The Public’s weekly local music reviews and previews.

Album: Night Slaves — Night Slaves Recommended if you like: Swans, Container, Nine Inch Nails

Released earlier this month, Night Slaves’ new self-titled record is a bombastic industrial synth music album that simultaneously calls to mind experimental no wave rock bands like Swans, mainstream industrial rock bands like Nine Inch Nails, and hard techno acts like Container. 

Recorded at Mammoth Studios and at the band’s own studio, the record, written by David Kane and John Toohill, melds elements of noise music, drone, industrial synth pop, and no wave into dark downtempo electronic music productions. Kane, who writes the music, and Toohill, who writes and performs the vocal tracks are both well known in the Buffalo music scene but this project marks a deviation for both.

One of the album’s highlights, “Under Waves,” plows through a blizzard of white noise and feedback, and fights off an enormous slithering bassline with a jangle-pop guitar groove and the hooky vocals of Toohill to create a rare beast that would sound just fine in a techno club or at a basement punk show. Another highlight, the beat-less “No Blinding Light” is a disarming odyssey through a nightmarish electronic terrain. The six-track album, which clocks in at 29 minutes, is packaged as a grey cassette tape which comes included with the album’s artwork—a gritty photo of the duo arranged back-to-back in mirrored mugshot postions, shot by Bob Collignon—as well as a patch, a pin, a sticker, and an “unfortunate cookie.” A physical copy of the record, with all of the aforementioned goodies, is available to order through their bandcamp page for $10. A digital version of the music is available for “name your price.”