Clockwork Echo return after two years with the ‘Acolyte Protocol’ single and video
Clockwork Echo released “Acolyte Protocol” on 11 August 2026, a self-released aggrotech single with an official video, and the project’s first since 2024.
Clockwork Echo released “Acolyte Protocol” on 11 August 2026, a self-released digital single that ends a gap of more than two years since the Denver project last put out music of its own. The 4:01 track builds distorted synthesis and industrial percussion over a dub-weighted low end, and arrived with an official video the same day. Moon Coil Media serviced the release to press on 17 August.
The press release describes the lyrics as taking aim at “fascism, complicity, violence, and consequence through severe, confrontational imagery”, with a video that sets performance footage against archival material. Gabriel Ryan wrote, performed and produced the track and cut the video himself; the credits name The Distressed Setlist for some of the live footage. No mixing or mastering credit has been published, and no album or EP has been announced around it.
Where to hear Clockwork Echo’s ‘Acolyte Protocol’
The single is on Bandcamp as a pay-what-you-want download from $0.99, including a 24-bit/48kHz master, and is streaming on Spotify and the other major services. There is no physical edition.
About Clockwork Echo
Clockwork Echo is the solo project of Gabriel Ryan, based in Denver, Colorado, and started as a side project in 2018 before he took it on full time. He handles vocals, synthesizers, programming and guitars, and works with rotating musicians on stage. The music sits in next-wave aggrotech and dark electro, with the rhythmic pressure of club industrial pushed towards the density of metal.
The first release, the “Lest Hell Embrace You” EP, appeared on 14 November 2018; X-Fusion Music Production mixed and mastered it. The nine-track album “Anti-Human Death Machine” followed on 11 January 2020, and the eleven-track “Death Rebirth Repeat” on 27 June 2022, with remixes by Alien Vampires and Komor Kommando among the tracks. Ryan returned the favour on Komor Kommando’s “One By One” EP, released by Alfa Matrix on 2 December 2022, with a remix of “Get Off The X”, and on Frontal Boundary’s “Without a Chance” for Re:Mission Entertainment in June 2024, alongside a C-Lekktor version. The single “Hallowed Be Thy Pain” came out on 29 May 2024.
Touring has carried the project further than its release count suggests. Clockwork Echo supported Hocico in 2022, Skold on his July 2023 US run, Psyclon Nine on the “From Hell and Back” tour that autumn and Not My God, and played Mechanismus, Fvck Industrial Fest and Goth Fest Denver. Most recently the project opened for Psyclon Nine again on the “God’s Not Here” US tour between February and March 2026. No further dates are currently listed, which leaves “Acolyte Protocol” as the project’s first new recording since that run.
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