(written by Islander) Shades of mental and emotional darkness have been features of heavy metal in general, and extreme metal in particular, for a very long time. Sometimes it’s been represented through supernatural imagery and lyricism, sometimes by more direct experiences of real-world turmoil and desolation. But while it’s commonplace to see descriptions of metal […]
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The band partnered with the asymmetrical multiplayer horror video game ‘Dead By Daylight’ for this track.
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Progressive rock veterans Steve Hackett (Genesis) and Steve Rothery (Marillion) have officially announced their long-awaited collaborative instrumental album, The Roaring Waves. After years of anticipation, the record is set for release on August 28, 2026, through InsideOut Music.
Developed over nearly a decade, The Roaring Waves features seven instrumental compositions that blend cinematic soundscapes with more intimate passages. According to Hackett, the project grew into something that stands apart from the typical guitar collaboration.
“It’s not the kind of album that guitarists normally make together.”
Recording sessions took place intermittently at Racket Club and the pair’s home studios, with the music taking shape through improvisation, jam sessions and the exchange of ideas. That process allowed both musicians to build an album driven by chemistry and a shared musical vision.
The songs throughout The Roaring Waves lean into rich atmospheres and visual storytelling, encouraging listeners to create their own images as the music unfolds.
“You’re trying to create an atmosphere… like painting a picture,” says Rothery. “Taking people on a journey.”
The announcement also brings the release of the album’s first single, “The Black Sea”. The accompanying music video features Hackett and Rothery performing alongside collaborator Riccardo Romano, who co-wrote the album while also handling keyboards, bass and mixing duties, as well as drummer Leon Parr. The video was directed by Tim Sidwell.
Discussing the track, Rothery said: “I think ‘The Black Sea’ is the perfect introduction to the sonic world we’ve created between us. We have a very special chemistry.”
Hackett added: “For ‘The Black Sea’, our joint guitar sounds with the keys created a strong vibe of intrigue along with a sense of a musical dark sea adventure…”
Fans will be able to pre-order The Roaring Waves in several formats, including a limited CD/Blu-ray mediabook featuring Andy Bradfield‘s Dolby Atmos and high-resolution stereo mixes. The album will also be available as a standard CD and a gatefold 180-gram vinyl edition, cut at half speed at Abbey Road Studios by Miles Showell. Artwork and layout design for all editions were created by Simon Ward.
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Their first record in a dozen years has an official release date.
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Few bands transformed emotional darkness into atmosphere as completely as Joy Division. Their music did not simply sound melancholic. It felt psychologically haunted, emotionally isolated, urban, nocturnal, and existentially fragile.
Long before “darkwave” and “post-punk Gothic aesthetics” became recognizable cultural movements, Joy Division had already constructed a sonic language built from alienation, repetition, emotional collapse, cold modern architecture, and psychological tension.
A cinematic noir tribute to Joy Division exploring post-punk minimalism, emotional isolation, and the psychological atmosphere that shaped their sound.
Their music functions almost like cinematic noir translated into sound. Basslines move like footsteps through empty streets. Guitars shimmer like distant neon reflections. Drums pulse mechanically with emotional restraint while Ian Curtis sings like a man trapped inside psychological collapse.
Understanding Joy Division therefore means understanding how noir atmosphere evolved beyond literature and cinema into modern musical psychology.
Joy Division emerged from late-1970s Manchester, a city marked by industrial decline, unemployment, urban decay, political frustration, and emotional disconnection.
This environment profoundly shaped the band’s emotional and sonic atmosphere.
Unlike many punk bands focused primarily on aggression and rebellion, Joy Division approached darkness differently. Their music feels colder, more introspective, psychologically exhausted, and emotionally internalized.
Factories, concrete architecture, empty streets, dim clubs, rain-soaked urban landscapes, and emotional alienation became embedded within the emotional texture of their sound itself.
The city does not simply exist as background in Joy Division’s music. It becomes psychological environment.
This relationship between urban space and emotional fragmentation strongly connects Joy Division to noir cinema where cities frequently function as oppressive emotional landscapes rather than neutral settings.
Ian Curtis remains one of music’s most psychologically haunting figures because he embodied many characteristics traditionally associated with noir protagonists.
His lyrics frequently explore emotional paralysis, alienation, guilt, unstable identity, fractured communication, depression, fear of intimacy, and existential exhaustion.
Songs such as Disorder, Isolation, Heart and Soul, and Atmosphere feel less like traditional rock songs and more like internal monologues drifting through emotional darkness.
Curtis rarely performs emotional catharsis directly. Instead, his voice often sounds restrained, detached, exhausted, or psychologically distant even while expressing intense emotional suffering.
That emotional restraint becomes central to Joy Division’s noir atmosphere because suppressed emotion creates more tension than overt expression.
