band Emmanacje at Akademia Rocka.

So I never really left music behind. I simply explored it from a different perspective for a while. Looking back, it was an incredibly valuable experience. Everything I learned during those years has found its way into the music I am making today, and I am sure it will also shape my live performances.

Karo: “Divert” came out in 2015, while “Amethyst” arrives more than a decade later as a full 14-track album. What changed most between those two versions of Miranda Cartel: the sound, the discipline, the emotional temperature, or your relationship with visibility?

Miranda Cartel: During that time, my whole approach to making music definitely changed. I am much more intentional now when choosing samples, paying attention to the sound itself, its quality, and the rhythmic foundation of a track. I approach melody differently, and I work with sounds in a completely different way. I now have a much clearer vision of what I want to create, but I also have a deeper understanding of music itself. Over the years, I have worked with and met many musicians who introduced me to new ideas and new possibilities. I also started taking vocal lessons, and that made a huge difference. Now I am able to sing the melodic lines I actually imagine, instead of being limited by technique. Singing lessons removed many of the limitations I had ten years ago and gave me much more confidence as a vocalist.

Karo: The title “Amethyst” immediately suggests colour, mineral depth, protection, perhaps even a kind of inner alchemy. Was it chosen for its visual and symbolic qualities, or did the album already have that violet, crystalline character before the title appeared?

Miranda Cartel: I have always loved amethysts. I am almost addicted to the energy I feel from this stone. It gives me strength, comfort and reassurance, and it makes me feel capable of overcoming whatever challenges come my way. I believe in the energy of crystals, and for me the amethyst is a talisman. It is a source of strength and positive energy that I rely on in everyday life. That is where the album title comes from. I wanted it to suggest that this record can also become a kind of talisman for different moments in life. The album explores a wide range of emotions and experiences, both joyful and difficult, but I believe every song carries its own strength and can help someone through a particular moment. I chose the title with that symbolism in mind, and it actually came to me only after the recording process was finished. Interestingly, the album also includes a track called “Amethyst”, one of its most experimental songs. But when I decided to name the album “Amethyst”, I was not thinking about that individual track. I was thinking about the album as a whole, what it represents, and, as you said, its violet, crystalline character.

Karo: Miranda Cartel has appeared on compilations connected with Alfa Matrix, Side-Line, Orkus and Electrozombies, which means the project has existed partly inside an international dark electronic network, even while remaining rooted in Poland. Did that outside recognition give you confidence, or did it create pressure to define the project more clearly?

Miranda Cartel: Every time one of my songs was selected for a compilation, it felt like real confirmation that my music resonates with people. It is one thing for me to believe my songs are good. That is obvious. But when industry professionals who understand the music market choose your tracks for their flagship compilations, it is an incredible honour. I am genuinely happy that my music has been included on those releases, and I hope it will not be the last time. I would love for my songs to appear on more compilations like that in the future.

Karo: “Andromeda” marked the return of Miranda Cartel with both sound and image. Why was that particular track the right signal after the break? Did it feel like a new beginning, or like a message sent from a place you had never fully left?

Miranda Cartel: This song, and the vision for its music video, had been in my head for a very long time. I have always loved ballads, and I think writing them is one of my strengths. So when I decided to return to music after such a long break, I knew I wanted to do it with a ballad. Not long after recording the song, we started working on the music video. It was an incredible experience, but also a real challenge, because I had to step into an acting role and express a wide range of emotions, even though I have no formal acting training. Still, I think I managed to pull it off, and the video shows exactly what I wanted to express through the song.

Karo: Polish electronic and dark alternative music has often operated outside the main European centres of scene visibility. Does working from Kielce give Miranda Cartel a sense of distance, freedom, isolation, or a sharper need to build its own language?

Miranda Cartel: Kielce has always had a vibrant music scene. When I first started making music, there were plenty of opportunities to perform live, record cover songs, and take part in music and poetry events, for example those held at Czerwony Fortepian. Working on my music there gave me a great deal of creative freedom, but it also encouraged me to develop my own artistic voice. I needed to build my own language. Now I have been living in Warsaw for the past few years, and this is where I create my music. The city offers incredible opportunities to experience live music, from concerts by international artists to performances by alternative bands, from commercial club events such as Boiler Room to underground nights in Warsaw’s independent venues. Every concert, DJ set or live performance I attend becomes a source of inspiration. Experiencing music from so many different perspectives constantly fuels my creativity and influences the way I approach my own work.

Karo: Your background includes music, academic activity and literature. How do these forms interfere with each other in your work? Does language shape the music first, or does the sound usually reveal what the text has been trying to say?

Miranda Cartel: Without a doubt, the time I dedicated to academic development completely changed the way I think about music, interpretation and storytelling. The literary sensitivity I developed through my studies, I have a PhD in literature, allows me to write songs that are meant to carry and communicate emotion. At the same time, my background in languages also changed the way I approach lyrics. I earned a master’s degree in English with a specialisation in translation, and that made me much more aware of linguistic nuance and of how subtle word choices can express exactly what I want to say. My academic and literary work gave me much greater confidence as a songwriter and expanded the ways in which I can use language to tell a story and connect with listeners. Most of the time, I write the melody first and only then add the lyrics. There are exceptions, though. “Broken” is one of them. I remember walking to work when I suddenly began quietly reciting these lyrics to myself and humming a melody. The words stuck in my head so strongly that I knew I had to capture them before they disappeared. I immediately sat down to develop the idea. Work could wait that day.

Karo: Performing at Castle Party in 2018 placed Miranda Cartel in one of the most symbolic spaces for the Polish dark scene. Looking back, did that concert feel like confirmation, confrontation, or a threshold you only understood later?

Miranda Cartel: That was not actually my first performance at Castle Party. I had already played there with my first music project, Lily of the Valley. Then, in 2017, I attended the festival in a different role. I worked there as a journalist, covering the event live for Projektor, a cultural magazine from Kielce, where I am still part of the editorial team today. I also wrote a feature article promoting the festival that year.

A year later, I returned to the Castle Party stage as Miranda Cartel, performing alongside my friend Adrianna, who played keyboards. It is always a little less stressful, and much more enjoyable, to share the stage with someone rather than perform alone. Castle Party has always been a very special festival for me. It is where I discovered many of my favourite bands, met incredible people, and learned so much about music and music production. It is also where I had the chance to meet talented musicians, passionate artists and true professionals. Performing at Castle Party was, and still is, one of the most meaningful milestones in my musical journey.

Karo: A solo electronic project often means total control, but also total responsibility. Which part of Miranda Cartel is hardest to carry alone: production decisions, emotional exposure, visual identity, promotion, or the simple persistence needed to keep going?

Miranda Cartel: Self-discipline is the hardest part of working solo, because you know you do not have any deadlines. Nobody is waiting for the track so they can record their part, nobody will say “stop” when it comes to revisions, and nobody is speeding up the process of creating music. With everything I work on, I try to reach the point where I can say to myself: okay, this is good, it is ready to be released. But that takes time and persistence. Is rushing a good idea? Releasing something in a hurry and then not being happy with it at all? At the same time, Miranda Cartel is deeply personal to me. It is my emotions, my experiences and my perspective. I am not sure I could share that creative process with someone else. Being in a band is a completely different way of working and creating together.

Karo: After “Amethyst”, what should Miranda Cartel risk next? More directness, more abstraction, stronger stage presence, deeper literary structures, or something that would disturb even your own idea of what the project is supposed to be?

Miranda Cartel: One of my biggest goals is to perform this new material live. After the holiday period, I will announce some live performances. It has been a long time since I last appeared on stage as Miranda Cartel, and I think it is definitely time to start playing concerts again. I also feel much better prepared now. I have more experience, a stronger foundation and much more confidence as a performer. I am really curious to see how audiences will respond to these songs, so I am looking forward to their feedback. I am also planning more music videos, so there is plenty of creative work ahead. I already have several ideas I would love to bring to life. And I do know one thing for sure: we definitely will not have to wait another ten years for the next album.

About Miranda Cartel

Miranda Cartel is the solo electronic project of Emmanuella Robak, based in Kielce, Poland. Robak writes, produces and sings the material, mixing darkwave and synthpop, and also fronts the Polish darkwave band Lily of the Valley. Her debut EP “Divert” appeared in 2015 on Halotan Records.

In the years that followed, Miranda Cartel tracks circulated through compilations rather than a steady release schedule, including Alfa Matrix’s “Endzeit Bunkertracks” and “Electronic Body Matrix”, Side-Line’s Face The Beat: Session 2 with the track “The Way To Follow”, the Orkus Magazine compilation, and Electrozombies tributes to Apoptygma Berzerk (“Apop We Love You”) and Depeche Mode (“Universe > Spirit”). Robak performed at Castle Party in Bolków in 2018, one of the central festivals for the Polish dark alternative scene.

After a break connected with academic and literary work, including a PhD in literature and a master’s in English translation, Robak returned with the single and video “Andromeda” in 2025. The 14-track album “Amethyst” followed on 21 March 2026 and is available on Spotify, Tidal and Apple Music. As she confirms in this interview, live dates are planned, and she does not intend to leave another decade before the next album.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Swedish-Norwegian artist Karin Park released her EP “EVO” on 8 May 2026, the first part of a three-part cycle she calls “EVO-LUT-ION-(EN)”. In this Karin Park interview for Side-Line Magazine, she speaks with Karo Kratochwil about that record and the ideas behind it: evolution as a costly process, motherhood surfacing in the songs without sentiment, the anger she found inside “Explodera”, the everyday field recordings and pump organ woven through the tracks, her parallel work with the band Årabrot, and the pull of the painter Hilma af Klint.

Kratochwil first saw Park perform as part of Lustmord at the 2024 Wrocław Industrial Festival, the encounter that shaped this conversation. The two spoke over Zoom between family duties, Park waiting outside her daughter’s circus camp, a setting that sits deliberately against the record’s themes of transformation, darkness and spiritual pressure.

Karin Park interview

Karo: Now that “EVO” is out in the world, do you feel more understood, more exposed, or more misunderstood?

Karin: Good question. I really have not thought about that at all. When I think about it, I do feel more understood, because it was a while ago since I released my last thing, and I am very much in that musical place of this EP.

I feel like I get to show where I am right now, which is important, because when I come and play live, I feel people do not know exactly what to expect from me. I have done a lot of different kinds of live shows, but now with this live show I have incorporated my whole musical history in a more danceable way, because that is kind of where I am with myself right now.

More than anything, when I play live now, people get to understand where I am in my life right now. There was a period where I had really small children, I was super tired, and everything I did in the studio was super slow. But now I have a lot more energy and the live show is a lot more energetic. So I do feel, with the EP and the live show combined, that I get to show where I am right now.

Therefore, I feel more understood. But it is not an easy thing to understand me as an artist, because I am so many things, and people want to put you into different boxes: “Oh, she is like that,” or “she is like that.” I play loads of different instruments. I have so many different interests, musically and in art and different things. So I do not think it is an easy task to try to understand. But over a long period of time, when you look back on my career, it is going to be easier to see where it was. When you get it just piece by piece, it is harder.

Karo: Did any reaction surprise you?

Karin: It always surprises me when people who loved my first album also love my last thing, because I have done this for like 20 years now, and my first record was quite different from what I am releasing now. But people still like my records. The same people like my records. And I find that quite amazing, that people kind of grow with me in that sense. That always surprises me a little bit: people who have been following me through my whole journey and have not fallen off at some record.

Maybe it is less different than I would like to think, because I am the same person after all. But other than that, no, I am not too surprised.

Karo: You have spoken about needing a frame for this project. Once that frame becomes public, does it still give freedom, or can it start becoming something like a cage?

Karin: I think that I do not care enough about where people want me to be. I cared a bit more when I was younger. I did a pretty big turn from my first and second album into a more electronic vibe, and I think that was my biggest change. But now, when I make music, I cannot make anything that I do not like. I am very bad at doing things that I do not like doing. So I do not think I could make music just to please someone else. I have tried, because I have tried to please people so many times, but I just do not know how to do it.

For some people, they have always stuck to their guns and chosen to be really different. But for me, ever since school, I moved to Japan when I was a kid, and when I came home from Japan, I was like a different person from everyone else. I tried my hardest to fit in.

I would do anything to fit in, but I realized quickly that I just had no idea how to fit in, so I was going to have to go the other way. It was not really a choice for me. That is kind of what I have done my whole music career. I have no idea how to fit in, so I might as well just do my own thing until I die.

Karo: So what is the drive for you?

Karin: The drive for me is to create. When I create something, it does not matter if it is music, or if it is a little short film, or if it is something I am building in my home. I just love the action of: there is nothing there now, and then suddenly there is something there. The most amazing thing with music is that there is nothing there, and suddenly there is something out of thin air. It does not even take any space.

