German label Dependent, dropped the new Fïx8:Sëd8 album Octogram, in the month of October, which seems oddly apt. The guys from Wiesbaden, have really put a lot of thought and heart into Octogram, with there being eight tracks, which all have a running time of approximately eight minutes each. Further more, each track has the last words of a imprisoned person, about to receive the ultimate penalty of death.
“TheUnborn” is your introduction to the concept of last words integrated into music. There is a undeniable truth is the fact that ‘everybody dies,’ but not everybody gets to choose when, The synths are sublime at times, almost serene in acceptance of the awaited fate, though there is a darkness within and it accented with the high pitch electronic feedback, breaking into your conscious.
There are probably no more powerful words than ‘I don’t want to go,’ when you know they were the last utterances from a human, who was euthanised, and “New Eden” is electronically beautiful, compared to the voice of this woman. The synths simply sparkle like stars in the sky, that will never be seen again and there is an urgency, with the metallic vocals that morph at will into otherworldly singing.
“Darkness Visible” has a delicate tone, carried with the almost oriental lines that ring out making me think of DepecheMode, broken by the guttural vocals. It sails on mercurial synths. There feels like a righteous reign of fire just waiting to break loose in “Oathbreaker,” as if the track is on the knife’s edge, waiting to break open, throbbing and building in tension. The beats become heavier and evolves into semi rhythmic noise.
There is a point in Octogram where you begin to wonder if humanity has the right to snuff out the life of another, as you run the gamut of emotions where the music and vocals sometimes builds on the psychological state and in other tracks, can almost be diametrically opposite. The music, as always, from Fïx8:Sëd8 is really breath-taking, putting forth creations that are not just danceable, but also take you from your safe place and make your heart beat just a bit faster.
Let us take a jaunty journey to Seaford in Victoria, a place of extreme weather patterns and industrial rock music, where the native DevilMonkey can be found. At the end of October, those sons of a DevilMonkey, namely Jim (bass, vocals, programming), Jesse (guitars, programming) and Wayne (drums, percussion), dropped the latest single “ZeroDays,” featuring the guest vocals of BeckMcPhai.
Be lured into a false sense of electronic security, which is soon broken with the bass heavy guitar work and the guttural vocals. Wowsers….it really is a vocal thunderdome of epic Aussie accented angst and funkiness. My description is going to sound a bit wrong, but the best analogy I have is Australian pub rock sashaying on down, and getting all industrial dirty on punk overdrive. It works and you can also check out the extraordinary PalliativeRemix that amps up the cyber ante, creating a dancefloor track. All bets are on DevilMonkey taking you back to “ZeroDays.”
The 90s was such an odd time for music. Grunge had broken forth into the mainstream, electronic dance music was no longer something that was just heard in clubs and raves. People were mixing influences and genres such as post-punk, brit pop and shoegaze, while industrial musicians, such as Ministry, had grown teeth incorporating rock, or pursued a more techno, harsh edged dance style like TheProdigy. There was something very fluid in how musicians drew from whatever influence caught their fancy. Now, you may ask why I speak about the 90s and I will say that after listening to New York’s HeavyHalo, they have that sound…. that edge of possibility, of writing anything they wish with those influences and melding it into songs that are definitively theirs.
HeavyHalo are McKeever, who is from a more tradition post-punk/grunge band background and Gosteffects, who cut his teeth as a DJ on the illegal rave scene. Together, they have created music heavily influenced by gothic melodrama and melodies, while firmly planting their feet in industrial EDM. One part harmony, one part resonating cacophony and lashing of personal themes and dreams might be one way to begin to describe their sound. Vocalist, McKeever kindly let Onyx interrogate him about the latest album, Damaged, and most things Heavy Halo.
What prompted you in the first place to combine forces, creating Heavy Halo?
Gosteffects and I had been orbiting similar circles in the NYC underground, I’d been more in the indie/punk DIY scene and he’d been in the techno/rave scene. When we met we realized we had an ideal Venn diagram of musical tastes and focuses. We always say I’m the starter of songs and he’s the finisher. So when we came together to make music, the process flowed naturally.
Can you tell us a bit more about what you were both doing musically before Heavy Halo?
