XVIII WROCŁAW INDUSTRIAL FESTIVAL

The indestructible and hyperactive Gaya Donadio, also known as Hagshadow/Hinoeuma, demonstrates the project named ACL as another mutation of the famous Anti Child League.  The anti-music of ACL began in 1997 as a post-punk experiment, soon taking the shape of completely radical and unrestricted performances applying all possible media. Gaia’s personality hates rest. Uncompromising and productive for more than 20 years, totally active on the London industrial scene. As a performer, she has participated in an infinite number of projects and collaborations (e.g. with Partick Leagas of Sixth Comm and Martine Bowes of Attrition). As a solo artist, she recorded a series of albums, including The Father, The Son, The Holy Spirit. ACL’s ingredients are elements of sub-genres such as harsh noise, power electronics industrial, rhythm noise, and ritual dark ambient.ACL is a solo instrument of fight and determination, whose each live-action is a display of uncontrollable rage and readiness for confrontation. Attention needed! [ws]

Ah Cama – Sotz has been standing out on the rhythm noise scene since the 1990s, but its founder, Herman Klapholz from Antwerp, had already taken his first steps in the world of dark sound a decade earlier as a participant in the famous project Hybryds. He has collaborated with The Klinik, Vidna Obmana and other artists associated with the industrial scene of northern Europe. Ah Cama-Sotz started with a solid, perfectly produced rhythm noise and released his output through labels such as Hands. The common feature of most of that work was the extremely boosted low frequencies. The aim of Ah Cama-Sotz’s music is to activate the mind and take the audience into something like an infinite tunnel and on a journey into the infinite depths of consciousness. The whole thing is spiced with a demonic flavour. Each fragment is provided with an exposition of irrational, dark powers, embodied in the figure of a predatory bloodsucking bat. Herman Klapholz has always refused to conform to any stylistic limitations. While, in his youth, he was fascinated by classical symphonic music, in his own work one can hear many elements – from serial and minimalist rhythm to dark ambient, from ritual trance music to sub-bass drone. In the later stages of his career, around the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, Ah Cama-Sotz’s music evolved into techno-like and break forms. Klapholz’s love for low frequencies led him to incorporate drum’n’bass motifs in his work, a result of which is ethno-tribal industrial music with a powerful dance vibe. The previous appearance of Ah Cama-Sotz at WIF was received enthusiastically, so we may safely assume that also this time, the artist will seduce and electrify the Gothic Hall. [ws]

Unlike many repetitive, almost banal projects that exploit the area of power electronics, Am Not immediately draws the listener’s attention with its quality. The success of the project headed by Tamon Miyakita consists in the awareness of the medium, proper proportions, and accuracy – qualities which are quite rare in the sphere of radical power electronics. Am Not made its début in 2010 in London, under the wings of Unrest Productions, a label specializing in this genre. First Morbid Vibrations and Unpunished were an original offering that went beyond the mould that probably anyone who speaks the language of noise has to fight. Am Not is a skilfully composed, carefully dosed display of anger and ideological opposition. An inherent ingredient of the live act is video montages devoid of chance and nonsense. The result is a solid and shallow-free explosive audiovisual material. The output of Am Not can be situated close to projects such as Anenzephalia and Genocide Organ. Hermann Kopp himself appears on the last cassette, entitled Incursions. [ws]

Anti-Terror are consistently faithful to their firm roots – industrial veterans insusceptible to fads. The band consists of two musicians who don’t reveal their names. Those well-versed about the scene know the people behind Anti-Terror. The project is a duo of musicians known from the punk band Liberum Veto, who later started making music under the name Compulsive Shopping Disorder and also published the famous fanzine Dark-Zone. Both, always devoted to dark forms of electronic music. Anti-Terror draw on the sources of electro, inspired by classic groups from the turn of the 80s and 90s. Without resorting to technological novelties, the music is full of references to the real world and invariably created with rough industrial sounds and quality electronic gear. [ws]

Tibetan ritual music does not deal with the emotions of mortal individuality, but with the eternally present, timeless qualities of universal life, for which personal joys and sorrows do not exist. Thanks to it, we feel unity with the sources of reality in the deepest layers of our being.Contemplative, meditative, and space-filled music of Contemplatron combines electronic sound structures with acoustic sounds (gongs, bells, and drums). Conteplatron is inseparably connected with the rituals of Buddhism, it transfers inspirations of the Tibetan Book of the Dead into the language of music and is a sonic rendition of the above-quoted paragraph. [ws]