Where there was silence, there is now music. I think that is such an incredible thing. It amazes me every day when I am in the studio. I made this. How cool is that? And also on stage. I love, love, love being on stage. When I am singing, when I am doing my thing, when I play my synthesizers live in front of people, it is like I am truly the person I want to be. I do not think about anything else. I am totally in the moment. So those are the two things. That is why I get up every day. I love doing that.

Karo: You seem to be working from a very immediate place now. Do you trust your first instincts more now than before as an artist?

Karin: Yes, I think I do. I think I have learned to. When I start something, when I start a song, there is always a mental choir that goes: “Boo, boo, stop doing this.” In my head, it is like a very critical ensemble of mental ghosts that are always criticizing what I do: “Oh no, not that chord again,” “We have heard this before.” Things that you tell yourself. But I have learned that if I can just quiet those mental ghosts for a while and get on with my thing, then suddenly I get sucked into the project. Before, maybe I would stop doing something and listen to those voices.

But now I know that is just a mental thing that a lot of people have, and that I have, and that I just have to deal with it. If I can just quiet those inner critical voices, then I can get to something good. I trust more now that I will get over myself and get sucked into the song.

Karo: Motherhood appears on “EVO”, but not in a soft or decorative way. It feels loving, pressured, exhausted, protective, and sometimes almost violent. Did you want to resist the clean story people often expect around motherhood?

Karin: I did not think that I was even writing about motherhood. I think that I wrote the songs, and then I realized what they were about after I had written them. Sometimes I try: “Oh, I want to write about this.” But then when I make the song, it does not want to be about that. The creative process is put down brick by brick, and then I am like: “Oh, this song became a song about motherhood.” With the song “Explodera,” I did not even know what it was about when it was finished. I was like: “What is this song? I do not even recognize what it is about.”

But then, when I was making the video for it, I was in the process of doing a script for the video, and I was like: “How can I make a script for the video when I do not know what it is about?” Then I saw “Raging Bull” by Martin Scorsese, and I was like: “Oh my God, this song is rage. I am angry.” When I listened to the lyrics with that in mind, it was so obvious, but it is almost like you cannot see the forest for all the trees.

Sometimes I just write the lyrics that I feel should be in the song. When I try to write a lyric to a song and it is not right, sometimes I just scrap it entirely. Or if I want to write about a subject and there is resistance, it just does not happen. Then I am like: “Okay, it does not want to be about this. So what do you want to be about then? Show me.” Then I write word by word.

Sometimes I write it backwards. I write the end part first, and then I go back and feel my way into what the song wants to be about. In the end, it makes more and more sense. By the end of it, it is like: “Okay, there it is.” I always write the melody first, and parts of the music. I almost never start with the lyric.

Maybe just a line or something, but most of the time I let the melody decide what the song is going to be about. Sometimes it is stuff that I do not even want to write about, but I do not have a choice, because this song is about this and there is nothing I can do.

Karo: With “Explodera,” you recognized anger and frustration underneath what first felt like a love song. Do you think anger sometimes tells the truth before the conscious mind does?

Karin: I think the unconscious mind tells the truth all the time, and that is kind of where you dip in when you write lyrics. Does it feel true or not? The unconscious mind is always right.

Karo: The use of your children’s voices is powerful because family enters the record physically, not only lyrically. What was the role of those samples for you?

Karin: I just have a lot of samples that I had recorded on my phone, and there are a lot of different samples. I use samples of my everyday life all the time. It was not like: “Oh, now I am putting my sacred son’s sample in here.” It was more like: “Oh my God, it would sound great if my son was laughing in that little gap,” or: “I heard this thing on the radio and I recorded it, can we just put it in here?” It is more about the use of different sounds.

I actually do not think too much about whether it is my children. It just sounded nice. It is not any more sacred than that, really. Sometimes a horse is neighing, or loads of different things. I have gone through like 700 recordings on my phone of different sounds.

Karo: So there are traces of everyday life, church space, hymns, pump organ, electronics and darker club textures?

Karin: So many things. It is more like: I was at this party, and my uncle and his friends came in and they were playing the violin, and I was like: “This sounds amazing, let us put that into a song.” When my father’s ashes were buried, we sang this hymn in church, and I recorded that. That is also a texture. There are lots of different things that people do not really hear, but they are from my life in different settings. Or if I do the dishes and the glasses touch each other and it sounds cool, then I just record it and use that in the song.

Karo: What about the pump organ? Does it bring memory, faith, architecture, or is it simply one more sound from your life?

Karin: No, they sound really special. They really do. Especially when you mix them with more electronic music, they have a different soul. I also play the flute, and when I play the flute, it sounds so warm and so human. Sometimes in an electronic track, if I use the flute, it is just a texture and you do not hear what it is, but you feel something. It is almost like someone reaches out and touches you, because it is so human. I feel that with the pump organ too. It is such an organic sound. It brings a whole different texture of organic feeling to the sound, which I love.

Karo: Your melodies can be very beautiful, but this beauty rarely feels innocent. Do you trust beauty more when it carries a wound?

Karin: Yes. I think I am very drawn to the darker side of beauty somehow. Always. I do not know why, but it is just the way it is. My first record sounds more innocent, I guess, but I was also the same then, to be honest. It was just that I tried to make a song.

I was not in a grown-up enough state so that I could ask myself: “What do I really like? What kind of melodies?” I was just like: “Can I write the song? Okay. This is a song that I could hear on the radio.” That was kind of just my attempt to write actual songs. But now, when I feel: “How do I get touched?” If I hear a melody and I am going: “Oh, that is so beautiful,” then I can trust that more.

Because I know now that I can write a song. It is no problem. It is just: what kind of song do I want to write? I have developed more, but I have always been drawn to the darker side of the melody. I think that is something that runs in my family too.

I grew up in church, but when I listen to what kind of music my family made, the hymns, and my grandmother’s uncle, who used to write a lot of the stuff and was the organist in the church that I grew up in, his melodies are so melancholic. There is a more folky touch to it because he wrote folk music, but it is still so dark and beautiful in a way. I just think that runs in my DNA somehow.

Karo: You have both the solo work and Årabrot, and they seem separate but connected. Are those worlds still clearly divided, or has the border between them become useful because it leaks?

Karin: I think it has become very useful. The big difference between Årabrot and my solo project is that in Årabrot, Kjetil writes all the music. I do not write anything. He is always 30 songs ahead of me. He writes every day. The creative process in Årabrot for me is to arrange the songs and to produce them. So it has a lot of influence from my production over the years. We obviously work together and talk every day, so we have a lot of influence on each other. We are very different, but we have a lot in common as well.

I was a small part of what I wrote for many years, but when we decided to kind of front the band, both of us, it became more useful, because I could take a bit more space there and find my own personality in the band. Now I feel like it is two different sides of me that I get to show. I feel like they complement each other in a good way. When I am with Årabrot, I get to be the second opinion a bit.

I can look at it from an angle. It is not all about inside of me all the time. I can look at Kjetil’s songs with a bit more distance. It is also nice to be able to rock out when I am in Årabrot. I can crowd surf, I can play bass, and focus more on the production side of things and the live part of things. I do not have to put all my personality in it at all times, which is kind of nice.

Karo: Evolution sounds beautiful as a word, but real evolution usually costs something. What has this current evolution cost you?

Karin: I think I am too close to it now to know that. But I think it cost a lot. It always does. To evolve is my trademark. I feel like my whole life is kind of a quick evolution, and it does cost a lot to do that, but you also gain a lot. I think I will see it more clearly once these three parts are out.

But it takes everything. It takes all the energy out of me to do and release all of this. I do not think people who are not artists can understand how much we put into it. It is everything. Everything. I feel like it costs a lot, but it gives you a lot too. Sometimes I wish I would just not be interested in being an artist anymore, because I think it would be an easier life. It takes so much: the passion, how personal it is. I do not think music is necessarily that personal for everyone, but for me it really is.

I do not know how to describe it, but sometimes it feels like it destroys you. It burns a hole inside of you when you give this much. But on a good day, it feels cathartic also, to be able to do that. And as you said, you mentioned that I create in a very immediate way, and I have not really thought about that.

But I am going to be grateful for that, because I do. I take it for granted sometimes, but I should not, because I am very lucky that way. I can create exactly what I want. I do not have to take any expectations into consideration. I just release exactly the kind of songs that I want to release, and I have the power to do so. That is great. But sometimes to have all of that freedom is also daunting.

Karo: Is this trilogy about becoming someone new, or becoming less afraid of who you already are?

Karin: I think in many ways the journey is to be closer to who you really are. As close to who you really are as possible. I think that is the quest in life: to really allow yourself to become that person that you want to be. I do not want to become someone new, but I want to be closer to the person that I am. Sometimes I am in touch with that person, but not always. That is what I want. Sometimes I want to get closer to myself, and I want to remind other people of who they are as well. I feel like music can do that.

Sometimes you go for a long time and you feel like you have forgotten who you are. Then suddenly you get a glimpse of the real you, and then you remember. Especially when you get older, you can lose yourself. When you are a child, you know who you are, and then you get distracted. There are so many things in life that try to distract us from who we really are. That is the journey that we all are on in a way. And because “EVO” is inspired by Hilma af Klint, she was on a spiritual journey to also reach her higher self, which I can relate to.

About Karin Park

Karin Park was born on 6 September 1978 in Djura, Sweden, and began her career in Bergen, Norway. She works as a singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist whose music moves between synthpop, electronic and darker, industrial-leaning pop. Her early full-lengths “Superworldunknown” (2003), “Change Your Mind” (2006) and “Ashes to Gold” (2009) preceded the shift toward electronics that defined “Highwire Poetry” (2012) and “Apocalypse Pop” (2015), both on State of the Eye Recordings. She also wrote “I Feed You My Love”, Norway’s 2013 Eurovision entry performed by Margaret Berger.

Later work moved toward sparser, more personal settings: “Church of Imagination” (2020) on her own Djura Missionshus, and “Private Collection” (2022) on Pelagic Records, which paired her voice with minimal pump-organ arrangements. In 2021 she released the collaborative album “Alter” with Lustmord, also on Pelagic, and performed the project live, including at the 2024 Wrocław Industrial Festival. Park is married to Kjetil Nernes of the Norwegian band Årabrot, where she plays keyboards and co-produces; as she describes above, Nernes writes the music while she arranges and produces it.

Park last spoke with Side-Line in March 2026, in an earlier interview about touring small and intimate venues. Her EP “EVO” arrived on 8 May 2026, trailed by the singles “Sing Your Sorrow” and “Explodera”, the latter released with a video. “EVO” opens the “EVO-LUT-ION-(EN)” cycle discussed in this interview, a set she describes as three parts still to be completed.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

The summer edition of Hands Label Night Berlin felt like a very different organism from the January one. I do not mean this in the tired festival-review sense where every edition is automatically described as unique, because that usually says almost nothing. I mean that the whole nervous system of the evening seemed altered: the heat, the audience, the way people entered the room, the way bodies moved, the relation between the music and the air around it.

January had carried another kind of severity. Winter in Berlin gives this music a different setting: closed jackets, darker streets, bodies folded inward by cold, a more concentrated kind of listening, the sense that sound has to cut through weather before it reaches the skin. The summer edition worked in another register entirely. Urban Spree was hot, RAW-Gelände was breathing outside with its usual mixture of dust, concrete, posters, walls, bodies and noise, and the audience felt looser, more mixed, more permeable. People seemed to receive the music differently, perhaps because the body had already been pushed into awareness by the temperature before the first proper sonic impact arrived.

That difference does not make one edition better and the other weaker. It says something far more interesting about Hands Label Night itself: the format is able to hold different atmospheres, different audiences and different kinds of intensity without losing its centre. The winter edition had density and inward pressure. The summer edition had exposure, sweat, movement and variety. Both made sense. Both belonged to the same label universe, where rhythm is never just rhythm, but also architecture, instruction, endurance, physical argument and, sometimes, a kind of controlled damage.

The running order on this Hands Label Night moved with its own internal logic: Supersimmetria opened with a DJ set, followed by Sans-Fin, Siamgda, Monya, MS Gentur + Sven Phalanx and Statiqbloom. I did not stay for Mono No Aware, because the heat eventually defeated me, and I would rather say that honestly than pretend to review something I did not experience properly. Even this felt oddly appropriate for the summer edition: January allows you to disappear deeper into the night; June reminds you that the body, however devoted to sound, still negotiates with oxygen, temperature and fatigue.

Supersimmetria

The evening opened with Supersimmetria, and Armando delivered exactly the kind of opening DJ set that does not need to dominate in order to establish authority. I first saw him at Hands Label Night, one of the winter editions, and since then I have had a particular weakness for the way his music seems to develop live in front of the listener, as if construction and perception were happening at the same time.

That quality was present again at Urban Spree. His set did not behave like a practical prelude, the kind of functional DJing used merely to fill the room before the first live act. It felt more like a gradual tuning of the space. Rhythms appeared, settled, shifted their internal weight; textures moved along the edges of the room; details accumulated without becoming decorative; the whole thing thickened with patience and precision.

