Westwind is a musical project from the French post-industrial scene, created by Kris G. since 1999. Over the years it has mixed influences such as Martial industrial, Post-industrial, Dark ambient, Neofolk and Neoclassical music. Westwind's 9th album, 'Despair' is more atmospheric martial industrial than anything else, although it does have its digressions. Hard to believe that in over 20 years I've never heard, nor heard of Westwind, but there's so many artists out there not getting a lot of publicity and attention that it really shouldn’t be a surprise.

In order to really get an idea of the project's progress and evolution I listened to the last couple of releases - 'Survivalism' (2014) and 'Ravage' (2010) which are both multi-disc albums, so there was a lot of material to consume. In comparison to these earlier releases, 'Despair' is definitely a step up in composition, recording and execution. Although there were some interesting tracks on the earlier albums, the sound was primitive and often didn't sound fully fleshed out. Right from the get-go on 'Despair' the music comes on strong with a good martial beat, distinct heavy chords, voices and a simple but effective theme. Westwind doesn't name any tracks on 'Despair,' just like on 'Survivalism' so I won't be doing a track-by-track analysis, however the album is 8 tracks in about 58 minutes. Although the track following the opener starts out kind of martial-electro with a prominent synth riff, it leans more towards the martial than anything else; instrumental and drum heavy, but yet with a simple melodic theme.

There is a definite sense of unease and prelude to war throughout much of the material on 'Despair,' but because (most of) the compositions aren't more specifically themed, there is a generic quality about it too. Beats and ambiences are varied from track to track and some are more complex than others but the majority of this could easily be used as the saber-rattling soundtrack to some militant video game. Then there is the noise issue, which doesn't emerge often, but when it does, you'll know it. The only song with vocals (track 6) has lyrics courtesy of Death in June's Douglas P., but I'm not familiar enough with DIJ's repertoire to know if there is any musical similarity. The final anomaly (on this album) and only other track with voice(s) on it has (sampled & echoed) ranting phrases such as "You say the sexual deviant is the problem...you say the man that hates his fellow man is the problem...you're the problem...tropical rain forest...the murderer...the taker of human life..." and so forth. I know Westwind is trying to make a socio-political statement here as all these voices are drowning in a miasma of noise, but I wouldn't ever want to hear this more than once.

Once again, compared to Westwind's earlier material, 'Despair' is streamlined and mostly on-target, a cool professional product for those who like martial-industrial. The last track was a bit off-putting though. This release is primarily on vinyl and you have to buy the record to get the CD, which has a couple of tracks that the LP doesn't. Cheapest option is digital with all 8 tracks.

Destruction Is Evolutionary (formerly Dying Is Easy) is an electro-industrial project our of Salt Lake City, Utah. They call the project "...an independent recording collective encompassing a variety of musical and philosophical influences with a goal of creating and releasing memorable and thought provoking auditory experiences." The band consists of J. Dreher - lyrics, vocals, synths, samples, programming; Anthony Reynolds - lyrics, vocals, guitars, bass, programming; Steve Borrowman - vocals; Ben Phillips - lyrics, vocals; Josh Lauscher - synths, programming; Ryan Sessions - lyrics, vocals, synths. You'll notice there's no designated drummer among these folks.

This self-titled third album by this band is 10 tracks in 37 minutes. The opener, "Men Like You" is little more than a jumble of synths and samples in 38 seconds. "Organized Science" is science-related spoken word samples with sequenced synth and crunchy industrial guitar over a simple beat. Nice guitar work but no lyrics on this one. "Up Against The Wall" begins with sample of some authoritarian issuing shoot to kill looter orders. Now we get the (kind of distorted) vocals from one of these guys, with brilliant guitar work, but the rhythm is quite submerged on this one. For me, things didn't really take off until "Shatterer (D.I.E. Version)" where everything seems to come together for the band, and spoken word samples are conspicuous in their absence. Vocals alternate between sort of clean and definitely processed. "Hostility" finally showcases the band's strength and also its influences - KMFDM, Ministry, Fear Factory, a little FLA, and bands along those lines. Vocals range from a Jourgensen snarl to a Leeb croaking whisper over balls-to-the wall industrial strength backing. Then, in the middle, a change of tempo and an alternate style for awhile before charging back into the fray. Inspired. Loved the silly 70s/80s TV series music sample at the beginning of "The Game of Life Show" with its Revco-like vocals you're sure to get the joke. "God's Wrath" races in doubletime because it's God's wrath man, no some chump fool's wrath, and there is no escape, not now, not ever. "Eyes of a Psychopath" is more than strange with vocals both scream/croaked and clean. Way over the top.

"The Keeper of My Demise" is the last industrial track on the album and sounds like an attempt to pull out all the stops with machine-gun drumming, clean and distorted vocals, and crunchy guitar that just won't quit. It almost succeeds too, just a hair short of bringing down the house with a rather weak ending. It's a bold move to end things with a predominantly acoustic guitar piece (atypical of the rest of the material on the album) at the end, but the drum programming on this track really sucks...really. This could have been a great album top to bottom but it opened week, ended weak and sounded too derivative in a number of places. Still, there is merit here and this band could easily strike gold on their next one. As for formats, I usually recommend the vinyl but here it's kind of expensive at 33 bucks.

