Belgian EBM act CauseNation is set to release “The Remix Collection” on September 6th, 2024. This new compilation, out via the Antwerp based DressCode Black label, features a lineup of remixes that re-imagine some of CauseNation’s tracks.

On remix duty we find Vomito Negro, Novakill, Darkvolt, First Aid 4 Souls, Nova State Machine, Enzo Kreft, Cirque d’Ess and VV303.

“The Remix Collection” is already available on Bandcamp and will be available on all major platforms, including Spotify, starting September 6th, 2024.

Tracklist:

1. Mark of Cain (Vomito Negro remix)
2. Hearts Beat Strong (Novakill remix)
3. Demons of the Night (Darkvolt remix)
4. Mark of Cain (First Aid 4 Souls remix)
5. The Things You Promise (Nova State Machine remix)
6. Hearts Beat Strong (Enzo Kreft remix)
7. Mark of Cain (Cirque d’Ess remix)
8. Hearts Beat Strong (Darkvolt remix)
9. Divided We Fall (First Aid 4 Souls remix)
10. The Things You Promise (VV303 remix)
11. Demons of the Night (First Aid 4 Souls remix)

CauseNation is based in Antwerp and was formed in 2015 by Vain Sacrosanct, Dries De Vreeze, and Jonas Herrnia. The band made its debut with the single “The Things You Promise” which was mixed and mastered by Claus Larsen.

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.

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Out now is the new EP “The Haunted The Hunted” by the post-industrial electronic rock act Fox Nova Project. Behind this project we find the US based musician Mach Fox from Zwaremachine and Australian musician Craig Saunders from Nova State Machine/Novakill.

Mach Fox: “Both Craig and I are known for our work in the electro-industrial, EBM and aggressive synth genres and the nature of this new side-project meant that we had the freedom to explore a different approach to arrangement and instrumentation while we freely probe genre styles that are not what we would typically release with our main musical projects.”

The debut 4 song “Fox Nova Project” EP was released October 27 last year and additional bonus tracks/remixes by Live Evil Productions, Blue Ant and Hostile Architect were added later on. You can check the release below.

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.

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Out now is a new digital EP from the Mexican industrial EBM act Godless Cross, “Listen To The Angels Cry (Insane Edition)”. This release is an extended version of the previously released single of the same name and can be downloaded now from Bandcamp.

The EP includes 5 remixes from Reality’s Despair, Chem, Nova State Machine, Data, Mach Fox as well as a new track “A Heart Of Darkness” for which you can see the video version below.

Here’s the full download release.

About Godless Cross

Originally from Veracruz, Mexico, Godless Cross was formed in 2016 as a solo project of Al Van Bergstein (Vox Humana). The project’s sound was from the beginning based on dark electro, metal, industrial and EBM. In 2019 Xibalba (guitar, synths, live) joins the band, consolidating the project.

The project released its first single in December 2020, “Listen To The Angels Cry”.

This year the project was already featured on the Italian compilation: “E:B:M Nation”, the compilation “We Are Not Safe Yet”, the Mexican compilation “Codex One Vol 3. this is not the end”, and the Russian compilation “Dark Sources”.

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.

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Hailing from Sydney (Australia) the duo Warren Bones (‘BONES’) and Craig L. Saunders (‘<Sik>’) are active for more than twenty years now as NOVAkILL. They release albums at irregular basis, the newest opus “Iconoclast” being released in 2020 on RepoRecords. It’s the band’s fifth full length and without a shadow of doubt also the most accomplished one to date. It’s a great production appealing for EBM fans in search of well-crafted and intelligent body music.

(Picture credits by Virginia Young / Interview courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: You guys last year released your fifth album to date, which I think was meant as a search for new ideas and progression. What is this all about and in, which way(s) is “Iconoclast” different from previous works? 

BONES: Not so much a search as a deliberate effort to do things a different way. Our first four albums were all done using the same software, Synapse Audio’s Orion, and we had basically approached things the same way. But Orion was discontinued quite a while ago and we ended up moving to Cubase, which led us down quite a different path, which we were keen to follow. It introduced us to a whole lot of things, many unexpected, and we wanted to explore those possibilities.

