VampireFreaks have announce the line-up for the 3-day music festival Dark Force Fest which takes place in Parsippany, NJ (one hour from NYC) on May 2nd to 4th, 2025.

The festival features 35 bands performing across two stages: including ORGY, The Birthday Massacre, Covenant, Suicide Commando, Aesthetic Perfection, Genitorturers, Funker Vogt, Razed In Black, Calabrese, SITD, Haujobb, Klutæ, TRAITRS, Beborn Beton, God Module, Flesh Field, Dead On A Sunday, Rosegarden Funeral Party, Amelia Arsenic, NYXX, Panic Priest, 2 Shadows, Seraphim Shock, Dancing Plague, genCAB, Occults, SINE, Circuit Preacher, Corbeau Hangs, Die Sexual, Frenchy and the Punk, Everything Goes Cold, Contracult, Project .44, and Whorticulture.

You can order your tickets here.

Dark Force Fest takes place at the Sheraton Parsippany, a castle-style hotel that features 44,000 square feet of event space and 370 hotel rooms. While the hotel rooms in the main venue sold out within days of announcing the festival, there are still overflow hotels in the surrounding area.

In addition to 35 bands, Dark Force Fest activities include:

• Over 100 Vendors
• Sideshow Performances
• Drag Queens
• DJ Club Events (Playing Goth-Industrial Music)
• Classes & Activities
• Panels and Presentations
• Food Trucks

Below is a preview of what to expect.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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Ten years after the release of “Black Out the Sun” (Metropolis Records, 2014) the San Francisco, California-based act Everything Goes Cold returns with a brand new single, “Nadir”.

“Nadir” was released today on all digital and streaming platforms through Pittsburgh’s own Distortion Productions. Everything Goes Cold worked with Inhalt’s Matia Simovich to produce the
single. A remix by Susan Subtract of Physical Wash is also included next to an instrumental version.

A new music video to complement the single is out as well and was directed by Gabriel Roland, longtime live visualist for Everything Goes Cold.

You can download the 3-track single right below from Bandcamp.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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American artist Mark Pistel (Meat Beat Manifesto, Consolidated) has joined San Francisco post-punk outfit Octavian Winters for the double single “Nebula / Velveteen (Mark Pistel Remix)”. Now his “Velveteen” remix also gets the video treatment thanks to filmmaker David Kruschke.

Mark Pistel is best known as founder of Consolidated and as a member of Meat Beat Manifesto since 1997. He has also worked with such artists as The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Grace Jones, Therapy?, MC 900 Foot Jesus, Machines of Loving Grace, Hector Zazou, Mark Stewart, Lee Scratch Perry, Cabaret Voltaire’s Stephen Mallinder and Fishbone’s Angelo Moore.

Formed in 2022, Octavian Winters is guitarist Stephan Salit (Thrill of The Pull), drummer Randy Gzebb (Thrill of The Pull, Love Club), bassist Jay Denton and Ria (Amenti) Aursjoen on vocals and keyboards.

Pistel explains, “Randy Gzebb called me about remixing one of the tracks off ‘The Line or the Curve’ EP. I was excited to do so, as we’d recorded some of these vocals at my Room 5 Studio in San Francisco. I chose to do ‘Velveteen’ as I already loved the track with its fantastic vocal melody and Stephan’s unstoppable guitar hook! I took on the track with pulsing analog synths and a slamming dance floor beat for the clubs.”

The A-side to this 2-track release, called “Nebula” began as an experiment: “I kept envisioning a sort of “last day at the end of the world” — what would the sky look like? Would we know and understand what was happening? There is this broadly Gnostic idea of the universe as unfolding and unfolding through what are called Aeons, essentially levels of manifestation, until we get this world we live in here. I imagined this world reaching the fullness of its life, that whole cycle ending — and then everything reversing, refolding back to the start to make way for the next universe,” says Ria Aursjoen.

This is not the first time Octavian Winters has worked with Pistel. Their debut EP “The Line or Curve” (released in late 2023) was mostly recorded at his Room 5 Recording before being mixed and mastered it at 13 Studio in Chicago, and co-produced by the band and William Faith (The Bellwether Syndicate, Faith & the Muse, Christian Death). Octavian Winters’ members have a rich history of collaborating and touring with notable artists, including Nine Inch Nails, Killing Joke, Lords of the New Church, Savage Republic, Christian Death, The Frozen Autumn, Everything Goes Cold and Black Tape for a Blue Girl.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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Genre/Influences: Electro-rock, rock-pop, hard-rock, synth-pop, punk, experimental.

Background/Info: Fast forward 30 years.  Industrial music scene promoter, cancer survivor and musician, Jim Semonik (label owner of Distortion Productions and active in multiple bands) has brought his fundraiser “Electronic Saviors: Industrial Music To Cure Cancer” to the aid of many a cancer victim.

It is with this intent that his label, Distortion Productions, LLC and Electronic Saviors offer up a tribute to the robots in disguise with “Respect The Prime: 1986 Revisited”. For the first time ever, the classic soundtrack from 1986’s “Transformers”-movie has been rebuilt from the ground up.

Bands: Xenturion Prime feat Trulos Haugen, Ghostfeeder, Bella Morte, Victor Love, Caustic, Everything Goes Cold, Latexxx Teens, am.psych ao.

Content: This sampler features 17 formations dealing with a rather diversified inspiration. No doubt about it, the original songs probably influenced the bands to experiment in sound and style. This album reveals several hard-rock minded pieces, which is a total surprise.

Other cuts move into electro-rock and vague electro-pop. But you also will hear some elements of metal music and even punk. Several songs are instrumentals, which accentuate the soundtrack feeling. Only one band (cf. am.psych) has been featured with two songs. One of them is the theme of “The Transformers”.

+ + + : The idea to release a music compilation as a way to bring some aid to cancer victims is not new, but still a great mark of solidarity and commitment. This is a record you’ll buy because of its initial concept while the content will for sure deliver a few nice surprises. am.psych is not exactly a newcomer although not exactly a familiar name and their electro-rock music reminding me a bit of The Swamp Terrorists.

– – – : Sound-wise this sampler is really versatile and simply mixes the most different and sometimes opposites genres together. There’s not much cohesion between some songs.

Conclusion: I’m definitely into the goal and concept of “Electronic Saviors” although the content of this edition can’t totally convince me!

Best bands: am.psych, Everything Goes Cold, Thoughtform, Ghostfeeder.

Rate: (7).

Label: www.distortionprod.com / www.facebook.com/distortionproductions

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

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