Supersimmetria understands repetition in a way that is much more interesting than repetition as looped insistence. Bad repetition stays dead. Good repetition changes because the listener changes inside it. Armando’s set had that ability: it slowly altered the room’s temperature, not by force, but by induction. It invited the audience into a state where rhythm could become hypnotic without becoming passive, and where structure could remain strict while still feeling alive.

As an opening, it respected the architecture of the night. It did not throw the audience immediately against a wall. It opened a corridor, adjusted the ears, prepared the body for stronger forms of pressure and reminded everyone that the HANDS language is not only about impact. It is also about patience, control, tension and the very precise pleasure of hearing sound organise space.

Sans-Fin

Sans-Fin followed with a very different kind of intensity, one that worked less through frontal assault and more through persistence, concentration and immersion. In a line-up where later performances would use severity more openly, Sans-Fin created pressure by narrowing the room slowly, almost methodically, until the audience found itself inside the sound rather than simply in front of it. That kind of set can be easy to underestimate if one expects industrial performance to constantly announce its own brutality. Sans-Fin did not do that. The music did not chase impact every few seconds, did not swell in predictable gestures, did not treat heaviness as a requirement to be fulfilled on schedule. It occupied its own space and allowed density to become the main instrument.

There was something procedural in the way the set moved. The sound created a field, and once inside that field, time seemed to stretch slightly. The body adjusted to a different breathing pattern. The mind stopped looking for obvious peaks and began following pressure as a continuous state. This is a difficult form of intensity because it requires trust: from the performer, from the audience, and from the material itself.

In the wider shape of the evening, Sans-Fin played an important role. After Supersimmetria’s hypnotic opening, it pushed the night further inward, making the room more attentive before Siamgda shifted everything into something more violent and ritualised. It was a set of controlled gravity, less spectacular than some of the later explosions, but very effective in the way it prepared the nervous system.

Siamgda

Siamgda changed the state of the room completely. This was a brutal sonic attack, and I mean that as praise, although the word “brutal” is almost too narrow for what the project does, because it suggests force alone, while Siamgda’s music seems to come from a place where rhythm, invocation, bodily endurance and spiritual pressure have not yet been separated into clean categories. My first deeper contact with Siamgda happened in May 2025, when I was preparing an interview around “Resistanz”, and what stayed with me from that conversation was the way the project spoke about drums. Not drums as decoration, not drums as an exotic surface added to industrial music, not drums as tribal colour pasted onto electronics, but drums as the centre: an ancient tool of elevation, calling, possession and transformation. Siamgda’s years of living among and studying different drum traditions in Asia clearly matter here, because the live sound carries that understanding physically. The drum is not there to support the track. The drum is the spine, the pulse, the door.

At Urban Spree, this made the set feel terrifyingly alive. The sound was severe, heavy and physically demanding, but it did not behave like standard industrial aggression. It had ritual gravity. The rhythms seemed to come from a place before genre, before club function, before the safer terms we use to organise music into categories. Electronics, abrasive pressure and vocal shadows gathered around that central percussive force, and the result felt less like a performance in the ordinary sense and more like a controlled ordeal. In that May 2025 conversation, Siamgda also described “Resistanz” as an album that had been almost ready for a long time, yet still lacked something until Marie’s voice gave it the ethereal touch it needed. Marie was not performing here, and I do not want to imply otherwise, but the idea behind that collaboration still helps explain the project’s internal tension. Siamgda is clearly interested in the point where weight and elevation meet, where impact and spirit do not cancel each other, where cruelty and purification can exist in the same sound.

This is where Siamgda becomes more than another harsh industrial act. The brutality is real, but it is not empty. It does not perform darkness as style. It uses darkness as passage. The set was harsh enough to feel almost punitive, yet underneath the violence there was a strange invitation: not to relax, not to be entertained, but to endure long enough for rhythm to change the internal temperature. For me, this was one of the strongest moments of the night because Siamgda refused the easy version of industrial intensity. It did not offer noise as spectacle. It offered percussion as elevation, rhythm as ordeal and brutality as a doorway into something disturbingly alive.

Monya

Monya was one of my absolute highlights of the night, and to be honest, I expected that. She is one of those artists whose sets make the tired distinction between club pleasure and experimental intelligence feel completely useless. She can give the room momentum, heat and drive, but she never reduces energy to a service product. Her sets feel alive because they keep thinking while they move.

There is something queenly in the way Monya handles sound, though not in a distant or decorative sense. It is command, instinct, risk, the ability to read a room and still refuse to become obedient to it. Her improvised sets bring together the best impulses of club music and harsher electronic culture: pulse, surprise, density, brightness, abrasion, acceleration, release. Their power lies in the refusal to settle into one predictable emotional lane.

At Urban Spree, she built a set that felt dynamic, energising and beautifully unstable. It could turn suddenly, sharpen its edge, open into something more luminous, then darken again without losing its internal logic. Complexity did not become a wall between herself and the audience. It became movement. The music remained physical, but the physicality was intelligent; it did not insult the body by assuming it only wants the most obvious beat.

Her set brought the best kind of euphoria into the night: not cheerful, not easy, not sugar poured over machinery, but that more serious excitement that appears when a room realises it is being led somewhere without fully knowing the route. It was invigorating, sensual in its own metallic way, and completely absorbing. For me, Monya was a reminder that electronic music can be generous without being simple, and intense without becoming narrow. She does not merely play for the room. She alters the room’s behaviour.

MS Gentur + Sven Phalanx

MS Gentur + Sven Phalanx were one of the real discoveries of the evening for me, perhaps because it was the first time I saw this configuration live, and perhaps because their energy was simply impossible to resist. Some acts arrive with severity, some with ritual distance, some with technical command; they arrived like a powerhouse with a pulse and a grin, which gave their set a very specific charge.

What struck me first was the stage dialogue. This did not feel like two people standing near each other while the machinery did the main work. It felt like exchange, friction, answer, provocation, acceleration. One impulse would be thrown from one side and immediately transformed from the other. The sound attacked relentlessly from the stage, but the performance itself carried visible pleasure in its own force, especially in Sven Phalanx’s presence, which had that irresistible quality of someone who does not merely operate inside the music, but animates it, pushes it outward and dares the room to keep up.

There was a lot of power in the set, but the power did not become dull or heavy in the wrong way. It stayed mobile. It had momentum, humour, aggression, impact and a very direct relation with the audience. Industrial music sometimes traps itself in seriousness, as if intensity required a permanent refusal of joy. MS Gentur + Sven Phalanx proved the opposite. Their set had mass, but it also had play; it had muscle, but it also had movement. It was relentless without becoming monotonous, loud without becoming stupid, energetic without slipping into simple entertainment. They inhabited the sound fully, and the audience felt that difference.

Statiqbloom

Statiqbloom was my personal favourite, the set that felt as if the whole body had been caught inside sonic barbed wire and then electrified through every loop. This is the image I always return to with this project, because it captures something essential: the sound does not merely hit; it wraps, tightens, cuts, shocks and keeps the listener inside its structure.

There is brutality in Statiqbloom, but it is never crude. That distinction matters very much. Harsh music can be painfully stupid when it mistakes volume for thought or abrasion for meaning. Statiqbloom does neither. The aggression has architecture. The textures scrape and burn, the rhythms apply pressure with a nearly surgical cruelty, and yet beneath the surface there is an emotional intelligence that prevents the whole experience from turning into empty sonic domination.

Every time I hear Statiqbloom, I feel that the project does not treat the ears, body, heart or nervous system kindly, and yet it gives something back that gentler music often cannot. It is invigorating precisely because it refuses comfort. The set at Urban Spree had that quality: damaged metal, dry rhythmic punishment, static, breath, electricity, urban dread, all pressed into a form that felt severe but alive. The sensitivity inside this violence is crucial. Statiqbloom’s soundscape is brutal, yes, but the brutality seems to know about fragility. It feels connected to alienation, exhaustion, fear, systems pressing too close to the body, the strange modern condition of being overstimulated and emotionally underprotected at the same time. The set did not tell that story in any literal way. It made the body understand it. In the context of Hands Label Night, this was perhaps the most precise expression of rhythm as psychological pressure.

Mono No Aware

I did not stay for Mono No Aware. The heat defeated me before the end of the night, and I would rather write that honestly than pretend to review a set I did not experience properly. Still, the project’s presence on the poster mattered, because Mono No Aware is one of the names that carry real weight within the HANDS universe.

Leif Künzel’s long-running project, rooted in German rhythm’n’noise and connected with the HANDS catalogue for years, represents one of the label’s most recognisable approaches to industrial body mechanics: repetition, impact, severity and that particular sense of rhythmic pressure where the body is not so much invited to move as instructed. Even without writing about this specific performance, it is worth acknowledging how the name shaped the expectations of the night. Mono No Aware is not a decorative addition to such a line-up. It is part of the language.

Final thoughts on Hands Label Night

Hands Label Night Berlin worked because it refused to present industrial culture as one uniform mood. The night moved through hypnotic construction, sustained pressure, ritual violence, improvised club intelligence, performance joy and harsh electronic overload, while never losing the basic HANDS premise: rhythm as something serious, bodily and transformative. The summer edition was completely different from the January one, and that difference was valuable. It showed that this label night can stretch. It can hold different audiences, different temperatures, different bodies and different approaches to sound without losing its identity. HANDS remains very clearly HANDS: physical, rhythmic, intelligent, uncompromising. Yet uncompromising does not have to mean narrow.

At Urban Spree, inside RAW-Gelände, with Berlin heat sitting heavily in the air and the audience moving between concrete, noise and sweat, the evening felt alive in a way that cannot be reduced to a line-up. Supersimmetria opened the evening with hypnotic intelligence, Sans-Fin worked through sustained atmosphere, Siamgda brought ritual brutality, Monya ruled through risk and movement, MS Gentur + Sven Phalanx turned force into performance electricity, and Statiqbloom delivered the kind of harsh, precise overload that remains in the nervous system after the sound is gone. And then the Berlin heat finished the job.

About HANDS and the Hands Label Night

HANDS (Hands Productions) is a German label founded in 1992 by Udo Wiessmann, specialising in rhythmic noise, power noise and industrial body music. The label has shaped that strand of the scene for more than three decades through artists such as Mono No Aware, Imminent, Orphx, Tarmvred and many others, and stages its recurring Hands Label Night events as showcases for the roster. The Berlin summer edition reviewed here gathered Supersimmetria, Sans-Fin, Siamgda, Monya, MS Gentur + Sven Phalanx, Statiqbloom and Mono No Aware at Urban Spree.

Words and photos by Karo Kratochwil.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Diary of Dreams have announced a new live format. Adrian Hates and Felix Wunderer will appear on selected international stages as Diary of Dreams – the electronic duet, focusing on the purely electronic side of the project.

As Adrian Hates comments: “the Electronic Duet” concerts are additional to playing live with the normal line up – NOT a replacement! – I was just sick and tired of not touring anymore in so many territories due to generally rising costs. This is my way of dealing with it. of course you still have a point here: after all, concerts are essential to survive as an artist, by slowly more and more unaffordable for so many of us. dead end dreams.”

The explanation is honest enough. Rising costs for flights, hotels, travel, crew and staff have made some international shows difficult, sometimes impossible, to finance in the usual full-band format. According to Hates, the alternative would be fewer concerts, fewer countries, fewer chances to reach people outside the safer touring routes. So the project is being reduced for certain shows, at least physically. Smaller team, lower costs, more mobility.

What I appreciate about the announcement is that it does not dress the problem up too much. This is not presented as a sudden artistic revelation after decades of misunderstanding. It is necessity. And maybe because it is necessity, the phrase “back to the roots” lands in a more complicated way.

In a sense, yes. Diary of Dreams were never far from electronics. The programming was always there, under the voice, under the drama, under that particular DoD sadness. The band’s early identity was already built around atmosphere, pulse, repetition and a very controlled kind of darkness. Nobody can seriously argue that Diary of Dreams are now discovering machines for the first time.

But still, I hesitate.

What the Diary of Dreams electronic duet changes

For me, Diary of Dreams always worked on several levels at once. Adrian Hates’ voice, of course. That voice is almost a genre in itself: severe, elegant, wounded, commanding without ever becoming theatrical in the cheap sense. Then the lyrics, often more intelligent than the usual dark-scene vocabulary allows, full of inner conflict, accusation, distance, self-observation. But the guitars mattered too. They were not decoration. They gave the songs a body, a pressure, a grain. They stopped the music from becoming too smooth.

That is probably why this news produces mixed feelings. Electronic music is not the problem. It would be absurd to complain about electronics in a scene built on synthesizers, programming and machines. The problem is different. There is a difference between choosing electronic reduction because the songs demand it, and accepting electronic reduction because the economics of touring have become brutal.

