Here’s some of our favorite underground metal releases from this week!

A quick look at our favorite underground electronic and dance releases from the week of 8/11!

“The pessimism of EXTERNAL ACTOR is like a bitter medicine. But by painting a portrait of our post-accelerationist dystopia, CRUEL AND STUPID provides comfort in commiseration. That's why this album is one of my favorite releases of the week.”

Long-running darkwave and post punk artist Soft Riot deftly avoids a sense of superficial nostalgia with their newest release No. This project is packed with darkwave synth bangers for the goth club, presenting 80s industrial packaged for the present day in a way that feels authentic and enjoyable.

Croy and the Boys’ new album What Good’s the Medicine? serves up anticapitalist Texan americana inspired by classic country music and cowboy culture while incorporating introspective lyrics that demand answers for the ways life fails us.

This project is an endlessly charming blend of noise pop and alt indie rock featuring feverish, eclectic builds of energy neatly contained in each song. At first you may wonder whether this will be more unimpressive indie rock but El Club Audiovisual blows those fears out of the water in short order.

Ivy Knight’s new EP Near the Lake We Forget to Count the Days gives us a ten minute reprieve from mundanity, as Knight frantically struggles to control and continue this fleeting moment of pure bliss.

Broken Image Faulty Wire remains deeply engaging and somewhat challenging, not giving up its frosty, minimalist, experimental edge to the whims of its pop sensibilities.

Reviews of some of this week’s popular music releases!

A look at some of the best underground electronic and dance releases from the week of 8/4!

Within the Buddhist worldview, suffering, dukkha, is inescapable. Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, and death is suffering. This concept of the First Noble Truth is encapsulated in पुनर्जन्म भाग १ (Rebirth Part 2), the newest album from गौतम बुद्ध (Gautam Buddha).

A look at some of the best underground metal releases from the week of 8/4!

The album makes abundant use of Irish folk instruments and sounds, and the record’s pulsing, meditative structure evokes a leisurely, awestruck walk through the hills.

No album flawlessly reflects the mind of the maker, but people like Dustin Wong at least give a glimpse at what it’s like to get really close.

While grief often receives an unfair appraisal in pop culture as something roughly equivalent to depression, the real life experience of grief manifests as a meandering and painful yet healthy and natural process. For the members of New York darkwave artist Activity, Spirit in the Room serves a key role in this process as the lyricist chews through the initial denial stages of their grief.

Breakup songs can be really cliche, but there’s something about an artist processing the loss of a relationship through their dedicated artform that has me on the edge of my seat. In this case, I’m talking about New Zealand group Strawpeople and their new album Knucklebones, a delicately produced and effortlessly cool plunge into dark electropop.

Winderen sets the scene to contrast the natural and anthropogenic as representatives of good and evil, as the noises of human machinery always throws unpleasant disorder into the harmonious world.

With the occasional hint of darkness sprinkled throughout in the form of suspended chords or near-harmonies, Preludes makes sure that we know that life in this town isn’t a fairytale, but we walk away from the record with an overwhelming sense of Flaer’s appreciation of their hope in spite of its difficulties and flaws.

they’re with you always by mu tate is a potent reminder that we always bear the influence of those we’ve lost