I played in noise rock bands growing up but also sang in choir and played jazz guitar. I came to NYC to study classical composition and poetry at Columbia which took me on a detour of writing string pieces and chamber pop. After graduating, I moved to Brooklyn and was working the door at venues like 285 Kent watching artists like HEALTH, Dan Deacon, Pictureplane, Deafheaven, Diiv, Vivian Girls, and endless others rip these warehouses to shreds. During this time I had an indietronica noise-pop type band called Life Size Maps. When that band imploded I knew I wanted to create its EVIL TWIN. That became Heavy Halo.
Gosteffects grew up in the Oklahoma City rave scene, throwing renegade techno parties in abandoned buildings. He was also DJing and producing, buying a Kurzweil sampler with money he saved from working at a pizza joint for two years. Eventually, he started the long-running OKC bloghouse party ROBOTIC that hosted hundreds of DJ’s like Skrillex and Steve Aoki at the height of the dance music explosion. This eventually led him to move to NYC to DJ and produce there, being a regular DJ at clubs like Webster Hall and The Box.
It could be said that you inhabit your music, that pieces of you are melded into the textures and lyrics. What is it like to hear that from the music you create?
It is definitely a strange phenomenon hearing your own music back. It is constantly shifting, when you first write something, hearing it back elicits a surprise of like: “wow this came out of me and exists now.” Then you go through a variety of phases of feeling differently about it while completing the song and it can be difficult to let a finished version go.
This question also reminds me of something a mentor of mine told me, “when you’re going to sing a song you have to think of 2 things: why you wrote it originally and why you’re singing it now.” The more time goes by, the more separate those feelings can be, but that’s what keeps a song vital and alive rather than being a museum piece.
Music is, for many cathartic, and many musicians say it is a kind of anchor, helping to deal with anxiety, stress and some mental disorders. What does music mean and do for you?
If you reach a true impasse and wall in your life that you can’t solve using logic or conventional means, sometimes writing a song is the only way to psychically overcome it. You have to write your way out of hell.
Heavy Halo dropped the album Damaged Dream back in the middle of the year, and I was wondering how long had it taken to write and then record?
It took a couple years to write and record the album, we did everything ourselves from production to tracking to the mix and master. Getting the final versions right took some time because we were balancing so many layers and trying to find just the right degree of bite vs clarity.
I read that the line ‘damage me’ comes from going to a show and seeing a bunch of beautiful punks, but can you tell the readers what the track is about?
So the whole song of Damage Me was written but I didn’t have the right chorus mantra. That weekend I ended up at a crust punk show at a scuzzy dive bar with a bunch of deathrock baddies and was like damn, I want someone to “damage me.” The song is about fucking each other to escape the fact that the world is fucked up.
The first single is also the title track, featuring Georgi Bangs on vocals. How did you get the gothic pop princess Georgi to be on “Damage Me” and why did you pick it as the taster for the album?
So, following the last question, after I had tracked vocals for the song, Gosteffects thought it was missing that final x-factor and suggested coed vocals. We had just met Georgi through the Brooklyn goth scene and realized she would absolutely crush the part, the rest is history.
We spent a rigorous but entirely fulfilling weekend shooting the videobrilliant Max Novaenergy of the track we decided to make it the first single we dropped for Damaged Dream.
I hear a lot of The Prodigy in the single, plus it has that high energy associated with a lot of the industrial music of the 90s. Is this an era that has a lot of influence for you both, considering both indie rock and electronic dance music were ripping up the charts back then?
The 90’s were such an incredible decade for music in several ways.
On one hand, you had some of the rawest and darkest music ever to be in the zeitgeist. Grunge, alternative, and metal were forces of nature. It’s unreal to me that music that honest and self-aware was able to bulldoze into the mainstream consciousness the way it did.
On the other hand, you had the invention of incredibly futuristic production techniques and styles of music based on those cropping up and pushing the envelope forward. From techno to big beat to triphop to IDM to drum and bass. Sampling and digital recording cracked open new worlds to explore sonically and emotionally.
Industrial is the perfect marriage of these two perspectives. Also, given how many vital new artists are mining that tradition and reinventing it today, it’s safe to say there’s a lot of lifeblood left and territory to explore.