Adrian Hates has experimented before. Coma Alliance with Torben Wendt of Diorama opened a different shared space, more collaborative, more cross-pollinated. .com/kill with Gaun:A moved into a colder, more direct electronic form. Some experiments worked better than others, which is normal. What they all showed is that Hates is not an artist trapped inside one fixed arrangement. He can strip things down, bend the language, move sideways from Diary of Dreams and still remain recognisable.

But Diary of Dreams is not just another vehicle. It carries history. It carries the weight of rooms, tours, records, line-ups, arrangements, expectations. It carries that strange bond between programmed melancholy and live force. A Diary of Dreams song can survive in a purely electronic version, yes. The question is whether it changes character when the physical band body is reduced.

And it will change. Of course it will. A live guitarist is not just the guitar sound. A drummer is not just the beat. A musician on stage is movement, friction, timing, small mistakes, resistance, heat. A laptop can carry the arrangement. It can do it cleanly, sometimes more reliably than a tired band in a difficult venue. But it cannot look back at the singer. It cannot push against the room. It cannot make the same kind of risk.

This has been happening for years with drums. Many bands in the darker electronic scene no longer tour with live drums. Some never did, some use hybrid setups, some rely on backing tracks, and in many cases it makes sense. Nobody wants to be naive about money. But now one wonders whether guitars are next. Is this where underground touring is going: two people, a laptop, a few controllers, and the ghost of a full band behind them?

That may sound harsh, but it is not meant as an attack on Diary of Dreams. Quite the opposite. Their announcement is interesting because it says aloud what many artists are probably already calculating in private. How many people can we still afford to take on the road? Which parts of the live sound are essential? Which parts can be programmed? Which parts will the audience miss? Which parts will they accept losing because everyone knows how expensive everything has become?

There is sadness in that. Not melodrama, just sadness. Artists who spent decades building entire musical worlds now have to redesign those worlds around hotel prices, flight routes, fuel costs, crew fees and promoter risk. That is the part that hurts. It is not the laptop. It is the reason the laptop becomes the solution.

So yes, “back to the roots” is partly true. Diary of Dreams have an electronic root. Adrian Hates can stand inside that reduced format without betraying the project. Felix Wunderer is not a random technician added to make the files run. If the duet is carefully shaped, it could become something genuinely strong: colder, more intimate, perhaps closer to the skeleton of the songs. Less rock pressure, more nerve. Less full-band drama, more exposed architecture. But if it becomes simply the cheaper version of the full show, people will feel that too.

The important detail is that Diary of Dreams are not announcing the death of the band. Hates makes it clear that the full line-up continues to exist, and that the duet format applies when the show is billed specifically as Diary of Dreams – the electronic duet. That distinction matters. It keeps the door open. It says: this is another form, not the final replacement.

Still, the announcement leaves a question hanging over the scene. What do we lose when live music becomes more portable? What do we gain? More countries, more shows, more chances for people to see artists who might otherwise skip their region completely. That matters. But we may also lose some of the human surplus that made concerts feel different from playback with lights.

Maybe the future of underground music will be more modular: full band where possible, electronic duet where necessary, acoustic or semi-acoustic versions when the setting demands it, festival versions, club versions, survival versions. Maybe that is not entirely bad. Flexibility can be creative. Limitation can produce focus.

But I would rather we name the pressure honestly. This is not only an artistic turn. It is also a financial wound. And Diary of Dreams, by speaking about it so directly, have given us more than a tour-format update. They have given us a small, uncomfortable picture of where live music stands now. Back to the roots? Maybe. But also forward into a future where even established bands have to travel lighter, count harder, and hope that what remains on stage is still enough to carry the dream.

Diary of Dreams 2026 live dates

• July 4, 2026 – Hude, Germany – Burning Pants Festival
• July 17, 2026 – Bolków, Poland – Castle Party 2026
• July 18, 2026 – Königstein, Germany – Festung Königstein
• July 26, 2026 – Köln, Germany – Amphi Festival
• September 6, 2026 – Deutzen, Germany – Nocturnal Culture Night 2026
• September 12, 2026 – Rotterdam, Netherlands – Baroeg Open Air 2026
• November 19, 2026 – Schwerin, Germany – Zenit Schwerin
• November 20, 2026 – Braunschweig, Germany – KufA Haus
• November 21, 2026 – Bielefeld, Germany – Stereo Live Club
• November 22, 2026 – Oberhausen, Germany – Kulttempel
• November 25, 2026 – Karlsruhe, Germany – Die Stadtmitte
• November 26, 2026 – Wiesbaden, Germany – Schlachthof Wiesbaden
• November 27, 2026 – Jena, Germany – F-Haus
• November 28, 2026 – Bremen, Germany – Kulturzentrum Lagerhaus

About Diary of Dreams

Diary of Dreams is the darkwave project of Adrian Hates, formed in Düsseldorf, Germany in 1989. Built around Hates’ voice, programmed rhythms and guitar, the project became one of the central names in German dark-scene music across albums such as “Cholymelan”, “Bird Without Wings”, “Nigredo” and “Nekrolog 43”. Hates has run the project through its own label, Accession Records, and remained its constant creative centre while the live line-up changed over the years.

Recent Diary of Dreams activity includes the orchestral reworking “Under a timeless Spell” and the “Dead End Dreams” series on Accession. The electronic-duet format adds another live configuration alongside the full band, applied to shows billed specifically as Diary of Dreams – the electronic duet, beginning with the project’s announced 2026 dates.

Words by Karo Kratochwil.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Ben Christo is a guitarist who has learned that volume is rarely the most dangerous thing a guitar can do. Sometimes the sharper weapon is restraint: three notes placed with intent, a riff stripped until it stops showing off, a melody dark enough to carry memory without collapsing under its own drama. That sense of control runs through his long tenure with The Sisters of Mercy, where guitar often works as atmosphere, pressure and architecture rather than simple attack. Yet Christo’s musical life is much wider than one band’s mythology.

With Ricky Warwick, he returns to a more instinctive rock language, closer to the teenage thrill of classic guitar energy. With Diamond Black, the emotional centre moves closer to his own life, touching mental health, chronic pain, alcoholism, recovery and the difficult work of making hope sound earned. His phrase for the thread running through it all is “dark, gritty melody”. It is a useful key to this conversation. In this interview for Side-Line Magazine, Ben Christo speaks with us about The Sisters of Mercy, Diamond Black, sobriety, songwriting as narrative movement, Andrew Eldritch’s lessons in restraint, the way new songs change on stage, and what fans may expect from the next tour.

Ben Christo interview

Karo: Ben, thank you for taking the time. We have around 30 minutes, so I will try to stay focused. I wanted to start with your recent tour with Ricky Warwick. It seems like a very different musical environment from The Sisters of Mercy: more direct rock’n’roll energy, more organic movement, and a different relationship with the audience. What does a run like that give you as a player before you move back toward something more controlled like The Sisters?

Ben: Yeah, that’s such a great question. To see that very clear contrast between the two performance styles. As you’ve pointed out with the Ricky Warwick show, it is very much what feels right in the moment. The last show that we played was this fantastic festival called Bonfest, and that was the last show we played. It was a big stage, big audience, and it really gave me a good chance to connect with something very inveterate, I think, in my own playing, which is simply playing three chord rock on a Gibson SG to an excited crowd. And that’s something that I think is very much in the roots of where I’ve come from as a player, where I’ve come from in terms of my influences and my very early influences being things like AC/DC and Def Leppard and these more classic rock bands. So I did feel during those shows a real connection with myself as a teenager and a child again. It was a very joyful feeling and a very different kind of enjoyment than I get from playing The Sisters of Mercy shows, where I feel within that that I’m stepping more into an existing personality of the band’s aesthetic, which does have perhaps more guidelines, even unspoken guidelines, than something like a classic rock, rock and roll show like Ricky Warwick, where the guidelines are kind of: there are no guidelines, just rock. Just have a good time, just enjoy yourself. And so, yeah, it is a very different dynamic. And both are freeing and liberating in different ways.

Karo: Would you say that Ricky Warwick reconnects you more with a more instinctive guitar language?

Ben: Absolutely. That’s a very good way of putting it. That instinctive guitar language is very much where I feel that I am with the Ricky Warwick dynamic. Absolutely.

Karo: What about Diamond Black? It gives you a different kind of exposure, because the songs, the emotional centre and the visual identity sit much closer to you personally. What does Diamond Black allow you to say or risk that would not belong inside, for example, The Sisters?

Ben: Well, it’s very much talking lyrically about the experiences that I’ve had of issues around mental health, alcoholism, chronic pain, and being able to talk very directly to the audience. Not necessarily going into detail about: this happened to me, this was this thing. The songs talk about that in-between. I get to just talk more generally about mental health and give guidance, but without it being, I’d like to think, preachy in any way. It’s just suggestions and it’s just my experience. And one of the things that I was often saying during the last tour before the final song was that “this song is dedicated to anybody who felt quite nervous about coming out tonight. Maybe they felt like they couldn’t face the world, that they didn’t have the confidence, but they still did it and they’re still here tonight. So whoever overcame that demon, this song is dedicated to you.” And it was really, really enriching that many people would come up to me afterwards and say, “I was that person. That was me. I almost didn’t come because I was too nervous. I felt too self-conscious, but I did it. And to be recognised for that, I feel seen.” And that’s such nice feedback to get, particularly as I imagine a lot of people feel like that. I’ve felt like that. I still feel like that, of overcoming that anxiety to come out for a night, come to an event, put yourself out there. So, yeah, things like that, where it’s not specifically talking about, hey, “this is what happened to me.” It’s more like “these are the observations that I’ve made through my experiences, seen through a lens of what I hope are shared experiences that people can connect with and relate to.”

Karo: You have posted very openly about sobriety, and I was following those posts because they were very encouraging. Alcohol is often treated as part of the music scene, or at least part of its mythology. Do you feel that sobriety changed your relationship with performance, recovery, discipline and the emotional rhythm of being on the road? Of course, only if you are comfortable answering.

Ben: Well, firstly, thank you for reading those or watching those so carefully. And that feedback you’ve given me is very encouraging. I definitely think it was a very happy accident that very naturally the necessity for me to move into sobriety then became part of what I wanted to present within my music. What’s really interesting was that in the first bunch of songs that the band released, Diamond Black, we had a song called “If You Kill My Demons”. And the idea about that was, the lyric was written about the idea that “without destructive behaviours, I am not the real me. Those destructive behaviours are the real me.” The voice of the protagonist of the song was saying that “if you take away the demons of alcoholism and self-sabotage, then I stop becoming myself. I need those things in order to be me.” And that was how I felt back then. That was when I was still drinking heavily and engaging in self-sabotaging behaviours. And then I was able to look back at that lyric, still perform the song and go, “this is the way I used to feel. This is a voice of a previous attitude, an incarnation of myself.” But when we entered a newer era of the band, the songs very naturally became about looking at things like alcohol, alcoholism and self-sabotage, and then looking at the positive aspects of overcoming those things in a slightly oblique way, because some of those songs were still written in a time when I was still drinking alcohol. However, what’s great is that the new album that we’re working on is 10 songs that have all been written in sobriety and therefore are able to reflect stories retrospectively regarding alcoholism, chronic pain, self-sabotage, and in a much more progressive way. Because the starting point of the song is one of struggle. But for each of the songs, there is a sense of a journey, that by the end, there is an element of hope, an element of progression that says, “okay, so we started in this place in verse one. By chorus three, we’re somewhere else. We’re still looking at the problem, but we’re looking at some solutions at this point.” And there’s a glimpse of a way out, which is something that previous songs didn’t have. They just existed within the same scene for the entirety of the song. The new songs all have this narrative arc where we go from the initial setup of “this is the status quo at the start – the destructive element. By the end of the song, there’s progression.” And not only do I think that reflects my beliefs well, I think it’s just kind of a cool thing to do with songwriting, to take people on a journey from the start to the end. I never really used to think of it like that. I used to think a song, basically, you start and you end in the same place. Maybe you make some changes to one of the lyrics, or you have an extra guitar at the end or some more vocal harmonies or whatever. That’s the change, not the story. The story isn’t changing. It was pointed out to me by someone who’s very good at lyrics that that was one of the weaknesses in my lyrics: they didn’t have a narrative arc. Anything that’s any piece of art, like a movie or a music video, there’s a journey. Songs are different because they don’t explicitly say, “let us tell you a story.” They say, “let us tell you a feeling.” But you’ve got the opportunity there to observe that feeling from different vantage points from the start to the end. And I find that was a really interesting and fun thing to do with the song, to say: “okay, how can I change this by chorus three so that it still is the same kind of a chorus, but there are little subtle changes in the words that mean that we’ve moved somewhere else?”

Karo: That is a beautiful kind of progress to show. It gives the listener a chance to participate in this journey, even from the outside. Moving to another area of your work: you work across very different contexts, Diamond Black, session work, touring with other artists and The Sisters. When you move between these worlds, what changes first for you as a player?