The unique vintage set of unforgettable Covenant will be a special event of this year’s WIF. There were many reasons for choosing Covenant as one of the festival’s headliners. The friendship and joint work of Eskil Simonsson and Joakim Montelius have been within the orbit of the post-punk electronic music since the mid-1980s. The original Covenant set was under the overwhelming influence of the roots of Electronic Body Music. Dreams Of A Cryotank – the first album, dating from the early 90s, contained not only elements of advanced neo-EBM but also everything that the Swedish duo would later on become famous for. In addition to the superb sound, perfect production, and catchiness, Covenant’s strictly synth-based work contained the characteristic element of humanum. Covenant’s music focused on universality and constant progress. At the beginning of the first decade of the 21st century, the dynamics, melody, and perfection offered by Covenant began to dictate the directions of the development of so-called future pop. Despite their overwhelming success, they never departed from the ethos of the independence and autonomy of their alternative beginnings. The hymns full of soul went beyond the limited formulas of genres such as electro, synth-pop, future-pop, etc. The advanced output of Covenant outdistanced the copycats and gained recognition even among radicals reluctant to appreciate such music. Discovering its roots at the unique WIF show is strictly advisable. [ws]

Croatian Amor is Loke Rahbeka’s personal project brought to life as part of his company Posh Isolation. Personally related to and stylistically akin to Damien Dubrovnik. Having said that, Croatian Amor goes further from noise music and related genres – delving into the space of more sophisticated music. The musical intuitionism of Loke Rahbeek and his guests is an unidentified, extra-rational musical world consisting of silence, sound, space and everything in between. Whispered songs and melodeclamation – quasi-sacred synthesiser music reaching as far as the area of ethereal ambient. Nobody knows what the next guise of Croatian Amor will look like. [ws]

A new generation Danish duo fascinated by noise and experimentation. The project, set up in 2009 by Christian Stadsgaard and Loke Rahbeek, combines many different elements. From cacophonous noises and disjointed moments of sonic chaos to slow synthesiser improvisations. Drifting through the multitude of influences is like wandering in a huge supermarket of ideas, where everything is at your fingertips. The final result and perception are the products of many interdependencies. They’re not just about the music. Free from all constraints, the way of creation delivered by Damien Dubrovnik fascinates a considerable young audience thirsty for novelty. Damien Dubrovnik performed at Unsound, where their performance was supported by the Sinfonietta Cracovia philharmonic orchestra. Each guise brings a new face of the (anti)concept and can be a complete contradiction of the preceding one. In the project’s offering to follow, the disjointed noise was complemented by gloomy drones and various shades ambient – from dark or quite easy to digest. The development of the musical formula never stops here. [ws]

Releasing their work through the label Zoharum, Dren is Natt and Akton from the Tri-City. The project was created in early 2018. The low drone and bass album Time and Formappears to be a carefully constructed stream of many influences. The eclecticism of Dren’s technical music includes distant references to drum’n’bass and breaks. There are also remote echoes of music made by Photek or promoted by Warp Music. Dren’s studio productions succeed in mesmerising the listener, surrounding them with stuffy sound, and leading them through dark, monochromatic labyrinths. How Dren will do in a live situation, before the demanding audience of Wrocław Industrial Festival – that we will soon find out. [ws]

Düsseldorf is undoubtedly one of the pioneering projects in EBM stylistics in Poland. Started in 1989 in Katowice by a singer Adam Białoń and a keyboardist Adam Radecki, the group were an expression of their fascination with experiments in style of early Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire and Front 242. Making music was only a departure point. Later emerged ideas for happenings of typically industrial character, taking place in industrial buildings. What dominated there – apart from voice and spoken manifestos – was the music of machines, “played” live and being 100% acoustic (i.e. gears, wheels and other mechanisms that make sound). In addition to performing, the group published leaflets, experimented with photography and recorded a lot of studio music, gradually departing from the initial assumptions of primitive, spontaneous industrial rhythm and sound. In 1993 the band went on hiatus to realize themselves in different projects. After a 20-year break, Düsseldorf have been revived.