The second single “New Blood” could not be more different, with that haunting guitar and mournful attitude, lit up brilliantly by the synths. The track definitely has a more gothy/darkwave vibe, so is it a vampire thing or a metaphor for finding connection in the world?
New Blood is probably the most straightforward and direct song on the record. It was written about livewire desire, wanting to find someone to have an explosive romance with to shake you both out of the doldrums of stagnancy and mundanity of everyday life. The vampire metaphor fit like a lace glove.
PHOTOS BY TORI MCGRAW
The video for “New Blood” is pretty lush as well, so what was the thought behind it and was it intentional to shoot it in black and white film noir style?
We worked with the awesome director Brendan McGowanknowledge of old monster movies as well as silent film shooting techniques and aesthetics. It was his idea to go with black and white as well as use subtitles and an antiquated aspect ratio to evoke the shadowy atmosphere of the early days of horror film.
It was definitely a conscious choice to have Damage Me be super cyberpunk and New Blood to be the total opposite. It’s fun to try and give people whiplash.
Is there an overriding theme for the album or a flow?
Simply put, a “Damaged Dream” is what you’re left with when the ideals you hold shatter. Cruel reality brings the hammer down on the purity of innocence, joy, youth, love, energy, creativity, optimism…
But while the Dream is Damaged, it is not totally destroyed. In fact, desperate times call for desperate measures, and you can use the longing spark deep within you as fuel to wage war against the negative forces pulling you down. You can reject nihilism and strive to reclaim your agency and meaning in a chaotic world.
Do you have a favorite track off the album and if so why?
Bloodrush is probably my favorite because it accomplishes everything I want a Heavy Halo song to be: melodic, melancholic, driving, romantic, aggressive with a marriage of synths, drum machines, guitars and orchestral choir samples blended beyond recognition.
Please tell us about the new remix you have done for the man with the angelic vocals, Andy Bell (Erasure) and how you have put your spin onto it?
We were honored to be asked to remix “Godspell” from Andy Bell’s new album Ten Crowns. We had to finish it within 3 days after getting home from our summer tour with Light Asylum. After sleeping for a solid 24 hours after getting home, we got right to work. The song was already really interesting melodically and lyrically and Andy Bell’s vocals are otherworldly so it was hugely inspiring to work on.
The lyrics are laced with castigating vitriol and disdain for grifters and selfish hangers-on. We tried to echo this venom in the instrumental we created and up the darkness. Musically it was also really cool to reharmonize Andy’s melody with mysterious chord progressions.
Talking of remixes, you have done quite a few for other artists, including one small band called Duran Duran. What is it like having other musicians trusting you with their baby and do you find joy in tinkering with tracks that are not yours?
Gosteffects has more experience with this as he is a mixing and mastering engineer by trade. Living together I watch him help countless artists discover their voice and get to the finish line with singles, albums, and dance mixes. When he works with already established artists it’s endlessly inspiring to see how he brings a different angle to their work.
You live and record in a converted 19th century hospital. I am curious how you managed to find such a cool place to occupy and do you think it influences your music and mood?
It is a pretty classic New York City story. The building was a historic Jewish hospital built in the 1800’s. If you were born in Brooklyn at that time it was probably in this building. Albert Einstein was also treated here in a life saving procedure where they wrapped part of his brain in cellophane. It worked and he lived another 5 years.
This neighborhood we live in was plagued with race riots in the 1990s around when the hospital was closed down. The laundromat in the basement was the morgue. The super of the building told me when they took over the building a body was left in the basement. Apparently the city or whoever owned it before just completely abandoned the building. That’s how bad it was here at the time. He said he just told people in the neighborhood to come take the computers and beds and everything.
The biggest influence the building has on us is more pragmatic than supernatural. Since we have 2 studio rooms in our apartment it makes it very easy to work on different aspects of tracks at the same time.
The next burning question is do you share your residence with ghostly types, and if so, what have you seen or heard?
Honestly, if there are spirits lingering around here, they seem to have good vibes. Being a hospital, maybe the doctors and nurses did a valiant job caring for the patients. If anything we are more angry and disturbed than the poltergeists…
Heavy Halo is now on the Silent Pendulum Records label. Do you find them a better fit for the band and how did you end up signing to them?