Ben: That’s a very interesting question. And I wonder if it’s just been something out of necessity, that due to the nature of how my career has developed, I have by necessity had to fulfil different roles. If I was someone like, let’s say, Dave Gahan from Depeche Mode, that’s what I do. I write the songs like that, I sing like that, I perform like that. That’s it. For myself, however, I have a number of different substrata to my brand or my identity as a musician that I can step into, whether that being something that’s more moody or something that’s more energetic or even something that’s a bit heavier and more aggressive. I love all those things. Therefore, I’m able to step authentically into all of those things. I can play in a hardcore metal band. I can play in a dark indie band. I can play in an emotional, acapella vocal band. Because as long as there’s an element within it that I engage with, then I can feel authentic and excited. And that element for me always is: dark, gritty melody. That’s my kind of keystone of: “do I like this music?” It doesn’t matter what genre it is. “Does it have dark, gritty melody?” If it does, I like it. That tends to be my guiding star. And that means that I can like anything from some singer-songwriter folk that is impassioned and dark and moving to something that is a lot heavier, as long as I still feel it’s got melody. I still feel the lyrics mean something. And I’ve got that whole spectrum because, as I said, that same key thing is there. So all of the projects that I’ve been involved in that I’ve really enjoyed the most generally have a sense of dark, gritty melody. Some of the songs that that band has or that project has might not be completely within the Venn diagram of what I like. There might be some stuff on the periphery, but most of it is in the middle. So, say, for example, if I was to play with a punk band, most of their songs are quite dark and quite aggressive. They might have some ska songs as well. Now, I’m not so much into ska, but as long as the lyric and the melody and the general vibe of the band still retains that element, that personality, and doesn’t suddenly just become, “hey, really fun music”, I still feel I can invest in the project in general.

Karo: When I think about The Sisters’ guitar sound, it is often as much about space and absence as it is about riffs. There is a discipline in what you choose not to play. How do you decide what to leave out? Is that something you arrive at in rehearsal, or something you feel in the moment on stage?

Ben: It’s something that certainly had to be taught to me, because when I first came to the band when I was 25, I wanted to play all the time. I felt like every song was an opportunity for me to show everything. It was driven by a kind of fear of, “if I don’t show everything that I can do, people won’t think I’m very good!” So every song is a chance for me to go, “hey, look, I can do this, this and this,” regardless of whether or not the song’s mood and story needed it. So how that then developed over the years was, first of all, Andrew was very good at saying, “okay, look, I think you’ve got a lot of potential. You’re here. Let’s reduce what you’re doing. Let’s really think about these three notes that you’re going to play all the way through this song. You have to play them really well. You have to play them with the right kind of emotion and restraint. Sometimes you have to not play them and just stand there.” And he taught me a lot about that, and he got me to listen to a lot of Atlantic Records, Motown music that he loved when he was growing up and said: “listen to the restraint. Listen to how one instrument just does the same thing all the way through the song, because that’s its part in the machine of the song. Listen to the emotion behind this music because it’s been written and performed in a time of great oppression from the people who are creating it. Think about how that is being imbued into three or four notes.” It’s not just about, “hey, look at this cool thing I can do.” You’re telling a story of a time and a place and a climate. And so that meant that when I got to play riffs like, let’s say “Dominion”, just three, four, five notes throughout the song pretty much, I was able to think, “I’m not just playing three notes. I’m playing something that tells a very important story about the song.” But also, these three or four notes have found their way into the hearts of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people, and they mean something. I want to play them right. I want people to hear them and think, “oh my God, that takes me back to this. Or that reminds me of that person, or this song feels like me.” And that’s going to work if those notes are played in the right way and if those notes are played with the right kind of sound as well, the right effects, the right guitar, the right kind of velocity that you’re playing the notes. So it’s all really important. And it reminded me, particularly when it’s songs that people really care about, how important it is to have fidelity to what they’ve heard on the record that has been part of their life soundtrack.

Karo: Brutal Assault announced that The Sisters of Mercy pulled out of the 2026 edition because the band had moved up the recording schedule for a new album. That sentence landed like a small explosion in the fan community after so many years of speculation. What was it like watching that public reaction from inside the band?

Ben: That’s something I can’t really comment on, I’m afraid.

Karo: I understand. Then let me ask more generally about the group of newer songs. Many are credited to you, to Andrew Eldritch and to Dylan Smith, with some other credits as well. These songs have already lived on stage and inside the audience before any possible studio version. If material like that enters the recording process, does it arrive already shaped by the live experience?

Ben: I think what happens, generally speaking, with that process in any band is that the song gets written in a rehearsal room initially, and then sometimes you can record a demo of it just because you want a reference as a band to go, “okay, look, how does this go? Oh, look, we’ve done that, to decide how the parts work.” Sometimes songs can be written like that as recordings, people sending recordings back and forth: “I’ve come up with this. Okay, I’ll send it to your house and your computer, you can add something to it, I’ll send something back.” And that can be a process, that the song is written, or certainly some of the song is written. And then, yes, the live performances will shape the song. You’ll realise things that work and things that don’t work. It’s a bit like if you are performing a play and you start to realise which bits get a good laugh, which bits create a lot of tension, and you’re able to then amp those up or show restraint. “Oh, actually, that joke didn’t work very well. Or when we try and do this dramatic scene, it doesn’t land. It doesn’t feel right.” You can’t tell certain things until you actually do them live in front of an audience, both with music and with acting, performance. So, yes, the songs have certainly been shaped by the live performances and the things that we’ve naturally felt either as players or as performers – what does the audience vibe, what do they get from this – that have then shaped the progression of the song’s development.

Karo: Your name appears in the credits of several newer songs, so your role is not only interpretive. When you bring a riff, a structure or an idea to The Sisters, how much of it tends to survive the process? Does the song strip back, mutate, or become something you did not expect?

Ben: All of the above, really. Sometimes I’ll bring a fully fleshed-out song and one part of the main riff will then be changed and be made into the bassline or something, and the song will develop like that. Other times I’ve come with a fairly comprehensive map of the song and then vocals have been added to it, or riffs and ideas have been taken away or developed, often simplified when I’m working with the other guys in the band. And it’s finally found its final destination through that process. Or I’ve got a bit of a riff idea and then that gets built on by everybody else and myself. And then finally the original riff idea will have disappeared entirely. And it was only what came later that was inspired by the original riff that actually becomes the song.

Karo: You joined The Sisters when you were 25, so it is close to two decades of playing with them, which makes you one of the longest-serving members in the band’s history, apart from Andrew, of course. Beyond the mythology, Andrew Eldritch is a bandleader you have been making music with for a very long time. What have you learned from him about how to lead a band, hold a sound together, or simply make decisions inside a project this singular?

Ben: Yeah, definitely. I think the ethos that I’ve taken away with the songwriting is often when I’m writing for my own projects or other people’s projects that I’ve been asked to write for and I’m composing a guitar melody or a vocal melody, I’ll often think: “could this be simpler? Would this make the cut for a Sisters of Mercy song? Could it be simpler? Could it be more interesting?” It’s often about, you’ve got three notes, but instead of putting them in one place in the bar, you move them to an unexpected place in the bar. And those sort of techniques that hitherto I probably wouldn’t have considered. I’d just think, “hey, let’s do as much as possible. If it sounds cool, let’s just do it.” Rather than “actually, how could this be better by doing less and doing less in a more interesting and unique way? And how can we get more out of this piece of music, not by adding more notes, but by considering how we present those notes and when we present those notes?” That is definitely something that I got from working on The Sisters’ material.

Karo: To close our conversation, I wanted to bring it back to the upcoming tour. I will probably be seeing you in Wrocław on 22 October. What can fans expect from this tour, without revealing too much?

Ben: Well, I guess what I can say is that where we left off on the last tour might be a good barometer or a good directional point to say “it will probably have some of these elements.” Where we were when we finished the last tour, we had a pretty fair split of recorded works and unrecorded works in the set list. Things would come and go, so other new songs would come in, other older songs would come in, and there would be some fluctuation there. The show itself, I think, is very visually unique in terms of the way that light and shapes and stage set are used. I think we have developed a really powerful frontline of the band. I think Kai has brought so much to the band that when we last played in certain places in Europe, Kai wouldn’t have been there. So that’s something that some audiences wouldn’t have witnessed before. Kai’s brought something very special, particularly vocally, to the band that was different from what we were doing before. And so for people witnessing the band for the first time since perhaps 2022, there will be key differences. And I think one of those key differences is what Kai brings to the table. It’s a different vibe, it’s a different feel, it highlights a different part of Sisters history than other iterations of the band have highlighted. I’m not saying any particular iteration of the band is better or worse than any other. It’s just I think people who come to this band have some kind of connection and history with it, and they bring that history with them or that connection that they’ve personally made to the band, and then they present that on stage as part of their performance. That’s certainly what I did when I first came to the band. For some reason, I decided it was more of a metal band than it really was, “Vision Thing” being my main album that I’d known as a kid, and therefore I thought, “oh, this must be really heavy guitars all the time.” Not recognising that for many of the fans, the more important part of The Sisters sound was something that was colder and had more restraint and was more spacious and more cinematic, and it took a while to find that nice balance. So, yeah, I think members and players for The Sisters can sometimes bring what they liked as fans or as followers of the band to the band. Even if they weren’t particularly fans of the band before they came to it, everyone pretty much knew something about the band before they came to it, so they bring that something with them. And I think Kai brings a very special something that maybe previous iterations haven’t brought.

Karo: Apart from The Sisters of Mercy, will the time before the tour be preparation for you, or will you be doing some other shows with other bands and focusing on your own project?

Ben: So in July, I’ve got some festival shows with Ricky Warwick again. There’s the Wacken Festival, which is going to be cool. There’s Firevolt Festival in the UK and a few others. And then I’m going to be working on the Diamond Black album. We are in the mixing stage now, so that’s where we’re at. And just trying to get a sound that everybody feels represents what is important to them individually, I think, and as a band. And yeah, that’s kind of the focus for the next part of the year before September.

Karo: Thank you very much, Ben. That was a lovely chat. I really appreciate your time.

Ben: You’re very welcome. And I think your questions were extremely well thought-out and researched. It was a really fun interview for me to do because you’d put the time in and you clearly are passionate about the things we were talking about. So thank you very much.

About Ben Christo

Ben Christo, born Benjamin David Christodoulou on 22 March 1980 in Bristol, England, is a guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and session musician. He began playing as a child and first drew national attention with the punk-metal band AKO, which he co-founded in 1998 and which released the album “Find Yourself” in 2001 before splitting after a 2005 show at South By South West.

In 2006 Ben Christo joined The Sisters of Mercy as lead guitarist and backing vocalist, having been approached by the band in December 2005. He has toured worldwide with the group and co-written newer songs with Andrew Eldritch and guitarist Dylan Smith, several of which were premiered across the 2019-2020 and 2022 tours. Ben Christo is now one of the band’s longest-serving members alongside Eldritch.

Alongside The Sisters, Christo founded the melodic rock band Night By Night in 2008, releasing the album “NxN” in 2014, and established the dark rock band Diamond Black in 2016, whose debut single appeared in 2017. Diamond Black now works as a three-piece with Christo on lead vocals. As a writer and session player Ben Christo has contributed to Lord of the Lost’s number-two German chart album “Judas” (2021), PIG’s “Risen” (2018), records by Esprit D’Air, and Ricky Warwick’s 2025 album “Blood Ties”; he joined Warwick’s touring band in 2022.

In March 2026 The Sisters of Mercy withdrew from that year’s Brutal Assault festival, moving up the recording schedule for a new studio album. In this interview Ben Christo confirms that a new Diamond Black album, written entirely in sobriety, is in the mixing stage, with festival dates alongside Ricky Warwick set for July and a Sisters of Mercy tour that reaches Wrocław on 22 October.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Urban Spree was the right place for this night. Not just because it is a good venue for dark electronic music, although it obviously is, but because the whole area already feels half-staged before anything starts. RAW-Gelände has its own atmosphere: brick walls, graffiti, dust, metal, warm concrete, people moving between bars and club doors as if the evening has already begun before you have even gone inside.

For the Berlin release celebration of Front 242’s “Black Out”, with AD:keY playing live and Machineries Of Joy involved, the venue did not feel like a neutral location. It felt like it belonged to the event.

There was a small but lovely touch at the entrance. Early guests were given the new Alfa Matrix sampler, a 19-track compilation with Alien Vampires, Krystal System, Lovelorn Dolls, Digital Factor, Elektrostaub, First Aid 4 Souls and others. A CD at the door might sound like a minor detail, but in a scene like this it matters. It is physical. A little stubborn, even. It says: take this home, keep it somewhere, remember that music is not only a link, a playlist, or something that disappears from your feed tomorrow.