Labeling the band as EBM is an oversimplification – in their music one can hear echoes of new wave and early industrial, completed with Suicide’s synth-punk rhythm, minimalistic and aggressive beats associated with DAF, march-like energy bringing to mind works by Laibach, poesy of lyrics in the spirit of Soft Cell, and all of that flavoured with very punk motility. Düsseldorf are a synthesis ad quintessence of what was most interesting about postindustrial music of the 1980s.

No one knows who they are or what they look like. The three carefully masked members of Geography Of Hell remain unrecognised despite their growing presence on the industrial music scene. The anonymous collective has been recording for Hospital Productions since 2017. They name their dirty apocalyptic power industrial tracks after places of great catastrophes, crises, and crimes of the twentieth century. Ruthless, mutilated sounds evoke images of places of disasters with many victims. In the history of the 20th century, these names are associated with hell on earth. The reception of Geography Of Hell’s work should be permanently accompanied by the question of whether these are only soundtracks of the past. [ws]

Imperial Black Unit (next to Codex Empire, which has also performed at WIF) represent the new wave of artists cooperating with the Berlin-based label Aufnahme+Wiedergabe. The Thomas Chalandon and Pablo Bozzi duo come from the French city Toulouse, contributing to the techno scene of the metropolis. Their power of expression stands out from that of the Aufnahme+Wiedergabe label’s offering. Featuring an actual track/song structure, Imperial Black Unit’s compositions go beyond the technoid continuum model. With their fusion of old and new electro-industrial music, the recent newcomers to the scene are showing a shift towards the classic European Electronic Body Music. They are a perfect transmission of the means of expression associated with massive groups, such as Proceed or Orange Sector, into a completely new dimension. Imperial Black Unit’s output comprises two attractive 12” records –  State of Pressureand the latest Murder Under Establishment.Both vinyl offer strong, danceable music with roots in EBM classics, played at a new tempo and using only modern instruments. The exquisitely dynamic and hypnotising songs are filled with political samples that bring to mind classic Consolidated albums. Imperial Black Unit spreads agitprop industrial techno – and does it in a great way. [ws]

Łódź is one of the most industrialised cities in Poland. For ears it was dominated by light industry, but even after the transformation in the early 1990s, the infrastructure of the ruined industry still emitted noise. Sound coming from huge weaving plants could be heard all the time, day and night. This created something in a shape of a special sonic sphere – the city sound. And it was exactly that place, dominated by machine noise, filled with factory complexes and huge abandoned storehouses where the band Jude was formed in 1993. Its members used the industry and considered it as a source of inspiration, as well as a working material as such. This relationship between five individuals operating within a music group expanded the range of their communication to include other media, such as video, print, performance. Their visual layer was based on the language of totalitarian propaganda.

The attempt to categorise the group within established genres is pointless – Jude play fierce music of instincts and impulses, overloaded with emotions that might conventionally be described using such terms as industrial-hardcore-punk-noise. Jude treat industrial as culture and an attitude. Jude use noise, music, technology and visual arts as weapons. Jude is rooted in punk, but is industrial by vocation. [rj]

The attack against the senses generated under the brand Kommando has baggage of everything you associate with the good old school of power electronics. Daniel Hofmann Anton Knilpert AKA Dan Courtman is the person behind the project, which has been operating since the late 1990s. The musician is known for his famous Thorofon and close cooperation with Genevieve Pasquier. A number of his productions for labels including Ant-Zen, Kranial Klash, and Skull Snake are characterised by means of expression which are obligatory in the power electronics genre, such as distorted spoken messages, shouting, and chunks of noise. The artist’s radical and critical references to the present times are coupled with a hefty and mature sonic charge. His recent projects for the Berlin-based label Raubbau are a true testimony to the consistency of this path. In live situations, the wall of sound generated by Kommando becomes even more powerful. Sometimes it is enriched with rhythm, then it transforms into a concrete attack of dirty and aggressive rhythm noise. [ws]

Half of the radical power electronic duo Kevlar exposes an equally mature approach to the ideological and sonic matter. As is the case with Kevlar, Kontinent is associated with the London-based label Unrest Productions. While Kevlar’s latest products were filled with images directly related to the Polish conflict landscape, Kontinent seems more universal, targeting a wider spectrum of corruption in today’s world. Kontinent is serious ammunition in the struggle with the current civilisation overload. Demonstration and uncompromising commentary. Venomous sound and audiovisual attack against the reality of the media as well as that directly tangible.  The monolith of noise and image generated by Kontinent is a perfect soundtrack for the culture of exhaustion and twilight in which we live. [ws]