Florida’s AntiMozdeBeast is a one-person avant-garde / noise / industrial / metal project. Gabriel Palacio, the man behind the AntiMozdeBeast, “uses a language in his poetry that is not very commonly found in electronic music”, according to the press release. The idea seems to be to find a balance between electronic dance music, noise music and extreme metal.

AntiMozdeBeast’s latest offering is an EP entitled The Ritual. It has a running time of just under 30 minutes, and consists of five tracks which run seamlessly from one to the next to make up a singular uninterrupted listening experience. The music is harsh, disorientating and unsettling. It is not easy to listen to, and I have no doubt that that is entirely intentional. Demonic and distorted lo-fi screams are a key feature. They are genuinely frightening. The music that pulsates underneath owes a lot to early 90s rave music. There are trance-inspired rhythmic synth patterns and drum ’n’ bass influenced beats. Often the harmonies are unusual and (intentionally, I presume) confusing, but there are also sections where classic psychedelic minor chord synth pads dominate. Sometimes the electronic percussion patterns and samples shift away from skittering dance into industrial territory, with clanging metallic stomping rhythms rising to the fore. There are strange samples including parts that sound like they were from real instruments such as flamenco guitars. Sometimes we hear what sound like weirdly contorted and out-of-key orchestral strings that add more weirdness to the chaotic lunacy. In spite of the swirling madness generated by this noisy mix of disparate styles, the music somehow holds together, albeit precariously. The songs still have a sense of structure and dynamics as opposed to being completely confused. The breaks and dynamic drops that occur periodically are key to preventing The Ritual from becoming too relentless or monotonous. In fact, the music is structured so that each time the screams and harshness return they seem to come back with a renewed intensity and ferocity.

The Ritual will be confusing and difficult for a lot of people to listen to, even if they have some experience with industrial music or similar styles. The experience could be compared to sitting in on some kind of actual bizarre ritual, replete with unfamiliar practices and menacing atmospheres. If the intention is for the music to feel oppressive and constrictive then The Ritual undoubtedly succeeds. Listeners who are able to stomach the dizzying frenzy of the music’s unforgiving exterior will find much to appreciate here.

The Ritual will be released on 23rd April 2021 as a digital download.

Operations of transplant of a genre into a completely different one often smells like an attempt of flirting to a different market, and this grasp of some of the most known KMFDM songs into dub grounds could be too condescendingly labelled in this way. Finding points of contact between industrial/rock and dub/reggae is not that easy, even there were some interesting attempts of melting together some elements of these two styles were done by bands like Meat Beat Manifesto, Swamp Terrorists or Pressure Drop (to mention just a few), particularly in the 90ies. In a recent interview, Sascha Konietzko, the lead of this punky industrial-rock band, that got famous for a style that never adheres to a purist definition of industrial music, besides the awesome covert artworks by Aidan "Brute!" Hughes (fostering his inspiration by means of Italian futurists, Russian constructivists and Golden Age comics), said he was remarkably influenced by dub and reggae while moving the very first steps in productions. Furthermore, he considered punk and reggae as strictly connected, not only for the common criticism against society in respective ages, but also for some technical aspects. Besides his words, the clearer evidence of some connections with dub (besides some tracks within the huge discography over more than 35 years of activism) is maybe their last album "Paradise", whose opening track "K-M-F", featuring Andrew "Ocelot" Lindsley, has been reshuffled and inserted in the tracklist of "In Dub" (...and that 'Bing Bing Bong Bong' vocal excerpt perfectly fits to the new dub-reggae suite!) together with a nice dub version of the title-track "Paradise", re-titled "Para Dub", and "No God", which didn't need any particular retouching as it was a proper dub song with an industrial-rock injection in the middle. Any possible doubts on the meaning of such an operation of conversion of KMFDM song files into a dub format will definitely fade away after the awesome level fo quality of some of these conversions: my favourite ones are songs mostly driven by the voice of Sascha's partner in art and life Lucia Cifarelli, that are "Amnesia" and "Superhero", while the dub version of songs like "Real Thing", renamed "Real Dub Thing", as well as the remake of "Bumaye" where both Sascha and Lucia used to shout on the mic, sound excessively sweetened to me, if compared against their sources, while the pretty surprising dub versions got out from songs that I couldn't imagine that would work in a dub shape such as "A Drug Against War" (retitled "A Dub Against War").

“Wanna Dance” is a 20-minute mini-album from the Italian noise punk outfit. It’s predominantly a set of two-minute-long noise walls of guitar, uptempo punk drumming, distorted angry vocals and stretched, uncomfortable-sounding synths and some experimental lo-fi electronic sounds adding texture. But underneath it there’s a songwriting quality and intelligence that raises it well above the average angry garage band. Tracks like the title track may sound dumb at first listen, but there’s an infectiousness to them and in some ways this is speeded-up, revved-up pop music in punk costumes.

Some of it’s rather earnest, like the only long track “Alter Ego” with its sweary lyrical frustration gradually getting mirrored by the music, or “Champagne”’s barely channelled raw fury.

There are more tongue-in-cheek moments though. “Your Duck”, with its bouncy two-note synth pattern and Iggy Pop-parodying line “now I wanna be your duck”, is the sound of a band not taking things too seriously.

This is the sound of a punk band maturing well, without losing their heart.