Classic noir protagonists often suppress emotional vulnerability beneath controlled exterior behavior while slowly collapsing internally. Curtis channels a remarkably similar psychological tension through performance itself.
Joy Division’s atmosphere depends heavily upon spatial construction inside the music itself.
Producer Martin Hannett played a major role in shaping this sonic architecture. Rather than pursuing aggressive punk rawness, Hannett emphasized distance, echo, silence, texture, and emotional emptiness.
The result feels intensely cinematic and psychologically spacious.
Drums often sound isolated inside enormous empty space. Guitars appear fragmented and spectral rather than dominant. Basslines become melodic emotional anchors carrying much of the psychological movement beneath the songs.
Silence itself becomes part of the composition.
This use of sonic emptiness resembles noir cinematography where shadows, darkness, and negative space frequently communicate emotional tension more effectively than explicit action.
Joy Division understood that atmosphere often emerges through absence as much as presence.
One reason Joy Division still feels emotionally modern is their remarkable use of repetition and minimalism.
Many songs rely upon hypnotic rhythmic structures, repetitive bass motifs, restrained percussion, and slowly evolving emotional textures.
This repetition creates psychological tension because the music feels trapped within emotional loops unable to fully resolve themselves.
In songs such as She’s Lost Control, repetition mirrors emotional obsession and psychological instability directly. The mechanical rhythm feels simultaneously human and emotionally disconnected.
Modern psychological horror frequently uses similar techniques through repetitive sound design, ambient tension, and unresolved emotional pacing.
Joy Division translated those same principles into post-punk music years earlier.
Although Joy Division rarely functioned as overtly “Gothic” in the Victorian sense, their emotional atmosphere strongly connects to Gothic literary traditions.
Like Edgar Allan Poe, Kafka, Dostoevsky, and existential writers before them, Joy Division explored emotional isolation, fragmented identity, mortality, instability, and psychological alienation.
Ian Curtis’s lyrics frequently blur the boundary between internal emotion and external reality, creating emotional landscapes where perception itself feels unstable.
The song Atmosphere demonstrates this perfectly:
“Walk in silence.”
The line feels simple linguistically, yet emotionally enormous. Silence becomes emotional condition, existential state, and psychological environment simultaneously.
This emotional ambiguity strongly resembles Gothic psychological literature where atmosphere often communicates more than explicit narrative explanation.
Joy Division’s music remains deeply cinematic because it constructs mood visually and psychologically rather than relying solely upon melody or lyrical narrative.
Listening to the band frequently evokes imagery automatically: empty train stations, rain-covered streets, flickering lights, smoke-filled rooms, decaying industrial buildings, nighttime apartments, and emotionally isolated figures wandering through urban darkness.
This visual quality explains why Joy Division continues influencing noir photography, Gothic aesthetics, independent cinema, dark fashion, post-punk culture, and psychological horror soundtracks decades later.
Their music does not merely accompany emotional darkness.
It creates immersive psychological space where emotional fragility, existential dread, and urban loneliness become almost physically tangible.
Much of modern dark alternative music descends directly from emotional mechanisms Joy Division helped refine.
Darkwave, Gothic rock, post-punk revival, noir ambient music, cinematic electronic music, and countless melancholic alternative artists continue borrowing from the band’s use of emotional restraint, repetition, atmospheric tension, and psychological minimalism.
Yet Joy Division remains uniquely powerful because their darkness never feels artificial or performative.
The emotional weight inside the music feels painfully authentic.
Long before “noir atmosphere” became aesthetic branding, Joy Division had already transformed alienation, psychological fragility, and existential darkness into one of modern music’s most emotionally immersive soundscapes.
Explore Edgar Allan Poe apparel, Gothic aesthetics, noir-inspired fashion, and psychological darkness inside the official Edgar Allan Poets Noir Store.
Explore Gothic music, cinematic tension, psychological darkness, and immersive noir atmosphere through the official Edgar Allan Poets playlist.
Joy Division created emotionally dark, cinematic music built from urban isolation, psychological tension, existential dread, minimalism, and atmospheric sound design strongly resembling noir aesthetics.
Their music combined post-punk minimalism, hypnotic repetition, emotional restraint, spatial production techniques, and psychologically introspective lyrics into a deeply immersive atmosphere.
Ian Curtis helped shape modern Gothic and dark alternative music through emotionally vulnerable lyrics, existential themes, psychologically fragmented storytelling, and haunting vocal delivery.
Themes involving alienation, depression, emotional isolation, urban anxiety, and psychological instability remain deeply relevant, allowing Joy Division’s atmosphere to continue resonating across generations.
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Greetings, Decibel readers!
It’s a week for reflection, experimentation and exploring, as today’s new releases show a wealth of creative minds taking their sounds in all different directions. Although black metal and death metal are now long-established styles of extremity, there’s still room for maneuver for bands willing to be bold while still retaining what makes those styles compelling and exciting (and without simply “breaking new ground“).
