Gorgeous, haunting, and epic suprise release from Australian industrial / experimental rock / black metal musician Uboa.
Her breakout 2019 album "The Origin of My Depression" was a bleak look at the existential pain of living in a transphobic society, but frontwoman Xandra Metcalfe says that this album starts to be about the existential hope of resilience. That hint of optimism definitely comes through on the 9th and final track, the title track, which features the spoken-word and singing talents of Chinese experimental musician Otay:onii. This album still goes into pretty dark territory, however, and is just as grand, deeply moving, and punctuated by Metcalfe's anguished screamed vocalizations. A strong contender for my personal AOTY pick. - Joshua `<|:{P>

RIYL: Liturgy, Lingua Ignota, Boris, Godspeed You Black Emperor
FCC: 2 ("piss"), 4 ("fucking", "get off")
Favorite tracks: 2, 9

1. (4:22) Instrumental with simple synth voice drone that gains industrial crashing noises on top in the middle
2. FCC (5:50) Slow monotonous droning with occasional glitchy sounds slowly builds with sung vocals and rhythmic background melody + drumtrack
3. (3:09) First half is slow droning synth with vocalized synth voice backing. Second half is all fast glitchy industrial noise collage
4. FCC (4:43) Starts with loud industrial white noise, before quickly switching to low goth/darkwave synth that is slowly builds and becomes accompanied with rhythmic industrial drumtrack and highly distorted low vocals
5. (5:22) Begins with atonal, amelodic zither plucking with low droning vocalizations, suddenly shifts to crashing industrial white noise with anguished screamed vocalizations
6. (2:20) Low vocalized drone instrumental with a voice slightly reminiscent of Gregorian chant
7. (2:41) Begins with loud industrial white noise collage, descends into gentle layered vocalized drone
8. (5:15) Begins with quiet drone with quiet sung vocals, builds into industrial synth & drumtrack drone with angry screamed vocalizations
9. (9:48) An epic track in 3 (seemingly disjoint) parts. Starts and ends with Uboa's gentle, yearning vocals over hopeful and minimal instrumental (music-box and synth, respectively.) Middle section has vocals by Otay:onii in Mandarin, starting with spoken-word over rain but building into explosion of loud and melodic singing over crashing, glitchy melodic synth.