As is the case with most Hospital Productions artists, Jim Mroz, the person behind Lussuria, doesn’t restrict his emploi to one type of expression. Active since 2007, Lussuria means a number of productions showing a whole range of ways to build moods and evoke states of anxiety and threat. The artist uses different methodologies, but most of his music is created by means of building intricate multi-layered forms and loops, an experimental collage of elements of various origins. In Lussuria, you can see a multitude of sources of inspiration and abundance of means of expression, such as metallic textures, slow power drone structures, and trance rhythms.  Each of his works is a journey through different shades of dark and deep music. The atmosphere created in this way can be contemplative, uplifting and ethereal, as well as crude and direct. The components of Lussuria sound comprise both natural field recordings as well as electronically generated noise.  You should expect anything from pure electronic compositions that could find wider acceptance as accessible field electronics to distorted and dirty industrial music, akin to other Hospital Productions projects like Alberich and Prurient. Jim Moroz vel Lussuria’s oeuvre includes already recognised releases, such as American Babylon or Industriale Illuminato, as well as a few hours long opus entitled Standstill. [ws]

Lustmord’s music has always had the power to transfer the listener to different dimensions. The Wales-born Brian Williams is a representative of the classic industrial movement of the late 1970s. He started as one of the artists affiliated with Industrial Records, then cooperated with SPK and Chris and Cosey as CORE and the Creative Technology Institut. He also ran his own label, Side Effects. None of the readers seems to have to be reminded of the total significance of his mature albums, such as , , or . Their quality and power cannot be overestimated, even today, in the times when every kind of art is devalued. The prominent artist has enjoyed great success for a long time, also as a sound designer working for Hollywood, to which he was brought by SPK’s Graeme Revell. In addition to his high-class Lustmord work, Brian Williams regularly composes music for films and computer games. The personal abyss of Lustmord doesn’t stand still. In recent years, his music has come out to the surface from underground dungeons. This does not mean, however, that the sonic palette is brighter. While it used to ooze out of the interiors of ruined cathedrals, dark dungeons, underground labyrinths, and cold bunkers, today the Lustmord sonisphere is inspired by desolate locations and deserts – places of merciless nature – the dangerous interior of America. Brian Williams has been performing live for over a dozen years. His live performances met with an enthusiastic response. What he produces with his small Powerbook is monumental, demonic, and overwhelming. It has a power that can be called destructive and overwhelming – one that can equally generously inspire you and give you strength. [ws]

Lustmord is definitely the most important and recognized music venture of a Scottish musician, sound engineer and film score composer Brian Williams. Started in 1980, Lustmord is often considered the first dark ambient project in history, and the album Heresy from 1990 was hailed as the milestone of the whole genre.

For Brian Williams, basically every sound material serves as means of creating his atmospheric, dark music. In his works he uses field recordings from crypts, catacombs, caves, slaughterhouses, shelters, mines, cathedrals, as well as signals from the outer space, which he skillfully combines with ritualistic incantations and Tibetan horns. He treats all available (although carefully selected) acoustic phenomena by enriching them with digital bass effects, this way creating the best quality dark ambient.

Lustmord has collaborated with, among others, Tool, The Melvins, Chris & Cosey (Throbbing Gristle), SPK, John Balance (Coil), Paul Haslinger (Tangerine Dream), Robert Rich, Clock DVA, Current 93 and Nurse with Wound. He is also a member of the group Puscifier, started by Maynard James Keenan, a vocalist of Tool and A Perfect Circle. He has provided remixes for Tool, Jarboe (Swans), Venetian Snares, Lori Carson, Mortiisa, Isis, Puscifer and Nadja. He has contributed to 44 Hollywood film soundtracks, and his sound effects have been featured in numerous video games. [rj]

Active in Arkhangelsk since 1994, the band fits into the spectrum of ritual darkwave. Moon Far Away is Wolfgang Count Ash, Anea & Heleg. Despite their English name, they are strictly oriented towards the folklore of northern Russia. The band perform most of their music using traditional instruments – the acoustic guitar, balalaika, and drums, augmented with electronic equipment. The poles of this work are a bond with the birthplace, one located in the north, on the borderlands of Europe, by the White Sea. The music of ritual and roots, a communion with nature, water, the rustle of leaves, and nostalgia. Singing is a fundamental feature of Moon Far Away’s expression. The band’s melodic folk songs performed live in Russian have a strong rhythm and even a sort of electric groove. Moon Far Away’s musical offering includes a tribute to the film Ivan the Terrible made by Sergei Eisenstein and, which seems equally interesting, a record with versions of the new Russian anthem. [ws]