Check it out.
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The Costa Rica-based outfit’s followup to 2023’s nightmarish Pulsations from the Black Orb sees them further hone and perfect their atmospheric take on terrifying death metal. Astriferous plays their music like an orchestra from hell, filling the gallery with towering guitars, devastating rhythms, and ground-quaking vocals. There’s touches of dissonant vibes present on this album, but the band is so good at keeping the music in a certain groove that the sound avoids some of the pitfalls of similar bands. Pay attention for some moments that recall Forulas-era Morbid Angel and Close to a World Below-era Immolation that peek out from behind the curtain.
Stream: Apple Music
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An absolutely stacked split of four amazing bands. Although I’m most familiar with Panegyrist and can readily vouch for them, there’s a lot to discover in the death metal of Deathspiral of Inherited Suffering; the melodic atmosphere of Elysian Blaze; and the epic, death-rock-tinged chaos of Maerund.
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The long-storied artist returns with a reflective and moody album that has one foot in 80s post-punk, and another in 90s electronica. Think of it as Pure Moods for goth kids. But don’t get me wrong, there’s still moments that recall the ancient days of Mortiss’ dungeon-synth past, like “Transcending Morpheus,” and moments where things pick up like the dance-able “Tundra, Heart of Hell.”
Stream: Apple Music
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I really like what these guys are doing. Although THÆTAS definitely makes brutal death metal and delivers all the goods in that way, they’re bold enough to experiment with eerie soundscapes and unexpected flourishes that set them apart from the endless hordes of palm-muted gurglers. Think of Dying Fetus and Misery Index in collaboration with Immolation and Demilich.
Stream: Apple Music
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Melodic, entrancing black metal from Iceland. Definitely essential listening for anyone looking for a though-provoking take on the sound, one that strongly recalls Memoria Vetusta-style Blut Aus Nord and perhaps bits of Windir and latter-day Enslaved.
Stream: Apple Music
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Ice Nine Kills have continued their streak of perfect collaborations, this time teaming up with iconic horror game Dead By Daylight.
As well as crafting a song about the games’ universe, the band are also playable characters in the game. That means you can be Spencer, but you can also be the Silence killer. Does it get much cooler than that?
And when it comes to the song, it is classic INK splatter. Guttural metalcore boosts, soaring melodies and plenty of intricate easter eggs to be found within.
And if that wasn’t enough, the band have also welcomed a few more famous faces into their ever-expanding cinematic universe, mainly Tony Hawk. Devin Sawa and Krsy Fox, the former two very much a part of horror history.
Spencer had this to say about everything wonderful that they have created here:
Ice Nine Kills has always lived somewhere between menace and mischief. ‘Play Dead,’ our take on Dead by Daylight, is a collision of hooks, horror, and total chaos. As lifelong horror fans, we find it surreal and an absolute honour to have Ice Nine Kills’ music officially tied to Terrifier, Scream, Ready or Not, and now, the iconic survival horror game Dead by Daylight.
“Collaborating with Dead by Daylight gave us the chance to step into a world that feels deeply aligned with our creative instincts. The game has an incredible legacy, and that chaotic, eerie, immersive energy is something we respect and admire. We wanted the song to feel like a real extension of that universe, not just inspired by it, but genuinely part of it.
“We worked closely with longtime composer Michel F. April to ensure every detail, from the atmosphere to the intensity, felt true to the game, and we spent time on set with Dead by Daylight creatives Mathieu Cote and Eric Pope, as well as player experts like SpookyLoopz.
“The video also features iconic genre star Devon Sawa. He’s one of my favorite actors, from Idle Hands and Final Destination to literally playing “Stan” in the Eminem video. And we’ve got Krsy Fox, one of the new modern horror scream queens, who not only had a showstopping performance in Terrifier 3, but is a kickass indie horror film producer, too.
“Having Tony Hawk appear with us felt essential because he isn’t just the Michael Jordan of skateboarding. He’s synonymous with the marriage of music, gaming, and subculture. We bonded over the same offbeat pop-culture touchstones, from punk rock to the irreverent ’80s comedies like The Naked Gun that shaped my brain just as much as horror did.
“And of course, Dingbar Tarbani slithered in to make things even stranger.”
Get stuck in.
The track follows on from the band’s last two collaborations, sitting on either side of their sound.
There is ‘Twisting The Knife’, which was crafted for Scream 7:
And ‘Hell Or High Slaughter’, delivered by alter-egos Grave Diggler, and playing a part in Ready or Not 2:
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Five Finger Death Punch celebrates 20 years with its new album “Legacy,” featuring “Eye of the Storm,” “De Oppresso Liber,” and a summer U.S. tour.
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