AD:keY live

When AD:keY came on, the room did not need a long introduction. Their language is direct by design: disciplined sequences, commands, economy, repetition sharpened until it becomes physical rather than merely mechanical. But what makes AD:keY work so well is that they do not treat EBM as a museum object or a costume kept safely behind glass. They know the tradition, but they play it with circulation, appetite and present-tense force.

The set had all the necessary strictness: the pulse, the forward push, the clipped energy, the body logic of classic EBM. Yet it never felt like imitation. There were no frozen poses, no dead reenactment of an older scene, no attempt to prove authenticity by simply sounding harder than everyone else. AD:keY understand that EBM is not only a sound vocabulary. It is also timing, attitude, sweat, discipline and the ability to make a simple command feel alive again.

That distinction matters. The best EBM does not become powerful because it is complicated. It becomes powerful because it knows exactly what to remove, what to repeat, where to strike and how to make the audience answer with the body before the mind has time to negotiate.

René gives the songs their structure. He holds the voltage together, keeps the grid tight, keeps the machinery moving. Andrea does something different. Calling her simply “the singer” feels inadequate, because live she is doing much more than delivering vocals. She works with the beat physically. She pushes into it, pulls away from it, smiles at it, challenges the audience with it. At times it felt like she was asking the room: are you actually here, or are you only watching?

That was one of the reasons the set worked so well. It had life in it. Not just volume, not just force, but life. Nothing felt preserved or over-rehearsed into stiffness. AD:keY played hard, but there was humour in it too, and warmth. Those are easy qualities to underestimate in this kind of music, but without them EBM can quickly become parody. Here, the songs hit because they are built to hit, but also because the two people on stage seemed genuinely present inside them.

When Andrea jumped into the crowd, it did not feel like a planned “frontwoman moment”. It felt like the obvious next move. The gap between stage and floor had already been getting smaller throughout the set. By that point, the room had almost pulled her in. That is what I keep enjoying about AD:keY live. They put the body back into electronic body music, but they also put some heart into it. I have seen them a few times now, and the impression has been consistent: they want to be in the room with people, not above them. The sound is muscular, the delivery is direct, the beats do their job, but the warmth is not decorative. It is part of the energy.

And it was fun. Not “fun” as a lazy word in a review, but actually fun. Sweaty, direct, unpretentious fun. People moved because the music made standing still seem slightly ridiculous. You could see recognition passing through the crowd, not only recognition of songs, but of old habits and reflexes, the kind stored somewhere in the body before the brain has time to explain them.

Front 242’s ‘Black Out’ on the floor

After the live set, the night moved further into the Machineries Of Joy and the link with Front 242’s “Black Out” became clearer. Tracks from the release came into the room during the afterparty: “W.Y.H.I.W.Y.G.”, “Quite Unusual”, “MasterHit”, “Welcome to Paradise”. In the wrong setting, those tracks could easily become heritage objects, brought out for polite appreciation. Here they were not treated like relics. They were used. That makes a difference.

“Black Out”, released by Alfa Matrix on 19 June 2026, documents Front 242’s final live chapter, recorded at Ancienne Belgique in Brussels during the farewell shows in January 2025. It is impossible to write that sentence without feeling some weight behind it. Front 242 are not just a name to drop in EBM. They helped define the grammar: sequenced force, voice as command, abrasion with groove, discipline that somehow still creates release.

But the album does not feel like something sealed and finished. It still has too much physical charge. The songs still work as machinery, not as archive material. “W.Y.H.I.W.Y.G.” does not need an introduction. “Quite Unusual” does not need explaining. “Welcome to Paradise” still has that strange poisoned theatricality, somewhere between warning, seduction and control mechanism.

Hearing those tracks at Urban Spree gave the night another layer, but not a sentimental one. Front 242’s live history may have closed, but the language they helped create is clearly still moving. It moves through labels like Alfa Matrix, through DJs who know the difference between history and decoration, through younger dancers discovering that pressure for the first time, and through older dancers whose bodies react before they have time to think about it.

What made the evening work was that it did not overstate itself. The sampler at the door, AD:keY’s generous and physical performance, the later Machineries Of Joy mood, the Front 242 tracks cutting through the floor after midnight – it all connected without anyone needing to explain it too much. That was the strength of the night. It allowed EBM to be what it is when it is at its best: intelligent but not cold, historical but still alive, severe but not joyless, physical without being stupid. This music does not belong under glass. It belongs in rooms where people answer it. By the time the Front 242 tracks hit the floor, nobody needed a lecture on why they mattered. The room already knew.

About Front 242 ‘Black Out’ and AD:keY

Front 242 are the Belgian group, formed in 1981, who helped define electronic body music with releases such as “Geography”, “Official Version”, “Front by Front” and “Tyranny (For You)”. “Black Out” is their final live album, recorded at Ancienne Belgique in Brussels during their January 2025 farewell shows and issued by Alfa Matrix on 19 June 2026 across multiple formats.

AD:keY are the EBM duo of René and Andrea, also on Alfa Matrix, whose recent releases include the single “Der Böse Gott”. Their live set anchored this Berlin release celebration, held at Urban Spree with DJ support around the Machineries Of Joy nights, and tied the evening to the catalogue Front 242 helped make possible.

Words and photos by Karo Kratochwil.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Martyrmachine are an EBM and electro-industrial duo from Łódź, Poland, whose new album “Efficiency Justifies Everything” arrived on 26 June 2026. The nine-track record pairs Jakub M. Kasiński’s electronics and vocals with Szymon Adamiak’s live drums, and turns capitalist discipline, technological alienation and post-industrial Łódź into rhythm. The project grew out of Kasiński’s earlier solo work as Martyr, started in 2018, was renamed Martyrmachine in December 2022, and gained its second member when Adamiak joined in June 2023.

In this interview for Side-Line Magazine, Martyrmachine speak with us about the album’s title and themes, the shift from Martyr to Martyrmachine, what live drums change in a programmed sound, their use of Polish and English lyrics, the Łódź poetry behind several tracks, their reinterpretation of Sodom’s “Nuclear Winter”, and why they treat a concert as physical confrontation rather than a clean playback.

Martyrmachine interview

Karo: “Efficiency Justifies Everything” sounds like a title that could belong equally to a corporate manual, a political slogan, or a dystopian commandment. Where did this phrase come from, and what does it say about the world you wanted to confront on this Martyrmachine album?

Jakub: The title is basically the sum of all the options you mentioned. For many people, its negative tone probably passes them by completely, and they see it as something entirely normal: efficiency above everything. Mainstream media and society in general are primarily interested in economic growth and climbing higher in global rankings, rather than the human-capital cost that all of this entails.

That is largely what the album is about, although it is not a coherent, linear story. It is more a cross-section of phenomena appearing within galloping capitalism from the end of the nineteenth century up to today.

Szymon: You have put together three possible interpretations of our title quite well. In my view, however, it refers most strongly to the “dystopian commandment”. Of course, most of the work on the album rested on Jakub’s shoulders, but I think its final shape was influenced not only by his internal struggles, but also by direct experience of the system we currently live in, as well as our travels in Poland and abroad. I fully agree with Jakub, and if I were to add something from myself, it would be the permanent feeling of the pressure of success propaganda mixed with collective brainwashing in the context of a collapsing, post-industrial city.

Karo: The press description presents this Martyrmachine album as a manifesto against a world ruled by efficiency, control, and technological alienation. How personal is this critique for you? Is it mostly directed at society and systems, or also at the way individuals internalize these demands and begin to discipline themselves?

Jakub: I do not think it is possible to criticise the system without also touching on the question of the individual people who create that system and function within quiet consent. I address this especially in my own lyrics. In some tracks, we used poems written over the past century that deal with similar subjects. My own texts speak precisely about individuals functioning in the realities of the modern world, whether they live passively inside it or try to influence it somehow.

Szymon: For me, this strike against the system has quite a personal meaning. As a person who has been unwillingly pushed into the gears of the capitalist machine, unfortunately from the lower social layers, working on this album was something like a cold shower after a long, exhausting journey. Even though I am able to move within today’s socio-economic reality, it was a kind of salvation for me. I will not go into the subject of victims internalising the violence inflicted on them, but I can say that such references can also be found in our music.

Karo: Martyrmachine began as Jakub’s solo project Martyr in 2018 and later changed shape, name, and sound. Looking back at “CONCRETE” and “Fabryka Żalu”, what did those earlier releases teach you about the language of the project, and what did you know had to change before “Efficiency Justifies Everything”?

Jakub: The most important change was definitely recording live drums, which already happened during the digital release of the “Fabryka Żalu” EP. In that case, however, it was only a refreshed version of an old track that had already existed and been released earlier. With “Efficiency Justifies Everything”, it was different. Here, the tracks were created and shaped alongside the drums, which certainly influenced their final form and made the whole thing sound more coherent. My recording and mixing skills also improved, which made it possible to express the whole concept more effectively through sound.

Szymon: I do not feel competent to answer this question, so I will leave the stage to Jakub.

Karo: The name change from Martyr to Martyrmachine feels important. It suggests not only transformation, but also a collision between suffering, mechanism, sacrifice, and industrial force. What did the new name allow you to express that the original name could not fully contain?

Jakub: In fact, these two entities should be separated with a very thick line. One ended when the other began. They differ from each other drastically in form and content, to such an extent that I think I will stop mentioning “Martyr” at all as the beginning of Martyrmachine: two separate projects, close only in name. These are my very current thoughts, though, so anything may still happen. The whole transformation is actually a reflection of my own internal maturation, from very personal and emotional dark electro to socially engaged industrial music.

Szymon: As above.

Karo: Szymon joined Martyrmachine in 2023, bringing live drums into a form of music often associated with programming, machines, and strict electronic structures. How did this change the physicality of Martyrmachine? Did it make the music more human, more violent, more unpredictable, or perhaps more machine-like in a different way?

Jakub: I think that, in general, human and machine complement each other perfectly. In fact, one cannot exist without the other. Every machine has to be programmed; for now, nothing can come into being without the human factor. Live drums certainly make it possible to balance more effectively between the rawness of electronics and evenly arranged samples, and the humanism and margin of error that add authenticity to the sound, especially during concerts.

Szymon: I will not replace the machine, but I am forced to cooperate with it. That margin of error is exciting on stage, but also technically demanding. The machine does not slow down, it does not wait. In short, it does not forgive. Is it not far more interesting to watch such a struggle on stage than to allow a drum machine to do its job without any unnecessary fuss?

Karo: You describe the Martyrmachine sound as balancing aggression and melancholy, mechanical rhythm and emotional weight. How do you keep that balance from becoming either too polished or too chaotic? Is there a point in the studio where you know a track has found the right amount of dirt, discipline, and feeling?

Jakub: Here, everything mostly comes out in the wash, as the saying goes. The balance finds its own place during the process. If the demo version really leans too far in one direction, then usually it is no longer considered as a candidate for Martyrmachine and ends up as one of many unfinished projects on my hard drive. Occasionally I may even finish such a project, but it still remains in the “for the drawer” category, at least for now.

Szymon: In this area, Jakub makes the decisions, so I give him the whole floor.

Karo: The album includes Polish titles such as “Przy Pracy”, “Styczeń”, “Redukcja” and “Na Barykady!”, alongside English-language titles like “Modern Man / Modern Times” and “Techniques Of Propaganda”. How do you decide which language belongs to a song? Does Polish give you a different emotional or political charge than English?

Jakub: Three of the four Polish-language tracks were created as part of a special repertoire for a concert in the “Zawieje” series, organised by Łukasz Pawlak, our publisher. Because of the location and circumstances, we could not play our usual concert then, so we prepared a special set consisting mostly of completely new tracks. For the lyrical layer, we used texts from an anthology of poetry about Łódź titled “Kwiaty Łódzkie”, which is where the Polish language came from. As a curiosity, I can add that this was our only, and probably last, performance using a guitar.

Szymon: For me, it is a healthy linguistic balance. As a patriot, I would like to express myself mainly in my native language, but of course English can reach the vast majority of listeners.

Karo: The first Martyrmachine single pairs “Reform Yourself” with a reinterpretation of Sodom’s “Nuclear Winter”. Covering a thrash metal classic within an EBM/electro-industrial context is an interesting gesture. What drew you to that song, and how did you approach translating its energy into the Martyrmachine language without simply imitating the original?

Jakub: “Nuclear Winter” is a great song, and the opening riff is simply iconic. One day it was stuck in my head so persistently that I had to play it on something, and because my guitar was broken, I played it on a keyboard. In my teenage years, I was very deeply into thrash and related things, and out of those biggest legendary bands, Sodom was my favourite. In a way, I am still connected to that environment, because in another band I am a member of, we play thrash.

Privately, as I get older, I am more drawn to new-wave black metal, but I gladly return to things from years ago with a large dose of nostalgia. When I sat down to work on the cover, I knew I would definitely have to slow it down a little. 194 bpm is simply too much for our style; it would have become very unclear and the whole thing would have lost its point of impact. I also cut out the middle section of the original to keep the dynamics and leave only the meat. In my opinion, the balance between the metal roots and the electronic interpretation came out exactly right.