<SiK>: For us, the progression was in the process. It initially started the same way, developing a few song ideas and sharing them, though once Bones made the decision to do a song a month it gave it real impetus and a coherence. We were building on our usual style, and had a few strong EBM based tracks, that then allowed us to play more and deviate a little, and we kind of expanded the idea of what can be a NOVAkILL track..  The idea for the intermezzo tracks is something we have talked about for a couple of albums, though never did it. This time we of course did, and I feel they lend a lot to the album listening experience.

Q: One thing is for sure, this new work definitely sounds as the most accomplished and mature production to date; retro EBM elements mixed with a very own, powerful and contemporary touch! Did you handle specific references and/or criteria to achieve this work? 

BONES: Not at all. The big difference for us this time around was that we put a time limit on things. We set a goal to write one new song every month in 2018 so that we would have an album’s worth by the end of the year. It worked really well, we had something like 15 songs by September, which meant that for the first time we had new songs that didn’t make it onto the album.

We did all that while we were still using Orion and by the end of March 2019, we had it finished. But during that time we had started working with Cubase and we ultimately decided to re-do all the songs in Cubase and choose the versions we liked more. That meant another year of work but, in the end, “Strike” and “Descent” were the only Orion versions that made the cut.

I don’t normally work with my influences front of mind, but it is inevitable that they will find their way into what you do. If you like the way a certain artist does something, it will always affect the way you approach the same thing. Most of my inspiration comes from the instruments we use. “Twisted”, for example, came from a beautiful pad sound I got from one of our plugin synths that I spent a whole evening just playing from one of my keyboards.

<SiK>: We have a set idea of what constitutes a NOVAkILL track, and though, as mentioned above, we expanded on that a bit there are still elements to our process and style that push us down a certain path to achieve a sound we like, so of course other artists/music we like will be reflected in that. We never think we want to sound like a particular or specific artist, we always set out to make a NOVAkILL track, but of course influences come through. I take a very Post-Modern approach, the whole ‘everything is a remix’ idea, and take influences/concepts/styles and kinda blend them together, then they go through the Bones filtering and production process.

Q: The title of the album “Iconoclast” needs some extra explanation; what or who did you’ve in mind to find the title and how does it reflect the lyrical content of the album?

BONES: To me it is an obvious title for what we do. In ancient times, iconoclasts were people who went around smashing craven idols. Today it is associated with people who speak out against the status quo, which is exactly what we try to do. I actually think “Iconoclasm” would have been a better title, but I didn’t think of it in time.

<SiK>: Our albums often go through a few titles before we settle on one.. and the word “Iconoclast” felt good, and is sorta what we do…  it doesn’t relate to one specific song or idea, but reflects our basic political/ideological standpoint..  ‘don’t blindy trust icons, idols, authority etc.., question them, pull back the curtain,  tear them down if you have to’. 

Q: Tell us a bit more about the writing and production process of the album. What have been the different stages you’d to go through? What were the biggest challenges, the main difficulties you encountered and finally the points of satisfaction and/or improvement?

BONES: First off, I hadn’t written a song in a long time, maybe 8 or 9 years. For “Kill Everyone” and “I Hate God”, Sik had come up with pretty much all the musical ideas and a lot of the arrangements, too. If I’m honest, I had lost motivation and was really only going through the motions. That’s why there was such a long break between “I Hate God” and “(D)anger”.

On the back of “(D)anger”’s success we got to play Wave Gothik Treffen in 2017 and we spent several months rehearsing, far more than we’d ever really done before, and that got me motivated again. I was keen to keep things on the boil, which is why we decided on the schedule I mentioned earlier.

Our production process is pretty simple. Whichever one of us comes up with the idea works on it until it’s in some kind of usable shape, then we share it with the other, who continues the process, refining it and adding extra bits and pieces. They all end up back with me and I add vocals, do the final mixing and mastering.

Obviously we are very happy with “Iconoclast”, it turned out better than maybe we thought we were capable of. Still, we can hear areas where we can improve further still, so we’re keen for a follow-up, although we haven’t started anything yet.

