It's early still, obviously, but URGH is my favorite release of 2026 so far ...FrontwomanValentine Caulfield is even more uncompromising ... Je viens pour toi ... .
The Manchester/Berlin-based four-piece’s new album, Urgh, was written in what they’ve called “an intense residency at an eerie studio house” near Leeds; at the time, singer Valentine Caulfield and ...
That’s one of the recurring throughlines on URGH, the second album from the Mancunian-Parisian noise rockers ... Through this methodology of escalating their industrial grit until it becomes almost unbearable, URGH utterly shatters expectations.
The striking cover art for Urgh depicts a human head recoiling in what looks like shock and agony ... Where their 2023 debut, I’veSeen a Way, had a hazy, cinematic quality; Urgh is heavier and stranger ... But Urgh offers glimmers of unexpected hope, too.
The artwork for Urgh... (The band’s Daniel Fox mixed Mandy, Indiana’s debut and co-produced Urgh.) Each of these acts has disassembled rock down to its mechanical bones, Frankenstein-ing it with the DNA of techno and trap to make it seem shockingly new.