Kreign – III (Digital/CD/Vinyl Album – Scanner / Dark Dimensions)
About 4 years after their second album, the American duo Kreign released their third opus at the end of 2024. Xiån Austin and Ryan Hutman stay true to their roots, drawing heavily from hard, old-school EBM. As with their previous work, they adeptly channel these influences, but this time they’ve pushed their compositions further, enriching them with a more diverse arsenal of sounds and effects. The music remains hard-hitting and relentless, with raw, aggressive vocals that perfectly complement the uncompromising intensity of their sound. Kreign strikes with precision, delivering efficient and impactful EBM. While a few tracks take a slightly quieter approach, the duo’s core identity -creating fiercely powerful EBM infused with brilliant sonic textures, shines through. Personally, I still lean towards their earlier work, but “III” undeniably stands as one of the standout EBM releases of the past year. (Rating:8½).
Listen to “S.O.S.”:
About Kreign
Kreign is an American duo of Ryan Hutman and Xiån Austin, set up in 2010 as a side-project of their band Hardwire. The pair started Kreign to pursue Hardwire’s more EBM-driven material, but the project sat mostly dormant for a decade before Kreign released its self-titled, self-released debut album in 2020. Scanner (Dark Dimensions) quickly re-released that debut.
In a Side-Line interview, Hutman and Austin discussed their shared love of stripped-down, old-school EBM. Kreign released “III”, the album reviewed here, on Scanner at the end of 2024.
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