ATOM, the new project/ collaboration between a trio of Melbourne post-punk heavyweights Harry Howard (Crime and the City Solution, These Immortal Souls , Pink Stainless Tail, Harry Howard and the NDE), Edwina Preston (The Moll Flanders Band, Harry Howard & The NDE) and Ben Hepworth (REPAIRS, Eastlink) have dropped today the last shot of gripping synth-punk “I Used To Win”, out worldwide today Friday 14th June on all digital platforms via It records, before unveiling their first full-length LP “In Every Dream Home” due out June 21st 2019.
Dual vocals (Harry & Edwina) synth, keyboards, drum machine and scorching guitar make for razor-sharp, dark and edgy synth pop. The result sits somewhere between Chrome and The Cramps, Suicide and the B52’s, with a haze of Hawkwind. Dirty, swampy New Wave.
“This is an early one inspired by the dark relentlessness of that damned Ben Hepworth’s satanic mills. Sometimes you almost feel as if you live in a state of grace. Then the gears jam, the whole machine starts burning and all you are left with are strange memories. Worlds falling apart, over and over, laid to waste. That kind of thing.”, in this way Harry Howard explains the inner core of “I Used To Win”.
Perfectly merging synth coldness with restrained punk anger leaving no way out, nor glimpses of light.
Hypnotic cymbals and kicks hit the ground with taut precision along with relentless thick buzzing, menacing bass pulses and sinewy abrasive and bleak guitar riffs to anxiously drive dire high-strung doom heightened by sinister shards of hissing, strident synth and sparse devilish lustful female back-ups, that undercut, adding haunting terror, the fearful, forlorn and egocentric complaints of brazen self-pity.
ATOM‘s debut album “In Every Dream Home” will be out on June 21st 2019 and can be pre-ordered now at It records Bandcamp.
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