Silent Pendulum is an awesome NYC-based label run by musicians, for musicians. We ended up working with them because our band and their label are deeply ingrained in the Brooklyn underground music and art scene. The modern world tries to convince you that any creative endeavor can be accomplished over the internet, but there’s nothing quite like hashing out projects face-to-face.
What musicians or acts were your original influences?
Early in our friendship I was living in Silverlake in LA and Gosteffects was visiting and checking out the beach at Santa Monica. I drove to pick him up and it took FIVE HOURS to get there and back. In that time we listened to the same scratched Smashing Pumpkins and NIN cd’s on repeat along with some futuristic club shit like Rustie, DBridge, and Dark0. I believe the genesis of our sound formed through that arduous ordeal.
Who do you listen to now and is there anyone out there you think people should really check out?
As a side quest from Heavy Halo, I play guitar in a band called Coatie Pop. We toured with Pixel Grip and Patriarchy, both incredible bands that dropped banger albums this year, check them out!
Last question, which you don’t have to answer… If you could dig up any famous person, musician, artist, poet, writer etc, and Onyx could reanimate them for a conversation, who would you pick?
I would pick Carl Jung, his theories on the shadow self and being possessed by ”creative illness” are so deep and ahead of their time. He was a real innovator and fearless creator. In pursuit of his unique ideas he went against his mentor Sigmund Freud’s theories and was ostracized from the psychology community at large. But he won out and received recognition in the end. A true artist.
Mach FoX (Zwaremachine) is back with a single released in September, called “Biteback“, which heralds in the new album Chaos of Man for October, that will be out on Phage Tapes.
Mach FoX are marking their territory laying down heavy guitar riffs with equally heavy electronics, those signature thumping beats, and all drawn together with the muddied and brutalised vocals of Fox, reminiscent of Trent Reznor. There is even funky bass lines that would fit in well in the time of disco.
“Biteback” is industrial rock where you can hear the ties to the 80s EBM, as well as the synth lines in the chorus that reek of early 80s electronica. So, Mach FoX are leaning into a lot of influences and, honestly, that sort of thing can go sideways quickly, however it all just works. All the angst to get on down to with Mach FoX and “Biteback.”
It is Onyx’s great pleasure to premiere the new single from Melbourne’s goth-tastic duo, Velatine. “We’re Not Suburban” is HollyPurnell’s second single with the band, after joining fellow musician and producer Loki Lockwood, on the darkwave journey to create fabulous songs, and it comes out on the label Spooky Records.
Let the night sweep you away into its dark embrace, as the synths sensuously ask for surrender, and the sirens of emergency services, reminds us the city after sunset it full of life. Purnell’s singing is unhurried and so easy on the ears, as she elucidates about how being suburban can be perceived as being suffocating and ‘normal’, something artistic types are constantly at war with. At times, the synths caress the vocals, before becoming spikey. You can hear Lockwood’s vocals, deep and in unison with Purnell, as the track goes on and the sirens become increasingly intrusive.
Lockwood told me the track is autobiographical, until the lines ‘Despite the odds, The un-dead, you’re not, So be a little reckless, And make the life you’ve got,’ which is more of an ethos that many of us should take note of for ourselves. Velatine have made a lush video, walking and driving through those same suburban streets, so you can see those two beautiful people haunting your screen. The song itself is slightly reminiscent of that Portishead style, and I think Holly’s vocals are perfect. I can’t wait to hear go from strength to strength as she proceeds. “We’re NotSuburban” is yet another showcase of Lockwood’s composition mastery and proving Velatine don’t care to be run of the mill, because boring is for other people.
Let’s go back to January of this year and visit an EP from Copenhagen’s Sanity Overdrive called god.clear (). The man behind this project is Paweł Mielcarek (Anthropoid Idol, ex-Haemorrhagic Diarrhea), and he meshes dark synthwave with nihilistic industrial.
We kick off with the short lived intro “Invocatio,” which leads into “L’autoportrait binaire,” filled with the drone of an electric guitar, the focal piece, while the synths is the softer foil, making the grinding guitar even more aggressive as it gathers speed.
The electronic knocking rhythm is soon joined by the guitar in “Nur-noch-leben,” building up the growing suspense. The air is becoming thick with the ever pervading pressure of the pounding beats and driving guitar.