Szymon: The decision was made individually by Jakub. I am not a huge fan of thrash metal, but I have a lot of trust in our vocalist when it comes to choosing songs to cover.

Karo: I saw Martyrmachine live at Wrocław Industrial Festival 2024, and what struck me immediately was how physical Martyrmachine felt on stage. The live percussion and self constructed iron instrumentation did not function as decoration, but as part of the body of the performance. How important is this visual and physical dimension for you? Do you see a Martyrmachine concert as a presentation of songs, or rather as a ritual of pressure, noise, movement, and confrontation?

Jakub: I would lean rather toward the second option. I really like creating an elevated and slightly theatrical atmosphere during concerts. The whole thing can even be treated a bit like a performance, although more improvised than directed. We have a skeleton in the form of the setlist, but everything else can differ greatly between two consecutive shows. Physicality and authenticity live are at the core of what we do. After all, it is electronic BODY music, so something very bodily and tangible. When you come to a concert, you want to feel emotions, almost touch them. That is exactly the kind of experience we want to give the audience, and fortunately it comes to us very naturally.

Szymon: I fully agree with Jakub. For me, a concert should be something more than a played sequence of sounds. I also like acting a bit and I feel good with it. I have the impression that the audience usually buys into it, and because of that it allows for a higher level of immersion.

Karo: “Efficiency Justifies Everything” is described as a new chapter and a clear step forward. Once this album is out in the world, where do you imagine Martyrmachine going next? Do you feel drawn toward making the sound harsher, more melodic, more theatrical, more industrial, or is the future of the project something you prefer to discover through friction rather than planning?

Jakub: For me, everything is born more from impulses than from a strictly arranged plan, or even intentions and visions. Future releases will certainly overlap to a large extent with the previous ones, but I am not yet able to say how they will differ. If someone is very curious about new material, we invite them to the concerts. That is where new creations can be heard first.

Szymon: Difficult question. I have no idea what the future will bring. We are certainly managing to make efficient use of various opportunities; who knows how they will shape us?

About Martyrmachine

Martyrmachine are an EBM and electro-industrial duo based in Łódź, Poland. The project began as Martyr, the solo work of Jakub M. Kasiński, started in 2018, and released early material including “CONCRETE” and the “Fabryka Żalu” EP. In December 2022 Kasiński renamed the project Martyrmachine, marking a turn from personal dark electro toward socially engaged industrial music. In June 2023 drummer Szymon Adamiak joined, adding live percussion to a sound built on electronics, samples and self-constructed iron instrumentation.

The duo mix programmed EBM and electro-industrial structures with live drums, Polish and English lyrics, and themes of capitalist discipline, labour and post-industrial Łódź. They performed at Wrocław Industrial Festival in 2024. On 23 January 2026 they issued the single “Reform Yourself”, paired with a cover of Sodom’s “Nuclear Winter”, as a 7″ through Requiem Records. Several Polish-language songs grew out of a set prepared for the “Zawieje” concert series run by their publisher Łukasz Pawlak, using poems from the Łódź anthology “Kwiaty Łódzkie”.

“Efficiency Justifies Everything”, released digitally on 26 June 2026, runs nine tracks: “Przy Pracy”, “Reform Yourself”, “Styczeń”, “Threads”, “Modern Man/Modern Times”, “Redukcja”, “Na Barykady!”, “The Other Cheek” and “Techniques Of Propaganda”. In this interview, Kasiński and Adamiak from Martyrmachine place the album in that timeline, describing it as a record where live drums and programmed structures meet under pressure rather than resolve into comfort.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Nine years after “Kopfkino”, Kant Kino have returned with “Echoes of The End”, a 24-track album that feels less like a comeback announcement than the result of something slowly refusing to die. The Norwegian duo have never treated EBM as a museum piece or a discipline to be obeyed, and this new record continues that attitude with force, melody, fatigue, humour and a very clear distrust of neat answers. Instead of presenting collapse as spectacle, Kant Kino seem more interested in what happens after people have already adapted to absurdity.

The record moves through anxiety, alienation, hard electronic rhythm and melodic memory, while keeping the dry wit that has always made the project sharper than standard genre seriousness. Lars Henrik Madsen talks about the long road to “Echoes of The End”, why 24 tracks made more sense than a polite short album, how humour can get closer to truth than a manifesto, and why Kant Kino are not interested in preserving EBM under glass.

Kant Kino interview

Karo: “Echoes of The End” arrives nine years after “Kopfkino”. That is a long gap, but it also means the project returns into a very different cultural climate: more noise, more collapse language, more algorithmic distraction, more exhaustion. What had to change in the world, or in Kant Kino, before this album could exist?

Lars: Probably less had to change than simply happen. We started working on this album years ago and assumed it would be finished much sooner. Instead, life got involved. There was a pandemic, health issues, work, family, long periods of creative fatigue and more than a few moments where we seriously considered abandoning the whole thing. The strange thing is that while we were struggling to finish the album, the world slowly started looking more like the album. What began as fragments about anxiety, alienation, absurdity and modern exhaustion gradually became less speculative and more observational. By the time we finished Echoes Of The End, it felt less like a prediction and more like a field recording.

Karo: The album has 24 tracks, which already feels almost provocative now, when music is often pushed toward shorter formats and faster consumption. Did you need that scale because the material kept expanding, or because the subject itself demanded something larger, more crowded and less polite?

Lars: Both, probably. We never sat down and said, “Let’s make a 24-track album and completely ignore modern attention spans.” But once the songs started forming a larger picture, removing pieces felt wrong. The album became a collection of different perspectives on the same landscape. Besides, if the modern world is an endless stream of noise, distraction, contradictions and unfinished thoughts, making a neat, efficient 35-minute statement felt suspiciously polite.

Karo: Kant Kino have always had a strange relationship with seriousness: the music can be hard, sharp and socially alert, but the titles and gestures often carry dry humour or absurdity. Is humour a way to survive the darkness, or a way to make the darkness more accurate?

Lars: Definitely the latter. Reality is rarely purely tragic. Most of the time it’s tragic and ridiculous at the same time. People don’t experience societal decline as dramatic movie scenes. They’re standing in supermarket queues, arguing online, forgetting passwords and trying to make dinner. Humour helps reveal the absurdity already present in the situation. Sometimes a joke gets closer to the truth than a manifesto.

Karo: “Rodney” became the first signal of the new phase. The name itself is oddly specific, almost anti-mythological. Why “Rodney”? Is he a person, a mask, a symptom, a private joke, or simply the wrong kind of name for a song that clearly carries a heavier charge?

Lars: Yes. Part of the appeal of the name is that it refuses to explain itself. In a culture obsessed with symbolism and decoding, it’s refreshing to leave some doors closed. Rodney may be a person, an idea, a warning, a joke, or someone sitting quietly at the end of the bar while the world slowly catches fire. We’re perfectly happy letting people decide for themselves.

Karo: There is a strong sense of systems failing across this album: emotional systems, social systems, perhaps even the small daily systems that allow people to keep functioning. Are Kant Kino interested in collapse as a dramatic event, or more in the quieter moment when people have already adapted to living inside it?

Lars: The latter is much more interesting to us. The dramatic collapse only lasts a moment. The adaptation lasts years. People are remarkably good at normalising things that shouldn’t be normal. They adjust, improvise, develop routines and continue living inside increasingly strange circumstances. That quiet acceptance is often more unsettling than the collapse itself.

Karo: Your music often combines very direct electronic force with melodic memory. It can hit hard, but it also remembers synthpop, old industrial discipline and the strange emotional pull of classic electronic songwriting. How do you keep the songs from becoming either too brutal or too polished?

Lars: We probably fail equally in both directions. We’ve always loved the physical impact of EBM and industrial music, but we’re also hopelessly attached to melody. If a song only hits hard, it tends to become forgettable. If it’s only beautiful, it risks losing tension. The interesting space is somewhere between a punch and a memory.

Karo: Coming from Norway, you work slightly outside the usual Belgian-German axis through which EBM history is often told. Has that distance been useful? Did it give Kant Kino more freedom to treat the genre with affection, irony and disrespect at the same time?

Lars: Being outside the centre probably helps. We’ve always loved the genre, but we’ve never felt particularly obligated to obey it. Norway is far enough away that nobody hands you an official EBM rulebook when you start a band. That distance allowed us to approach the music as fans rather than caretakers. We respect the tradition, but we’re not interested in preserving it under glass.

Karo: “Echoes of The End” feels very current, but it does not sound desperate to be modern. How do you relate to the present electronic scene? Do you feel part of it, irritated by it, entertained by it, or mostly operating in your own stubborn corner?

Lars: A bit of all four. There is a huge amount of great electronic music being made right now, but there is also a tendency for scenes to become trapped in cycles of nostalgia, trend chasing or algorithm friendly repetition. We’ve reached an age where trying to sound modern would probably be the fastest way to sound outdated. We’d rather make music that feels honest and trust that listeners will decide where it belongs.

Karo: Kenneth, you have also worked with mastering, remixes and technical production for other projects. When you return to Kant Kino, does technical control help you sharpen the material, or do you sometimes have to damage the surface deliberately so the music does not become too clean?

Kenneth: Technical knowledge is useful right up until the point where it starts getting in the way. One of the biggest challenges is knowing when to stop improving something. Music can easily become so polished that all the personality gets sanded off. Sometimes the right decision is not adding another layer or fixing another detail. Sometimes it’s leaving the crack in the wall because that’s where the light gets in.

Karo: After such a large album, what would feel like a real risk for Kant Kino now: becoming more minimal, more melodic, more brutal, more personal, or finally allowing the project to  become completely unreasonable?

Lars: The last option sounds dangerously attractive. After spending years finishing something this large, the most interesting direction is probably the one that makes the least sense from a strategic perspective. Fortunately, we’ve never been particularly strategic.

Karo: “Echoes of The End” sounds like an album that closes many doors, but also opens a few uncomfortable ones. After returning with such a large and decisive release, where does Kant Kino go next: further into collapse, toward something more stripped and personal, or into a place that would surprise even people who think they already understand the project?

Lars: We honestly don’t know yet, and that’s probably a good sign. For a long time, finishing Echoes Of The End was the destination. Now that it’s finally out in the world, we’re enjoying not having a map for a while. Whatever comes next will probably still sound like Kant Kino. Beyond that, we’re not making any promises. Some doors have definitely closed. The interesting question is what might crawl through the ones that just opened.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Does Berlin really want to become another Frankfurt?

The news around Cassiopeia and RAW-Gelände does not arrive as a shock. That may be the most depressing part. It lands with the familiar weight of another Berlin story in which culture is praised in speeches, photographed for tourism campaigns, used to sell the city’s mythology, and then asked to step aside once the numbers become interesting.

About Berlin’s RAW-Gelände: In June 2026 the owner of Berlin’s RAW-Gelände in Friedrichshain., Kurth-Gruppe, declared the RAW West planning process failed and issued eviction demands to several cultural operators. Cassiopeia was reportedly given two weeks to leave, with the venue warning that eviction by the end of June would mean immediate insolvency. Negotiations around the area had lasted more than ten years and that protesters were calling for “RAW für alle – Cassiopeia & Co. müssen bleiben.”

Another cultural space under pressure. Another developer. Another office project. Another fragment of Berlin forced to explain its worth in the language of rentable square metres.

According to the current mobilisation around RAW-Gelände, Cassiopeia has been confronted with a short time frame in relation to plans that could push the venue out of its long-standing location. Supporters have already reacted, including the protest around 19 June, drawing attention to the venue itself and to the fragile ecosystem around it. The practical details matter: ownership, contracts, planning law, safety requirements, investment, access, maintenance, the difficult reality of old industrial buildings. Any serious argument about a city has to admit that these questions exist.

Still, behind all those details sits a much colder question.

What exactly is Berlin trying to become?

If the answer is more offices, more hotels, more polished leisure districts, more investment façades and more interchangeable urban neatness, then Berlin should at least be honest about the price. It is losing far more than clubs. It is losing one of the reasons people crossed borders, took night trains, slept badly, stayed too long, fell in love unwisely, discovered music in concrete rooms, and believed, for a few hours at least, that a city could still contain some form of freedom.

Of course Berlin needs development. It needs housing, functioning infrastructure, safer public areas, maintained buildings, places to work and realistic answers to growth. RAW-Gelände is not a holy ruin floating outside money, ownership or planning conflicts. It is a complicated former industrial site shaped by temporary use, private interests, cultural improvisation, public expectation and years of negotiation. Pretending that nothing should ever change would be sentimental and useless.

But a city can change without erasing the very thing that made it matter.

