DUCA Vol.130 With Every Rage,  Another Part Of Me Dies

Northern Light

Bullet (Album Version)

Following the success of double A-side single, Holy Rivers / Incubation Song, which has racked up over 150,000 streams on Spotify since its October release and was praised by Clash Music for its “shimmering synths, glacial electronics, and heartrending vocals”, London Synthpop group Empathy Test returns with a second, tantalising taste of their upcoming third album, in the form of new single Empty-handed.

Empty-handed presents another sonic leap forward for a band that has never been one to tread water when it comes to their sound, presenting a harder, darker style whilst simultaneously tipping their proverbial hat to the Synthwave scene that helped launch their career back in 2014. An arpeggiated synthesiser provides a relentless momentum from the get-go, while the deceptively simple composition gradually builds to its epic conclusion.

Opening line, “My heart is an empty vessel / Drifting out to sea” sets the tone both lyrically and emotionally. It’s about being unable to give a partner the emotional support or commitment they need and the feeling of emptiness that comes with that. As always, Empathy Test delivers a perfect marriage of music and emotion, the sudden flourishes of strings and synthesisers rushing past like spirits in the night. 

There’s a sense of urgency here that has not been present previously, as well as an innate confidence that suggests the third album, which comes after the simultaneous release of two debut albums Losing Touch (Remastered) and Safe From Harm in November 2017 and is slated for release in early September, might just be the band’s most accomplished to date.

Empathy Test is childhood friends Isaac Howlett (vocals and songwriting) and Adam Relf (production and composition). They perform live with the help of Christina Lopez (live drums) and Samuel Winter-Quick (live keyboards). This June, they tour the UK with Canadian Post Punk band Actors and in September, North America, with Industrial Pop act Aesthetic Perfection. They will also be appearing at selected festivals in Europe. 

Empty-handed will be self-released in digital and CD formats on 20th June 2019, with b-side A River Loves a Stone and remixes by ex-Black City Lights producer TRAAPS and LA artist and producer Ari Mason, plus the band’s customary 7” vinyl picture disc format, all of which can be pre-ordered right now from Empathy Test’s Bandcamp.

For more information, please feel free to contact Empathy Test on email: info@empathytest.com

Empty Handed

Monsters

Bye-Bye Borderline

Lcyd

„Bye-Bye Borderline“

Kiss your loved ones goodbye, turn around one last time and burn down the bridges to your old life. No one can join you on this way. No one but this very special band from Norway who deliver the finest soundtrack to your very own apocalypse ever since they started playing in 1999. More than once, the music for your dying world, the symphony of your self-destruction came from ZEROMANCER. Now, they are finally back. And sound more intense, more stricken and determined than they did in a long time.

First a double strike, then the big hush: After “Sinners International” and “The Death Of Romance” were released with barely a year between these two masterpieces, Norway's Electro Rock connoisseurs vanished from view. Except for their unforgettable live appearances, the ZEROMANCER camp fell silent, a whole three years had to pass until a new album was finally born. “Bye-Bye Borderline” is its name – and sounds like a perfect embodiment of the title: Melancholic, bipolar, in one moment brimful with positive energy, in another falling into a bottomless depth. Sure, pleasure and pain share the same bed. Yet, nobody knew until now they were really that close: With the trained eye for pain and sorrow that made hymns like “My Little Tragedy” to milestones of melancholy in recent years, ZEROMANCER advance with new determination, armed to the teeth with the biggest of emotions. Love, hate, desperation or sacrifice are not only empty words for ZEROMANCER, but razorsharp songs for the next breakdown. Electro Rock mysticism in the purest sense of the word – sensual, highly erotic and altogether much too dangerous.

Songs like “Auf Wiedersehen Boy” or the biting title track prove just how much anger and bitterness piled up in the last three years. They drag a raw Industrial Rock edge back into the ZEROMANCER sound that finally stands for all things dark, infamous and forbidden again. But ZEROMANCER are more than that: The slow-motion serenade of self-destruction called “Manoeuvres” would even stir emotions in a rotten heart. Ambivalent, layered, passionate and abysmal is the guise of “Bye-Bye Borderline” – beginning with the title itself. Do ZEROMANCER sing about healing or disease? About life or death? “Ash Wednesday” certainly is on death's side, although hope seeps through some of the wonderful melodies like the sun through thick clouds. Dance, cry, hush or hope – no matter what it is: ZEROMANCER have just the right music for it. More intimate, more intense Electro Rock has yet to be invented.

Lcyd

Zeromancer

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