Silent Servant dances into the underworld on “Harm In Hand”

Silent Servant’s new single “Harm In Hand” evokes a number of different eras of industrial music. Its pulsing synth arpeggios seem to have been pulled from the early- to mid-’80s heyday of EBM (electronic body music). Its disorienting, unsettling spoken-word vocals—mostly indecipherable amid the song’s increasingly intensifying arrangement—nod to the proto-industrial performance art pieces of Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire. And its guitar-driven noises and cinematic synth backing are tied more closely to the post-industrial sounds of the present, such as Pharmakon or Raime. It’s no wonder, then, that Silent Servant, aka Juan Mendez, is releasing his next EP through Hospital Productions, the imprint through which Prurient has been releasing his evolving noisescapes over the years. Mendez’s nocturnal, hellish hallucinations are cut from a similar cloth as Dominick Fernow’s, but with more of an ear toward contemporary darkwave and experimental techno. “Harm In Hand” is an eerie, yet exhilarating dance into the underworld.

From Shadows of Death and Desire, out December 8 via Hospital Productions