AUTARKH (Ex-DODECAHEDRON, EXIVIOUS) are a perpetual motion machine. Their debut already sounded like a message from the future, but their second album truly embodies what it's like to live in the digital age. 'Emergent' synthesizes modern metal intensity with sinister industrial drones and ethereal, chiming post-rock - all within one song. "Strife" finds vocalists Michel Nienhuis and David Luiten locked in a battle with inner demons, their mental anguish spiked by a thousand megawatts of industrial-sized riffs, before escaping through a pinhole of light. Few bands have made something as innovative as this.