The eternal curiosity of the unknown, the desire to establish contact with extraterrestrial beings, distant and inaccessible civilisations, is what the abbreviation S.E.T.I. (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) stands for. The music of the project called S.E.T.I. may be described as a reflection of this yearning. Andrew Lagowski’s individual project has been active since the early 90s. Inspired by the early Human League, CDVA, and Cabaret Voltaire, Lagowski started playing music in secondary school, in acts including the electro post-punk project Silent Command. Further revelations of Andrew Lagowski’s work include the projects named Legion and Nagamatz. His most famous output, however, seems to be his collaboration with Brian Williams aka Lustmord. Their incidental joint projects have gone down in industrial history.  While Terror Against Terror announced the fusion of industrial and techno, Isolrubin BK intrigued the listener with its themes and atmosphere. Both projects, closed as of today, are already considered to be modern classics today. As for further projects, Andrew Lagowski only contributed to them with his surname. In the early 1990s,  his work contained elements of powerful techno, which the artist combined with sonic experimentation. After a series of experiences with club music, he focused on exploring deeper electronics. While the music he made in the 90s was sometimes clean and cheerful, it later gradually moved towards darker regions. Currently, S.E.T.I. is promoted in Power And Steel and the Loki Foundation from Leipzig, corresponding with other projects released under these banners. The productions may bring to mind images of abandoned mining installations and pipelines located in the far east of the former Soviet Union – areas of extensive exploitation of nature, places of ecological disasters, and areas of eternal contamination. S.E.T.I. is a musical search for the unknown – things beyond the rational and human cognition. [ws]

Sex Gang Children is one of the pioneers and co-creators of the so-called goth phenomenon, which in its original shape was a new phase of the punk explosion.  The style would quickly become one of the great attractions the UK gave to the world in the last decades of the previous century. Sex Gang Children were an inseparable part of the scene associated with the legendary London club Batcave, which defined the phenomenon. The unique atmosphere of Sex Gang Children’s music was owed to an exciting combination of demonic post-punk, new wave, cabaret-style music, and satirical folk songs. Theatricality, the evocation of the tragi-grotesque and horror aesthetics, mixed with the symptoms of the urban apocalypse; Andy’s voice – disturbing, unfakeable, and rich in mannerism; as well as the fruity music full of colours made up a sensational manifesto of the real goth genre. It was the album entitled Song and Legendthat gave us the fullest dimension of Sex Gang Children. Released in 1983, the record truly deserves to be called essential. Shortly afterwards, the brilliant band fell victim to rivalries and rifts, after which it disappeared into the darkness of the past. Despite the reefs and hindrances, Sex Gang Children took on different guises and continued its activity in many line-ups. Andi Sex Gang was also a prolific solo artist. The initial Sex Gang Children was brought back to life in recent years as the beautiful music of the past began to be remembered. The value of the legendary idea is proved by the fact that during the several dozen years since the flash and relative twilight, a group that would even partly resemble the original Sex Gang Children never came into being. [ws]

Sylmalm – the person behind the name Sylvgheist Maëlström (contrary to any speculation, the musician comes from France) – places his project in the space ranging from Neubauten to Orphx. The rich electroid texture of his pieces includes repetitive beats, rhythmic noise, techno-like glitches and clicks, as well as echoes of experimental IDM. He can put you in a trance and then break the rhythm and break the thread. Sylvgheist Maëlström means literally the lethal element of nature. Music is to be a reflection of the uncontrolled power of nature, which regains its control over a world dominated by civilisation. Sylvgheist Maëlström’s spacious compositions attract the listener’s attention to locations of disasters such as Bhopal and Chernobyl, as well as spaces of extreme exploitation of man and nature such as the post-gulag Norilsk above the Arctic Circle. The artist’s latest productions came into being as a result of a strong collaboration with Synapscape’s Philipp Münich. It’s a treat for fans of the classic Iszoloscope, Imminent Starvation, and Asche – music released by labels such as Ant-Zen or Hands Productions. [ws]

Formed in the early 1980s in the UK, Test Dept is regarded as one of the pioneering forces of ‘industrial music’, recognised for their ground-breaking sound and powerful performances. Their fearless and confrontational approach pushes the boundaries of music, art and protest, exploring themes of politics, social issues, and activism.

