Track Listing: Back To My Arms, Vanity Of Life, Tomorrow Will Be Worse, Sister September’s Soul.

What the world needs, apparently, is another goth-flavoured metal band – and Finland is only too happy to oblige with an outfit presumably named after the Roman poet. Vergil has the solid foundation you’d expect from musicians well-versed in the genre, and they don’t skimp out on heavy guitars or melodic riffs. But the EP’s thin lyrical retread of mopey quasi-romantic gothic indulgences and put-on pessimism certainly don’t rate an illustrious name associated with the spirit of the Roman Empire. Still, Mika Musakka’s vocals are up to the task if not especially inspiring, and it all works into a serviceable sound that holds genre appeal if little else.

For more information, visit their Myspace page.

Track Listing: Quicksilver, Quicksilver (Radio Edit), Avalanche, Quicksilver (Dancefloor Transformation), Roland.

“The future belongs to the brave,” sings Rogue. But however deserving of the significant respect the Cruxshadows has earned over the years, the Quicksilver single invites the all-too-familiar complaint of not quite being as brave as one might hope. Most can be forgiven, however, on the dance floor. The title track gets butts off chairs; “Avalanche” keeps bodies in motion until “Roland”, a lesser ballad, cools things down again. It all adds up to a promising, if mixed, peek at a full-length album.

For more information, visit their official website.

Track Listing: Savior, Destroyer, Corpse (Submerged Remix), Rockers, Supremacy, Everyone Bleeds, The Great Machine, Super Orgy (Breaker’s Orgy Remix), Amber.

With all the musicians, bands, and songs out there with the word killer, killah, or some such in their moniker, it’s a wonder they can tell themselves apart. This particular assassin, real name Sean Shah, hails from Brooklyn, and he means business. Broken beats, phat samples, hip-hop, percussions that pound straight through the middle ear into the auditory cortex, hard-edged kinetic electronics with more than a passing headbang to industrial – of course it’s noisy, sometimes gloriously so. Tracks like “The Great Machine” prove aptly named; Everyone Bleeds is a bloodbath of drum ‘n’ bass that is as often a grind as it is an invitation to crank up the volume and, well, do something that resembles dancing. St. Vitus would be so proud. And your neurologist.

For more information, visit their Myspace page.

Track Listing: Hookerbot 3000, Keys To The City (Vegas Mix), Red Parrot, Cousins, Touch Screen, I’m Not Gay, Abundant Redundancy, Lude Ferigno, Wizard Of Sextown, Hookerbot 3000 (Disco-A-Go-Go).

Al Jourgensen and the original generation of Revolting Cocks – RevCo, if you please – pass on the torch to a moderately debauched trio in this latest offering, Sex-O Olympic-O. Result: the kids – vocalist Josh Bradford and keyboardist Clayton Worbeck from Stayte, and Ministry guitarist Sin Quirin – are alright. Harder than Peaches or My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, though not as quirky, but layered with just as much sleaze and a heavy dose of flippancy. Topics include robot prostitutes, incestuous sex, and a smidgeon of social “commentary” that flirts – flirts? nay, makes out – with exploitation. To say the industrial edge pounds away with gusto might be to risk an atrocious pun, but with tracks named “Hookerbot 3000”, “Lude Ferrigno”, and “Wizards of Sextown”, it’s hard to keep the mind from getting silly in the gutter. That may just be the album’s shortcoming. The music rollicks well enough with only a few middle-of-the-road breakdowns, but the lust is undersold by cheap trills and the hooks aren’t consistently sharp enough to burrow and nest in the brain.

For more information, visit their official site.