The final track is the galvanic “Black Screen,” as the guitar buzzes angrily with the pounding beat. It is a cohesive explosive attack from a well oiled machine, asserting its dominance, thundering in fury, with the ominous synths raising the foreboding portent of something this way coming.
There is a bleakness to the music that the industrial aspect feeds into and the synthwave is often used as the emotive over tones, seeking to coat each track in variants of darkness. SanityOverdrive’sgods.clear() EP is an abrasive sonic journey.
DianaRingo is a Finnish film maker, who also makes avant-garde post-punk music. She released in August the single teaser “HappyMealz” off the album Cyberwolf, which dropped in October. You might say, Onyx, you are a bit late….*pointed stare ensues*…. aaaaand you would be correct, but we aren’t talking about that. It is all about this cool single “HappyMealz.”
Ringo’s vocals are unique, with the closest comparison I have being DiamandaGalas when she is hitting them low notes with her keening tones, matched with the spoken word veracity of Nico. It instantly spins you around after hearing the intro of sparkling synthwave and wailing guitar.
Is “Happy Mealz” about the children’s boxed meal that comes with a plastic toy from the place with the golden arches?? Where artificial food meets short lived joy, but it keeps the masses peachy keen and wanting more. It is the disconnect of a world that is swamped in mediocrity, because the common folk have been convinced, what the media and corporations sell you is your only choice. Choose life, choose freedom and choose to listen to something a bit different with DianaRingo.
When you are a band who is all about horror in real life and movies, the Halloween season is very important. Who Saw Her Die? (WSHD?) get very excited around this time, gracing us with their joy of all stories gruesome. Recently they released the Mothman EP, which you should check out, but they have dropped the fresh corpse of Dead or Alive’s track “Something In My House.”
This is not the disco version. It has been pared down to its bones and rebuilt like Frankenstein’s monster. It rumbles and groans, with the slow stalking beat and slightly lisped growled vocals of a broken and murderous heart. The synths add to the ghostly atmosphere.
A curse on the houses of Stock, Aitken and Waterman for their perversion of Dead OrAlive, who originally started off as the far more gothic Nightmares In Wax, but I will concede that without them, we might never had “You Spin Me,” (which I hated for several decades after spinning it every Friday night for two years) and “Something in My House.” The WSHD? cover is so different and yet so much in the vein of tongue in cheek that it was always was meant to be taken for. Hello? Police? There is “Something in My House” and it is all the fault of Who Saw Her Die?!
Portland’s Ceremony Shadows released the single “Future Past Collapse.” in September. This diverse trio, made up of musician/composer Timo Kissel, with vocalists/lyricists Anastasia Darkwater and Jakub Jerzy, and for the single, they are joined by JanaCushman (Darkswoon) and Annalisa Rose (Glori) vocally.
Jerzy’s vocals are the anchor in the human world, deep and unfazed by the electronics, while the backing singing is so precise and together, it almost seems unreal, as if they could be the computer code, enticing you in with their glossy cadence, All is enhanced by the dreamy synths, which could belong to a much more ‘innocent’ era.
The band has said that “FuturePastCollapse” was written about how AI could soon rewrite what it means to be a human, where talent and artistic ability no longer will be required for mass production, leaving us longing for the days of old. Indeed, this track feels like a link between when we were the masters of our tech and the onset of AI controlling what we hear and see, however, for now you can revel in the non artificial intelligence of CeremonyShadows.
RonnyFlissundet and KristianLiljan dropped their EP DancingDrone back in June, through their project RuleofTwo. Based in the capital of Norway, this duo blend electronics with whatever moody genre takes their fancy and due to being rather prolific, in October they released the single “Cloud Nine.”
There is something classically 80s about the synths that makes you think of groups like Depeche Mode and Erasure. Maybe it is the play of dark notes with the lighter ones, or maybe the graceful vocals that intertwine in delightful harmony
“CloudNine” is about taking your life into your own hands. Stop waiting for the right time and permission to live in the moment because in the end, all those moments are fleeting. It is an important message that most of us don’t understand until we reach a certain age. The music is really glorious in the way it soars, with a hint of regret, but more so a joyous refrain of freedom. Also, give Rule of Two’s music video’s a look, reminiscent in style of another Norwegian band, a-ha.
Onyx Music Reviews 