They are renowned for their innovative use of found objects, scrap metal and industrial detritus as instruments. Their unique blend of aggressive percussion, industrial noise, distorted samples and experimental soundscapes creates a visceral and immersive experience that reflects their commitment to challenging the status quo and seducing the listener into critical reflection.

In 1984 they ventured into the industrial communities of Britain performing live withthe South Wales Striking Miner’s Choir, raising money and awareness for that cause. This collaborative instinct led to the formation of The Ministry of Power an umbrella organisation for working collectively on multidisciplinary projects integrating music, movement, theatre, film and political activism, to create large scale multi-media productions in disused industrial spaces and unusual found environments.

Test Dept envisioned themselves as part of a broader cultural movement exploring the intersection of art and social change. Never standing-still, always evolving, TD are auditory explorers. Their powerful presence combines raw energy with thought-provoking visuals, creating an immersive and politically charged experience that resonates long after a performance ends. In 2014 they re-surfaced as a live entity, and published the comprehensive book Total Sate Machine a chronicle of the history, philosophy and work of Test Dept in 2015. They released the Disturbance album in 2019, incorporating their early industrial steel with expansive electronic production and touring with a new line up. In 2023 they were commissioned by the arts organisation A/POLITICAL to create a new large-scale work Furnace at an old iron foundry in southern France, this is an active relationship with new works in the pipeline.
So, 2025 sees new plans being hatched including a step back into performing at WIF . They re-emerge now as an electronic duo remixing early TD tracks alongside new material. Expect their ordered cacophony to generate an oasis of sense and reason from the madness that surrounds us all. Their commitment to addressing social and political issues through their music – support for activism, dissent and freedom of speech – is in their blood. Their spirit remains undaunted and their vision frighteningly focussed, bold and uncompromising.

The project’s driving spirit is Marcin Pryt. Apart from him, the super line-up of Tryp is made up of musicians known from the bands Agressiva 69, Cool Kids Of Death, and Psychocukier.  The leader treats the project as a platform for exposing his vision and exploring his obsessions and fascinations. The music itself is a quasi-baroque kaleidoscope of sounds, combined with a super-torrent of verbal messages. In Pryt’s phraseology, there is a place for outstanding poetry splashed at times with low-brow quotes from the media, urban slang, and a network of neologisms. Each of the two albums the band has released so far has a narrative character,  being an independent thematic concept. Kochanówka is dedicated to the victims of the Nazi action T4 conducted in the Łódź psychiatric hospital in 1940. Trypolis refers to the cultural reflection on the encounter between Africa (first of all, the conflict-ridden Maghreb countries) and the European sensitivity and its civilisational legacy in the current “post” context. Marcin Pryt cites the expression and personality of Alan Vega and Suicide; the intensity of the collage of sounds, words, and motifs, as well as the pace at which they are presented to the listener, brings to mind the first albums of Jim Foetus. Prepare for an ultra-fast trip that will electrify your every sense. [ws]

Vomito Negro started in the mid-1980s as a pure Electronic Body Music act. The genre did not yet have any constrictions or definition. The first, more widely known productions – Dare, Shock, and Human – showed Vomito Negro as a brutal, angular, and super energetic electro-industrial music, reminiscent of the work of The Klinik or Insekt. The duo’s productions were released by such distinguished electronic music labels as KK Records and Antler Subway. Gin Devo was always at the helm of the project (at the beginning together with Guy Van Miegh). Eric Van Wonterghem, Mario Vaerewijck, and Borg – crème de la crème of the electro-industrial scene from Benelux – were among the members the successive band line-ups and collaboration projects. The original concept was modified on The New Drug album. In the 1990s, Gin Devo concentrated on his solo work. During this time he also studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and at the Royal Conservatory. His high-quality solo albums guide the listener to other areas of electronic music but contain energy that still comes from Vomito Negro. Gin Devo has remained the backbone of the project to this day, and after years of absence, in 2008, he successfully undertook the effort of reactivating the original project. Skull And Bones and Slave Nation are the most outstanding of the albums released at that time. The new guise was far from disappointing, both on the records and live. Enriched with many new sounds, this reinvented music still remains a high-octane, energetic electro-industrial EBM. [ws]