Track Listing: Walkout Live, DSC (Android Lust remix), Painfully Obvious, Doors & Windows (Mimetic Mix), Doors & Windows (Displacer Mix), Thermodynamics, Punch the Red Circle, Skipping Stone, Doors & Windows (Haujobb Remix), DSC (Torrent Vaccine Remix), Windows Within Windows (I, Parasite Remix).

Solidly constructed. Nothing’s gonna rattle loose here, except maybe your sound system! Richly textured industrial tracks that are “IN YOUR FIST!” The Dark Overlord approves.

OK so I’m slightly exaggerating here! But Monstrum Sepsis have forged a sound that reminded this critic of dark futurist, Sci-Fi films that I love. Get out your black popcorn for this one kiddies, and stomp yo‘ boot in the Armageddon mud! (reviewed by KM)

For more information, check out www.monstrumsepsis.com

Track Listing: Everything, Ghosts, Epiphany, Swallowing Stones, Drifting, Breath of the River, Imbalance, Snapshots, Always There, Trinity Street, Just Fly Away.

Well, if an obviously belle noir group like The Changelings can be voted “best in Atlanta” in the World Music category, then award winning folk singer/songwriter Carolyn Currie can garner accolades here at Morbid Outlook. Though her music is more like the stuff you hear on NPR’s World Cafe radio show. This is adept songwriting sung by a voice markedly more ethereal than many folkies. Nice to hear complex acoustic arrangements as opposed to synthesizers and other electronica for a change. Perhaps new folk has a new denizen with this artist. Thought-provoking, often introspective lyrics with original, sometimes spooky twists to the imagery clarify why this offering was sent to a gothic publication for review. I enjoy it and also passed it on to my sister, a devout World Cafe fan. (reviewed by AF)

For more information, check out www.carolyncurrie.com

Track Listing: Hello Columbus, Not a Gear at All, Listen Somewhat Awkward.

I don’t quite know what to do with this yet... don’t really get it. Heavy, dense electronic textures with slow, emburdened vocals that seem to bewail something unceasing. Got more interesting with repeated listening and familiarity with the subject matter though. This guy seems to me like a poet who decided to take his poetry into the realm of song and composition. (reviewed by AF)

For more information, check out www.davidewilliams.com

Track Listing: Mushroom Trance, Ode To Twilight Clones, Faust Freak, Isolation Tank, Dementia, Sleep Deprivation, Toltec Ritual, The Homily, Unborn Self, Fish Clowns And Snakes, The First Flower, Schizophrenia.

Holy Andre Breton Batman! This guy’s groovin’ on some surrealistic stuff! Delightfully so my friends! It’s got a quirky vibe to it: picture plugging an amp into a Lava Lamp and you’ll get the idea.

Zino’s work also reminds me of what Zoviet France is into. Alien instrumental tracks that disorient. But not to the degree that you’ll find yourself clutching yourself in a corner. Heavens no! Robert’s work is much too fun for that. Mind you the kind of fun I’m talking about is watching horror B movies at 3am. Or creeping people out by hanging out in front of the morgue, giggling. Darkly wacky! (reviewed by KM)

For more information, check out www.experimentalartists.com

Track Listing: Play With Us, Continental Razorblade, Better in Industry, Euchre, Teardrinking, Vitamin Sugar, Hardwired, Exist, Your Son is Fine, Free Tonight.

There is a masterpiece of occult fiction, “The Lost Room”, by Fitz-James O’Brien. In this short story a man finds his boarding-room occupied by a mysterious group of refined strangers who seem bent on spending all their time on revelry, food, sex, beauty, drama, and esoteric conversation. As the question of their true nature becomes more and more dubious, the man rejects their offer to join them and tries to oust them from his room, at which point they inform him it is, in fact, their room and they have just been letting him use it. After a walk and a smoke in the darkened hotel gardens to ponder his problem with these wayward spirits, he returns to find the room gone – the whole room, right down to the door where it used to be, including all his stuff!

Okay... so this band is that group of mystery beings, with their flapperish sense of madcap mayhem, danger, drama, and otherworldly charm. At first listen to the first song I thought I wasn’t going to like the music, just didn’t warm to the sound right off, and the singer more shouting lyrics than singing them, though it is well rehearsed and delivered with authority. By two or three songs in, I discovered a quality to the brassy vocal delivery akin to a deco era jazz horn player; the subject matter and deft way it is treated, with nifty double entendre and such, drew me in. There is a strong sense that these people are sort of blasting their way through eternity, and the last place they were before here was the Roaring 20s, where they definitely “roared” and probably left a trail of maimed victims. Now if I could just get them to give me back my room and my stuff. (reviewed by AF)

For more information, check out www.curiosityvalentine.com

Track Listing: Spleen, Une Torche por Orphee, Clairimonde, Derrida, L’abbatoir.

