AUTOBAHN

Reports of their demise have been greatly exaggerated - the North has risen again. Close to five years since their last record, Leeds denizens AUTOBAHN re-enter the fray with the release of their third record, Ecstasy of Ruin, on 28th April via Tough Love. Half a decade is both a long time and no time at all: forever changes while some things remain eternal… So it goes that AUTOBAHN may have re-emerged with many of the hallmarks of their characteristic blend of industrial post-punk intact, but under the bonnet they’re a much leaner, more focused machine. AUTOBAHN 3.0.

If 2017’s The Moral Crossing was a record defined by its dramatic rhythm section, then it’s not insignificant that the 2023 incarnation of AUTOBAHN arrives shaved to a four piece and sans their previous drummer. The change necessitates an evolution. Live drums have given way to drum-machines and sample-based percussion, and with it see the band reconfigure their typically blackened aesthetic into a hardened take on Electronic Body Music. As with their previous record, it’s an entirely self-produced collection, recorded between two self-built studios on a range of analogue equipment, the ghosts of their industrial forefathers haunting the circuits. Indeed, some of Ecstasy of Ruin was made with pieces salvaged from Martin Hannett’s legendary studio.