��The debut EP from the new industrial metal duo Chiildren is disturbing stuff, from it's sleeve imagery of the two members naked and drenched in raw black petroleum, to the hypnotic, crushing throb of their music which seems to draw just as much fuel from the classic dark electronic music of Front 242 as it does from the crushing mechanized assault of Godflesh. As the squelchy cosmic synthesizers surge over the cinematic doom-laden guitars and pounding drum programming on opener "Girl In The Dirt", the echoes of Justin Broadrick's industrial metal that reverberate through the band's churning industrial blastmetal are clearly noticeable, but that first track soon begins to slip from that mechanized cosmic crush into a kind of industrial black metal, the vocals erupting in to a violent scream over the churning pneumatic drum machines, the song finally shifting into a huge driving, almost goth-rock hook. 'Flesh worship this isn't, as Chiildren draw a lot more of their sound from a mixture of 80's synthesizer soundtrack music, Wax Trax style EBM, and massive tremors of electronic dub-doom. There's an ode to the notorious Serbian Film called "Milos" that also emits a suitably grim electro vibe, dark melodies winding around clanging percussion and those dark synths, and "My Gods" combines a crushing bass riff with crawling glacial tempos and ringing, luminous leads. Stuff like that is a kind of slo-mo black industrial doom, like Godlflesh fused to Tangerine Dream-style soundtrack music, and the combo is fucking killer, dark and evocative, surging with crushing blasts of rapid-fire double bass and keening background vocals.

�� The other four tracks that make up The Other People are an assortment of remixes: "Other People (More Ephemerol Remix)" is a murderous dancefloor workout, while "My Gods (Imperative Reaction Remix)" transforms that song into something much more pulsating and Skinny Puppy-esque; "Post Misogyny (Kid Vicious Remix)" is a dubstep-infected reworking that twists the dark synthpop hooks of the original into a delirium of frenetic beats and skittering rhythms, almost like something from Kevin Martin, and "Post Misogyny (Rocky Rosga Remix)" is the best of the lot, starting off as a gorgeous wash of choral voices that ascend into an almost sacred beauty, then drops into a blistering blissed-out drum n' bass assault. Those remixes are definitely of interest if you're a big fan like myself of this sort of industrialized, electronically-enhanced heaviness, but it's those main EP tracks with their doom-laden electronic metal set to scenes of sexualized violence, religious blasphemies and occult imagery that really have me hankerin' for an actual album from the band. It's a sound that in some ways shares a similar vibe as recent works from Aborym and Control Human Delete, but is much more rooted in cold analogue synthcreep and an unshakeable atmosphere of apocalyptic doom.