Rock historians and pundits alike speak an era of “incredible creativity”, of “all or nothing” attitude. A time when bands weren’t interested in conforming to labels and “just did it!” In most cases, these punditoids are referring to what happened roughly 20 years ago. Let’s not put a label on it okay? We know what that so-called era was. We also know that the groups popping up now are trying desperately to tap into that energy, and we all know that the majority of them that end up in the mainstream are failing miserably.

So what’s my point? My point is that Veronique Diabolique has tapped into that energy! I genuinely got excited about what blasted out of my headphones! I LUUVVE these guys!

So are they “GOTH?” Hello! What did I just say about labels? Okay, ranting and raving aside. If you need a safe envelope, to dictate your musical tastes, scroll down to the next review and ignore what I’m raving about. If you’re looking for some fresh air to waft into your crypt, hear me out.

V.D. (sweet abbreviation no?) uses the basic Rock n’ Roll array of guitar, bass, drums and vocals, NO keyboards. Solange, Jean-Luc, Didier, and Dominique have plugged into the groove that the Velvet Underground, Joy Division and early Bauhaus had. Yet it’s their sound. Subject matter varies from Derridda, to Baudelaire, (there! That Goth enuff for ya?) to what sounds like an L’homage to Cocteau. Oh yeah! Another thing: you may have to brush up on your French, or hit the translation engines out there, cuz Veronique only sings in French. Which is interesting since the group is based in North Carolina! Hmmm? Is this the French colonial thing happening here? Couldn’t say as their bio on the website was sadly lacking at the time your humble narrator was reviewing this delectable EP.

That being said these folks have a sparse, kinetic energy happening. It’s balanced with just the right amount of dark atmosphere to inspire all you brooding introspective types out there! So what are waiting for? It’s a measly 5 bucks! Go and buy this one now! (reviewed by KM)

For more information, check out www.veroniquediabolique.com

Track Listing: Midnight Procession, Mark of the Witch, Devil’s Mass, Birth is Through Blood, Binding of Shadows, Profane the Twelve, Bringer of the Luciferian Flame, Abjuring the Cross, Dirge to the Deceased.

Anyone for a black mass? Next stop Hexentanz, all you Satanists out there in Morbidland. Instrumental “soundscapes” that are the aural equivalent of a painting; very evocative accompanied on most tracks by spoken word male/female voices that include occultic intoning and chant, sometimes with spooky, operatic female backing vocals. I am not a Satanist, so I can’t fully appreciate the text and import, though it is obviously well done and crafty, as well as a bit hair raising. (reviewed by AF)

For more information, check out www.hexentanz.us

Track Listing: Lust, Fikk Dich mit Fire, Kaiser von Shizer, Disko Fire Scheiss Messiah, Blut! Sex! Fire!, Burning Bush, Sheissway to Hell, And We Shall Purify, 10th Circle, Hellalujah, Purity.

Kind of corny in that manner so often found with the Satanic, the title says it all if you are up on your German. Does the world really need another industrial blackmetal band applying yet another torch to poor, burning Babylon? As far as I’m concerned, if it rocks ass like this band pour it on and add gasoline! (reviewed by AF)

For more information, check out www.metropolis-records.com

Track Listing: Play Nice, Dirty Water (Sister Machine Gun Mix), Parade (Electronic), Most People Don’t Forget (Undertone), Babyteen (In.flect Mix), Elaine (Homegrown), Most People Don’t Forget (Terminal Bliss Mix), Babyteen (Monstrum Sepsis Mix), Elaine (Hungry Lucy Mix), You Complicate Things (Look the Other Way).

Remixes of their excellent “The Difference Is A Boy” album, which was reviewed here in January, as well as some new material. Just as good as the original. The remixes feature work by Sister Machine Gun, Hungry Lucy, Terminal Bliss’s Daniel Cain, and Monstrum Sepsis (who are on the same label). As I concluded when I reviewed this band before, a skillfully rendered and worthwhile effort. (reviewed by AF)

For more information, check out www.trigger10d.com

Track Listing: Bodydriver (featuring kaRIN of Collide), Descendre, Beautiful/Deadly, Ethereal (featuring kaRIN of Collide), Red-xtc, Street Dogg, Stimulus Intro (Seduce Me), Stimulus: 101, E.T.S.E.

Sort of like telephone sex with a male stranger who happened to misdial your number while trying to call someone else... set to danceable/tranceable drum ‘n’ bass club mix electronica. Not really my cup of talk-dirty-to-me dark tea, but maybe it’s yours? Starting with track four we get the female at the other end of the phone line, all awrithe, dripping with love honey, and uber responsive. Could conceivably leave people screwing on the dancefloor. Then back comes the male dominant, “Street Dogg”, for some bestiality I guess (pardon my metaphors). Orgiastic music for a sweat and semen fetish ball; overtly hedonistic and pornographic, right down to the cumshots. (reviewed by AF)

For more information, check out www.mbx101.com