Magnus Sundstrom, best known as the mastermind behind The Protagonist, must have a fine appreciation of Decadent literature: he named his side-project after the main character in Huysmans’s novel A Rebours and the first album from that side-project after a story by Barbey d’Aurevilly. Literary allusions aside, what does des Esseintes sound like? The aesthetic captured on Les Diaboliques is what I imagine it would sound like to spend the night in a haunted factory. Eerie synth landscapes erupt suddenly into mechanized percussion and the groaning of stressed steel. Though this release may be mostly ambient in character, you won’t be putting this record on to relax; this is industrial music for industrial people.

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