<SiK>: As Bones outlined, this album went through a couple stages, the initial gathering of some sounds and ideas, then the process of building them into songs, with a reasonably strict deadline, and in that process a few tracks were written from scratch.  At the end of a year we had an album that was 90% or more complete, bar final touches and processes, but we had the album done.  We weren’t in a rush to release it, and gave it a little time to ‘rest’, and then, partly as a learning exercise and partly as a ‘what If’, we thought we would try to rebuild the tracks in a different DAW, which forces you to re-examine the elements, and make/remake some of the writing/production decisions. The albums always go through a stage of adjustment/change/etc though usually that is working with what was there, this time it was kind of a tear down, build again, and that process either affirmed what we had, or exposed things that could be improved which, overall strengthened the end product…

Q: What are the main differences between NOVAkILL and all the other (side)projects you both are/were involved with? What makes this project so special?

BONES: That’s easy, we both have the same musical tastes and we (hopefully) never let our egos get in the way of making the right calls. It’s a simple case of the whole being more than the sum of the parts. It’s a rare and special thing that’s allowed us to achieve way more than I could ever have hoped when I first got up on stage, solo, in 1985.

Until recently, I’d never really had any side-projects, but I think at one stage Sik had more than half-a-dozen on the go. But last year I started working on a few cover versions and during that process I realized that it might be a good way to get some live gigs (we haven’t played since WGT in 2017) so I’ve been working on that. I’ve got about 50 covers, mostly successful 80s stuff, and we’re in the process of trying to turn that into gigs. With COVID, it’s been a challenge.

<SiK>: NOVAkILL is Bones and me. We have a process and a sound unique to that combination. My ‘side-projects’ are often ways for me to just try things and experiment, or just ‘do’. NOVA STATE MACHINE started with the idea of doing a ‘pure’ EBM album, but with a different flavour, and I was after vocals in Russian to create a particular sound,  though in the process of making the first album (which was also a deliberate homage to some of my favourite artists) things evolved… which working with others always brings. I like the collaboration process, and some of my projects are specifically that… a way to work with certain people…  It challenges me to try different things, in ways I wouldn’t normally do. If it is just ‘me’ then I can do whatever the hell I want, be it good or bad… but it is about doing something different to NOVAkILL, sometimes in a small way, like a change to a drum sound, or sometimes in bigger ways, be it song structure or overall sound, but it is all about continuing to work, experiment, learn, develop… and it all feeds back into NOVAkILL through production and writing. ‘Everything is a remix’ some NOVAkILL tracks began life in a ‘side-project’.

Q: We last month celebrated the ‘international EBM day’ (24/2). Does it have a special meaning to you and what’s your perception of EBM?

<SiK>: EBM day has never been a ‘thing’ for us… Every day is Halloween, I mean EBM day… I don’t really go out of my way to mark the occasion. The ‘scene’ down here in Australia is very small, and while there are a few ‘club nights’ here and there,  it is not something I tend to do… though having said that, Bones and I had been discussing resurrecting our Industrial club night “Virus”, but then COVID hit and the idea was shelved. Maybe this year we will do something ‘special’,  start the next NOVAkILL album perhaps…  BONES: I’d never even heard of it until a couple of weeks ago. The scene here in Sydney no longer exists. It’s just gone and I can’t see or think of any mechanism that will change that.                                                                    

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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KREIGN is an American set up in 2010 by featuring Ryan Hutman and Xiån Austin. They met thanks to a mutual friend. Ryan was involved with HARDWIRE and in search of a drummer. Xiån was drumming for Sang:Rael and Alter Der Ruine at the time and finally joined HARDWIRE. Some HARDWIRE songs were pretty EBM-driven, which was the reason to start a side-project. KREIGN was born and asked Dave Strand (THE STRAND) to join in as singer. But he finally decided to move on with THE STRAND. Being a side project, KREIGN didn’t really move anywhere for 10 years even though they had quite a few songs started and set aside. But KREIGN finally released their self-titled and self-released debut album in 2020, which got rapidly re-released by Scanner (Dark Dimensions). The work is a powerful mix of good-old EBM with an impressive sophisticated production on top. “Kreign II” is a true masterpiece and one of the best EBM releases from the past years.

(Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)

Q: KREIGN has been set up as a tribute to ‘old-school’ EBM. What makes this ‘old-school’ style that special and what do you like in EBM sound? 

Ryan: It evokes aggression from me and I like that. I like the groove. I like that it is simple and minimal. 

