TV Cult’s Industry is an album that refuses to play nice. Equal parts furious and razor-focused, it takes aim not only at the machinery of late capitalism but also at the moral frameworks propping it up, conservative Christian values, hollow virtue, the suffocating pressure to conform. Where earlier releases toyed with atmosphere, Industry feels like a demolition: jagged guitars slash through mechanical rhythms, lyrics spit venom at hypocrisy, and the band’s energy is relentless, almost combustible. It’s not just a critique of the music industry’s churn or society’s obsession with profit, it’s a howl against the structures that sanctify suffering and call it righteous.
Communion wastes no time drawing blood. The opener reframes the ritual of breaking bread not as a sacred act of unity but as a performance hollowed out by power and hypocrisy. Against a backdrop of grinding guitars and funereal drums, TV Cult take aim at conservative Christian values, the way purity, sacrifice, and obedience are weaponized to enforce conformity and suppress dissent. The song’s liturgical cadence feels both familiar and corrupted, a kind of dark mirror of worship where faith is less about transcendence than control. It’s a blistering start, announcing that Industry won’t just critique the mechanics of capitalism, but also the moral scaffolding that props it up.
Surrender marks the emotional pivot point of Industry, where TV Cult’s polished exterior begins to crack and something unmistakably human seeps through. It opens in a haze of echoing guitars and fractured percussion before expanding into a chorus that feels like both confession and collapse. The song captures the strange relief of giving in, to love, to exhaustion, to inevitability and TV Cult frame that surrender not as defeat but as awakening. The production is immaculate yet trembling at the edges, every synth swell and drum hit threatening to spill over. In Surrender, the band capture Industry’s essential tension between control and chaos, artifice and vulnerability, and the fragile grace that comes with finally letting go.
Crack The Whip marks a decisive turn in Industry, yanking the listener out of the vulnerability of Surrender and straight into the record’s cold, metallic core. The track lunges forward with a punishing rhythm section, basslines grinding like gears, percussion snapping with precision and a synth line that glints like steel under fluorescent light. It’s TV Cult at their most confrontational, dissecting power dynamics through the language of control and submission. The chorus feels like a demand and a dare, the vocals delivered with the icy composure of someone who knows exactly how much they’re being watched. Yet beneath that surface rigidity, there’s a palpable unease, the sense that the band are exposing their own complicity in the systems they critique. Crack The Whip thrives on contradiction: sleek but brutal, seductive but unsettling. It’s the point in Industry where the façade doesn’t just crack, it fractures completely, revealing the machinery grinding beneath the glamour.
Symbols Of Death closes Industry on a chilling, almost cinematic note, pulling the album’s themes of power and decay into stark focus. The tempo slows to a deliberate crawl, each drum hit landing like a tolling bell, while synths shimmer and corrode around a vocal performance that feels more like a confession than a chorus. TV Cult trade precision for atmosphere here, letting the song breathe and unravel in equal measure. It’s less about literal death than the death of illusion, the collapse of systems, idols, and selves that once seemed untouchable. There’s a haunted beauty to the way it fades, as if the band are standing in the ruins of their own creation, still staring into the glare of the spotlight. Symbols Of Death isn’t just a closer; it’s a reckoning, the moment where Industry finally stops performing and starts feeling the weight of what it’s built.
Industry is a record that stares unflinchingly into the glare of modern life and finds both beauty and corrosion reflected back. TV Cult dissect the language of control—corporate, emotional, artistic—with surgical precision, yet what makes the album so compelling is its empathy for the people caught inside that machinery. Every track feels engineered for perfection but haunted by the cost of achieving it, as if the band are documenting the slow breakdown of their own design. The result is an album that resists easy catharsis, offering instead a kind of lucid unease: clarity without comfort. Industry stands as both critique and confession, proof that even in a world built on artifice, sincerity can still flicker through the static.
For fans of: IDLES, Ditz, The Murder Capital
‘Industry’ by TV Cult is out now on Flight 13 Records.
Words by Ell Bradbury