It can build without flattening its own memory. It can repair without sterilising. It can create safer structures and better public access without treating clubs, ateliers, concert halls, flea markets and informal meeting points as decorative remains from a less profitable decade. The question is not whether Berlin should stay frozen in graffiti and nostalgia. The question is whether Berlin still understands that clubs, rehearsal rooms, small stages, courtyards and cheap, imperfect places are part of how a city actually lives.

RAW-Gelände is not just a plot of land near Warschauer Straße. It is one of the places where Berlin still behaves like Berlin: messy, improvised, loud, contradictory, commercially useful and still stubbornly resistant to polish. It holds clubs, concert halls, galleries, painted walls, beer gardens, rehearsal rooms, tired Sunday bodies, night people, artists, tourists, locals, skaters, punks, goths, techno kids, industrial heads, metalheads, bored teenagers, stray romantics and everyone else who arrives in Berlin looking for something less obedient than a shopping street.

And anyone who has actually walked through RAW knows that this is not an abstract idea. It is the crunch of gravel under your shoes, the smell of beer, dust, old paint and fried food, walls layered with posters, tags and stickers, a queue forming somewhere in the half-dark, bass bleeding from one building while another room throws out a different rhythm entirely. You do not enter RAW as you enter a branded leisure quarter. You drift into it. You get slightly lost. You hear the city before you understand where you are going.

This is why the “Berlin ist RAW” campaign hits harder than a slogan should. It could have been another clever line for posters and social media. Instead, it exposes the contradiction at the centre of the whole debate. RAW is not a subcultural logo Berlin can paste onto its self-image while cutting away the rooms, leases and communities behind it. The campaign points to what is actually there: dozens of projects across art, sport, youth work, club culture and social practice; a former industrial site where studios, circus training, skate halls, climbing walls, bars, clubs and workshops still rub against each other instead of being sorted into sterile categories.

Campaign reporting has put annual footfall at more than a million. Even if one treats that number carefully, the point remains obvious: this is not a niche. This is Berlin making rough, half-broken places useful, social, loud and alive again. So yes, Berlin ist RAW. But that sentence only stays true if RAW remains alive, difficult, mixed, loud and materially protected. Otherwise it becomes a neat phrase placed over something that has already been emptied out.

Cassiopeia, Astra Kulturhaus, Urban Spree and the surrounding spaces belong to the same nervous system. Remove one element and the damage will not stay politely contained. These places do not function like office units. They depend on proximity, movement, accidental noise leaking from one courtyard into another, the chance that you leave one room and follow bass, smoke, light, people, bad decisions and sudden beauty somewhere else. RAW’s value cannot be reduced to one stage, one bar, one club or one event. Its value lies in the fact that one courtyard can contain five different versions of the city at once.

That is exactly what property development so often fails to understand, or understands perfectly and destroys anyway.

Cities love selling their mythology after the people who created it have been removed. Berlin is particularly gifted at this. It markets rebellion, club culture, creative freedom and urban roughness while allowing the actual places that produced those things to be priced out, regulated into exhaustion or replaced by developments that look acceptable in aerial renderings and feel dead at street level.

The East Side Gallery area already shows the result of that logic. A place once charged with rupture, border, division, violence and euphoria now competes visually with arenas, malls, hotels, corporate naming rights and the strange smoothness of capital dressing itself up as public life. Around the former Mercedes-Benz Arena, now Uber Arena, Berlin has already shown us the model: history on one side, brand architecture on the other, and somewhere between them the uneasy feeling that the city’s past has been hired as a decorative consultant.

Do we really need RAW-Gelände to follow the same route?

Cities change. Berlin has always changed, often violently, sometimes brilliantly, often stupidly, occasionally beautifully. The problem begins when “change” becomes the polite word for cultural amputation. When every irregular space is treated as underused land. When every courtyard must become monetisable. When every trace of unpredictability becomes a planning problem. When the people who made a district desirable are slowly pushed out by the value they helped create.

Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg are not ordinary districts in Berlin’s self-image. They are part of the city’s grammar. Through them Berlin explains itself to the world as open, alternative, rebellious, queer, loud, migrant, punk, electronic, unfinished, nonconformist. Of course that image is partly mythology. Berlin has never been as free as people wanted it to be, and no scene is innocent. There is tourism, commodification, exploitation, drugs, noise, conflict, exhaustion, rising rents and plenty of romantic nonsense. Still, mythology matters when it remains attached to real rooms, real communities and real risk.

Take the rooms away, and all that remains is the branding: the same old Berlin rebellion, emptied out and sold back as atmosphere.

I do not live in Berlin, and I do not want to speak over the people who do. But I have travelled there for years, often staying in this part of the city, and RAW-Gelände has always been one of the reasons Berlin mattered to me. Not the postcard Berlin. Not Brandenburg Gate, Ku’damm or the monuments one is supposed to admire politely. Those places have their history, of course, but they are not why I return. I return because of Warschauer Straße, Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg, the clubs, the walls, the courtyards, the strange mixture of freedom and exhaustion, and the sense that the city still leaves a door open for people who do not fit neatly anywhere else.

This is why the RAW question reaches beyond nostalgia. It is not about worshipping dirt or pretending that every graffiti-covered wall carries sacred value. It is about understanding that urban culture needs friction. It needs affordable rooms, ugly corners, late hours, imperfect infrastructure and places where people can gather without immediately being turned into customers of a lifestyle concept.

A city made mostly of offices, hotels and polished residential investment may look calmer, cleaner, more adult. It may also feel strangely dead, as if someone solved the noise problem by removing the pulse.

Berlin should be careful. The world does not need Berlin to become Frankfurt with better nightlife branding. Frankfurt already exists and performs its function perfectly well. Berlin’s power came from elsewhere: a historically wounded openness, an ability to absorb outsiders, a talent for turning ruins into rooms, emptiness into sound, damage into culture. Its landmarks are Brandenburg Gate, Museum Island and Ku’damm, yes, but for many people they are also RAW, SO36, Köpi, Berghain, Urban Spree, Cassiopeia, Astra, vanished clubs, cleared squats, bars that survived too long, walls that still speak before someone paints them beige.

For many regular visitors, RAW-Gelände is one of the reasons to go to Berlin. Not as tourists ticking monuments from a list, but as people drawn to the city’s living nervous system. Warschauer Straße, with all its chaos and excess, still feels like an entrance into a Berlin that has not fully surrendered. You arrive there and the city does not behave politely. It sweats, shouts, flickers, stains your shoes, feeds you badly, gives you great nights, and sends you home with too little sleep and too many memories.

That atmosphere cannot be rebuilt once it is gone. Developers can commission murals. They can leave a brick wall standing. They can name a courtyard after culture. They can preserve a façade, install lighting, create a “creative hub”, add food trucks and invite a DJ for the opening weekend. What they cannot manufacture is the cultural legitimacy that grows slowly through risk, use, conflict, failure, noise and belonging.

The irony is obscene. Berlin’s club culture has been recognised as cultural heritage, while the material conditions that allow that culture to exist remain under constant threat. Heritage cannot live in press releases. It needs leases, rooms, soundproofing, political will, protection from speculative pressure and an understanding that cultural value is not always immediately profitable. If Berlin wants to boast about nightlife, alternative culture and creative energy, it cannot keep feeding the spaces that sustain them to the real-estate machine.

Cassiopeia is not the whole story. It is a warning clear enough to be impossible to ignore.

Once these places disappear, the loss will not be counted only in closed venues. It will be counted in fewer accidental meetings, fewer small promoters taking risks, fewer bands finding a stage, fewer young people discovering a scene, fewer travellers returning because the city made them feel strangely at home, fewer nights where music rearranged someone’s life for a few hours.

This is what gentrification often erases first: not buildings, but conditions. Conditions for experimentation. Conditions for disobedience. Conditions for people without money to participate in culture. Conditions for a city to remain porous.

Berlin has to decide whether it wants to protect those conditions, or keep trading them for developments that could stand almost anywhere.

That is the real danger: not new buildings, not change, not the end of some romantic fantasy of eternal ruins. The danger is a Berlin that becomes more efficient, more expensive, more managed, smoother by the year, and less able to produce the culture it still uses as its calling card.

If RAW-Gelände is reduced to another predictable office-and-leisure development, Berlin will lose more than a few venues. It will lose part of its argument for itself.

That would not be urban progress.

That would be the city cutting into its own heart, then wondering why the pulse feels weaker.

Karo Kratochwil

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Editors have announced their eighth studio album, “Surface, Echo & Sound”, set for release on 30 October 2026 through Play It Again Sam. The Birmingham post-punk band confirmed the record on 23 June 2026 alongside the single “The Rush”, which arrives with an official video shot in Tokyo. The eleven-track album follows 2022’s “EBM”.

Guitarist Justin Lockey recorded and produced the album. Frontman Tom Smith wrote it using a stripped-back, acoustic-based approach close to the process behind his 2025 solo debut “There Is Nothing In The Dark…”, then brought the songs to the band to play together. “Surface, Echo & Sound” includes “Call It In”, the single Editors issued in April 2026, and is available to pre-order on CD, cassette, black and coloured vinyl, and digital. The tracklist is “Surface, Echo & Sound,” “Call It In,” “The Rush,” “Rescue,” “Shadow,” “Real,” “Happiness,” “Much Love,” “Butterfly Wings,” “Seriously” and “The Hills We Died Upon.”

Smith tied the album’s character to where it was made: “It was a very productive summer. The sun was out for the most part, we were in greenest Gloucestershire, not far from where I live, on this innocuous little industrial estate – it was pretty much the opposite of being in Berghain!”

The title track “The Rush” arrives with a video directed by Henry Ehara and filmed in Tokyo:

Smith plays mandolin on the track, an instrument Lockey placed at the centre of the record’s sound: “It’s not used in a folky kind of way, but it brings a warm element that can spike through anything in the mix. As a texture, it’s definitely a big character on this record. A lot of the rhythms come from the mandolin and the acoustic as much as they do from the drums.” He described “The Rush” as an imagined bar scene between two people talking about life: “That idea of finding comfort in people close to me, friends and loved ones and family, is a theme that comes up all the time.”

Editors 2027 tour dates

• 18 February 2027 — Amsterdam, Netherlands — Ziggo Dome
• 19 February 2027 — Antwerp, Belgium — AFAS Dome

About Editors

Editors formed in 2002 in Birmingham. The line-up of Tom Smith (vocals, guitar, piano), Russell Leetch (bass) and Ed Lay (drums), with Chris Urbanowicz (guitar), signed to Kitchenware Records and issued the debut album “The Back Room” in 2005, carrying the singles “Munich” and “Blood” and a 2006 Mercury Prize nomination. “An End Has a Start” topped the UK chart in 2007, as did “In This Light and on This Evening” in 2009.

The band released the single “Formaldehyde” in 2013, the year of “The Weight of Your Love”; Urbanowicz left in 2012 and Justin Lockey (guitar) and Elliott Williams (keys) joined. “In Dream” followed in 2015 and “Violence” in 2018, led by “Magazine”, before “EBM” in 2022. The current line-up of Smith, Leetch, Lay, Lockey and Williams now sets “Surface, Echo & Sound” for 30 October 2026.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

Belgian ritual industrial act This Morn’ Omina have joined the Dark Dimensions Label Group. The announcement arrives as the project prepares to mark its 30th anniversary in 2026.

To celebrate the occasion, ProNoize / Dark Dimensions will release “Vestiges – 30 Years Of Ritual Sound (1996-2026)”, a compilation collecting known, rare and previously unreleased tracks from the project’s long-running catalogue. The album will be issued as a limited edition digipak CD on 26 June 2026.

About This Morn’ Omina

Formed in 1996, This Morn’ Omina have built one of the more distinctive bodies of work in ritual industrial music. The project’s sound has often moved through ceremonial percussion, hypnotic repetition, martial pressure, EBM structures, Middle Eastern tonal references and darker electronic frameworks. Rather than treating rhythm as a simple club mechanism, This Morn’ Omina use it as a form of invocation, with tracks often built around trance, pressure and transformation.

Across releases such as “7 Years Of Famine”, “Le Serpent Blanc – Le Serpent Rouge” and “Les Passages Jumeaux”, the Belgian act developed a language that sits between industrial aggression and ritual intensity. The early club impact of “One-Eyed Man” helped bring the project to wider attention, but This Morn’ Omina’s identity has always reached beyond dancefloor functionality. Its work is tied to cycles, symbolic systems and a larger sense of sonic continuity.

“Vestiges” is therefore positioned as more than a standard anniversary collection. The title points to traces, remains and surviving marks, which suits a project whose music has repeatedly dealt with memory, transformation and the body as a site of ritual force. The compilation revisits three decades of activity while also underlining the project’s ongoing presence within the current industrial landscape.

The new signing also places This Morn’ Omina within the Dark Dimensions Label Group, whose network includes ProNoize and a wider catalogue of industrial, dark electronic and gothic releases. For a project with such a strong ritual industrial identity, the move connects past work with a new label structure as the 30-year anniversary approaches.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.