Mandy, Indiana // URGH

On their full-length debut for Sacred Bones Records, URGH finds Mandy, Indiana fully realizing the volatile fusion of industrial dance music, noise rock, and confrontational electronic experimentation hinted at on their breakthrough i’ve seen a way. The Manchester quartet of vocalist Valentine Caulfield, guitarist and producer Scott Fair, synth player Simon Catling, and drummer Alex Macdougall build songs from distorted percussion, throbbing synths, corroded feedback, and abrupt rhythmic shifts that constantly threaten collapse without ever fully losing control. Written during a residency outside Leeds and recorded between Berlin and Manchester while Caulfield and Macdougall navigated serious health struggles, the album channels physical and emotional unease directly into its sound. Fair’s production pulls equally from post-punk, noise music, and underground techno, while Caulfield’s French-language vocals move between hypnotic incantation and full-bodied confrontation. On “Magazine,” she rides a tense electronic pulse with icy control, while “try saying” fractures into clipped vocal manipulations and nervous rhythmic edits. Elsewhere, “ist halt so” channels the urgency of contemporary protest movements, tying political violence and personal survival into the album’s broader themes of endurance and resistance. Despite its abrasive surfaces, URGH remains surprisingly dynamic. “Sicko!,” featuring billy woods, injects frantic hip-hop energy into the band’s industrial framework, while tracks like “Cursive” and “Life Hex” blur together cinematic tension and deconstructed techno rhythms. What ultimately separates URGH from similarly punishing records is its emotional clarity. Beneath the noise and disorientation lies a record deeply concerned with vulnerability, embodiment, and survival, turning confrontation into catharsis rather than nihilism.