Xiån: I grew up a New-Waver… in Utah of all places. My first glimpse of EBM and I’m not sure  if it could be categorized as such, but it was MINISTRY’s “Twitch”-album. I could not stop listening to “We Believe”. It was the driving bassline and simplicity of the beat that gripped me. I wanted to hear more. I was now on the hunt for something similar. Back then there was no Internet. The only way to find new music at the time was via magazines, clubs and/or word of mouth. A friend of mine had a DJ buddy in New York City. He would send him mixtapes of music he was spinning. I discovered bands like FRONT 242, NITZER EBB, DAF, PANKOW, SKINNY PUPPY, FRONT LINE ASSEMBLY and more. I would comb through record stores for hours and I would buy anything with cool cover art that looked Industrial or EBM. That’s how I discovered the now legendary Wax Trax Records. 

In the late 80’s, early 90’s, Salt Lake City spawned a killer Industrial club called ‘The Pompadour’. We would go religiously every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. The DJ was awesome and he knew his shit. Funny thinking about it now, he was probably more annoyed at the fact that, almost every song, we’d go to the booth and ask who he was spinning. Haha! 

Q: You guys got both involved with HARDWIRE while you were still active in other projects as well. What did you learn out of these previous experiences and what makes the difference with KREIGN? 

Ryan: Jonah from HARDWIRE taught me to not always use the ‘easy’ word to make a rhyme and to put more thought into my lyrics. Now, I am proud of my lyrics, even though they are usually simple. I can say more with less words. 

Mike from HARDWIRE and I learned early on that a live drummer can take a show to the next level. Even though I admit I suck at playing drums, I do it for KREIGN when Xiån sings “Disco King” and “In That Frame Of Mind”.

Xiån: I learned that it’s very difficult to manage multiple projects. Haha! All good though, the experience was worth every moment. I enjoyed traveling, playing shows and meeting cool peeps. As far as the difference with KREIGN, I think Ryan and I have very similar mindsets. When we hook up to write, it just flows. It’s a freak of nature I suppose.

Q: Old-school EBM often sounds simple and powerful; solid bass lines mixed with a danceable tempo plus harsh vocals and eventually metallic percussion parts. I consider KREIGN as one of the first bands breaking the codes; your music being definitely old-school like, but much more sophisticated and elaborated. Tell us a bit more about ‘sound’ and writing/production of the songs? 

Ryan: I figured out how to bend notes with soft synths in Cubase and I couldn’t stop doing it. We then translated that forced portamento back into the Nord Lead 2. Then Xiån and I would grab a few knobs on the Nord while the computer played the midi and recorded whatever we thought sounded cool. Fucking with FM, octave selector, pitch, and cutoff was so fun. We couldn’t do it without four hands on it and us laughing at the crazy sounds it made as we pushed the keyboard to it’s limits. It became a signature bass sound in most of the songs. It is rare for us to leave a bass sound without at least messing with the cutoff. Almost every sound is modulated by hand or is programmed to modulate.

Our formula also includes a few other hallmarks like basslines that play for just one verse, break downs that go to ultra minimal and then build up bigger, random sounds that only happen once in the song, ambient creepy background noise, and lead synth lines.

Q: How did the self-titled debut album “Kreign” see the daylight? What have been the influences, triggers, maybe references, lyrical themes and criteria to achieve the album? 

Ryan: I was really influenced by WULFBAND and GESSAFELSTEIN. I went back through a bunch of our songs and randomly detuned them after hearing WULFBAND for the first time. GESSAFELSTEIN influenced me to go back and crank the treble on the synths.

Lyrically, most of the songs have an upbeat message about how to deal with stress, anxiety, and tragedy. “Live Fast” is about my love for my Harley Davidson. “Disco King” is a fun song written with tongue in cheek.

Xiån: The push came from our good  friends in HOCICO. Erk invited us to play a show with them in Mexico City. We couldn’t decline the offer. We only had a couple finished tracks at that time. I think we had three or four months to complete the album, learn the songs, and rehearse them enough to perform a decent show.

It was an amazing experience. To this day I can’t believe we pulled that one off. (Still breathing heavy)…

Q: The limited edition of the album is something really special featuring only great remixes by mainly great names from the EBM scene. How did this bonus disc see the daylight and tell us a bit more about the different artists and the remixes they made?

Ryan: We had previously done a remix CD and an EP with some remixes with HARDWIRE. We met Jürgen Engler first through Facebook when we asked him to remix HARDWIRE. We got to meet him in person on the FRONT LINE ASSEMBLY-tour. When we asked him to take a look at KREIGN, he liked it and wanted to remix “5 Layers Of Chaos”. He also wanted to sing a duet with Xiån on “Disco King”. I thought it would be cool if he would sing it in German and he agreed, even though he was unsure if German lyrics would even fit the song. I think it sounds perfect. 

I had worked with REACHING FOR SHADOWS on some of the songs on her debut album. We met SPANKTHENUN, NZ, and NOVA STATE MACHINE through Facebook and Bandcamp. As much as I hate Facebook, sometimes it comes in real handy. 

Xiån: Peter ELM and I have been friends for many years. He was one of the first people we asked to do a remix. His amazingness never fails. A number of years ago I was invited to play drums for VOLVO:242 (a side-project of SPETSNAZ) at ‘Familientreffen 5’ back in 2009 (there’s a couple of cornball videos on YouTube) and I met the guys in AUTODAFEH who were also on the bill. These guys are top notch! Loved their music and performance. They later asked me to play drums on a couple tracks for their upcoming album, “Identity Unknown”. (“Evil Doll & Love Hate” and “Pain” to be exact). I was honored to do so.

Q: 2020 has been for sure a horrible year to release a debut album. How do you experience the pandemic versus your artistic activities? And what are the plans for post-Covid 19?  

Ryan: We would like to play more shows. We did a livestream show called “Isolation Room” and it was fun, but it was in an empty room. We usually feed off of the energy of the audience. It pushes us further to perform harder. We’d like to eventually play shows in Europe.

Xiån: Luckily we’ve stayed healthy throughout the pandemic and have spent a lot of time in the studio writing for our next album. Hope you will all stay tuned. New ideas and sounds are brewing…

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.

www.side-line.com

Genre/Influences: EBM.

Format: Digital, 2 CD.

Background/Info: Kreign is an American duo set up in 2010 by Ryan Hutman (still involved with Hardwire) and Xiån Austin (also involved with hardwire and ex-member of Alter Der Ruine and Dust Is Noise). They set up this band as a tribute to old-school EBM. Earlier this year they self-released a self-titled album featuring ten songs. They got signed to Scanner, which re-released this album while there’s an extra disc available with remixes.

Content: Kreign deals with a solid old-school EBM basis, which is driven by solid bass lines, heavy rhythms and powerful vocals. This basis has been mixed with sophisticated sound treatments, even featuring Acid-like sequences. The songs are all extremely powerful; there’s just one short instrumental break. Two songs are featuring The Strand.

The second disc features 9 remixes by some renowned EBM names such as Die Krupps plus Jürgen Engler, but still established names such as Autodafeh, NZ and Elm. There’s also a remix by Nova State Machine while Kreign remixed 3 songs as well.

+ + + : This album left me literally breathless. I’ve already heard great EBM productions after Nitzer Ebb; thinking of Orange Sector, Spetsnaz or more recently NZ. But Kreign moves a step further by achieving retro-EBM together with intelligent sound treatments. It’s hard to find this kind of powerful EBM with such a sophisticated composition. It’s powerful and crafted with genius. Kreign elevates EBM to a higher artistic degree. The sound treatments are simply amazing; from the heavy, menacing bass lines to the more complex sequences, which together with the enraged vocals will sound like a smack in your face. And there’s more… It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed an extra disc with so many remixes. Kreign not only asked talented projects and great names, but there’s something to say about each remix. I however have a preference for “Building You Back” remixed by NZ and “Live Fast” remixed by Autodafeh. There’s also a cool remix of “Layers Of Chaos” by Die Krupps.

– – – : Both songs featuring The Strand are the only ones that couldn’t convince me a same way, but I’m not saying these songs are worse!

Conclusion: Kreign took me by surprise, unleashing nothing, but a masterpiece of phenomenal old-styled EBM with an intelligent writing.

Best songs: “Add It Up”, “5 Layers Of Chaos”, “Shit Storm”, “Disco King”, “Lost Purpose” + “Live Fast – Remixed by Autodafeh”, “Building You Back – NZRMX”, “Layers Of Chaos – Die Krupps Remix by Jürgen Engler”, “Shit Storm – Reaching For Shadows Mix”.

Rate: (9).

Artist: www.facebook.com/kreignmusic

Label: www.darkdimensions.de /  www.facebook.com/pages/Dark-Dimensions-Label-Group/486014725206

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.

www.side-line.com