KOOLOOZ - Blood Mountain EP Review BY Mark Jenkins. Sweet industrial purgatory.

KOOLOOZ - Blood Mountain EP Review

By Mark Jenkins.

★★★★☆

Melbourne's KOOLOOZ don't just make music—they manufacture anxiety. Their debut EP Blood Mountain is a four-track descent into industrial purgatory that feels like being trapped inside a malfunctioning surveillance state while your sanity slowly bleeds out through the speakers.

This Naarm two-piece has weaponised their minimal setup into maximum brutality. What emerges is a relentless barrage of sample-heavy carnage that sits somewhere between early Nine Inch Nails' factory-floor nightmares and the caustic electronics of Author & Punisher. But KOOLOOZ aren't interested in nostalgia—this is Y2K paranoia for the surveillance capitalism era, where every beat hits like a jackboot and every synth line cuts like broken glass.

The title track Blood Mountain opens with ritualistic precision—a hypnotic pulse that immediately establishes KOOLOOZ's gothic-industrial manifesto. There's something deeply seductive about the mechanical throb, channelling the body-music brutality of Nitzer Ebb while maintaining that distinctly Australian post-punk sneer in the vocals. It's a danceable dystopia, setting the stage for everything that follows.

Fowl Akt follows with suffocating paranoia, capturing the psychosis of surveillance capitalism through theatrical vocals that echo the Birthday Party's most unhinged moments. The track builds on gothic-industrial foundations, all hypnotic rhythms and spectral atmospherics that recall Dead Can Dance's darker explorations.

Banshee shifts the narrative focus to feminine rage incarnate—a vengeful spirit rising from digital death. The track's femme-fatale energy is palpable, all seductive low-end throb before erupting into cathartic violence. KOOLOOZ understand the power of dynamics here, letting the tension simmer before unleashing hell.

By the time Noise Floor arrives, any semblance of humanity has been stripped away. This is pure mechanized horror—autonomy dissolved into static, as the band puts it. The track lives up to its title, drowning everything in a sea of abrasive textures that somehow maintain rhythmic coherence. It's impressive how KOOLOOZ manage to stay musical while pushing into genuinely uncomfortable sonic territory.

What makes Blood Mountain more than just industrial posturing is its emotional core. Yes, it's brutal and relentless, but there's genuine catharsis buried in the chaos. These aren't just exercises in sonic brutality—they're survival strategies for navigating modern dystopia. The band's philosophy shines through: if you don't laugh at the madness, you'll drown in it.

The production deserves special mention—every distorted assault does indeed have a clever build-up and hefty pay-off. KOOLOOZ understand that true heaviness comes from contrast, not just constant pummeling. The electronic beats hit with industrial precision while the samples create a disorienting collage of found sounds and manufactured nightmares.

Blood Mountain announces KOOLOOZ as a vital new voice in Australia's underground. This is industrial music with actual industrial strength—uncompromising, politically engaged, and viscerally effective. For fans of harsh electronics, broken beats, and music that doubles as therapy through trauma, this EP is essential listening.

The only complaint? At four tracks, it's over too quickly. But perhaps that's the point—in KOOLOOZ's world, even catharsis comes with built-in obsolescence.

Recommended for fans of: Nitzer Ebb, The Birthday Party, Front 242, Skinny Puppy, Dead Can Dance, Gun Club, early Godflesh

Essential tracks: Fowl Akt, Noise Floor

Out Now:

https://koolooz.bandcamp.com/album/blood-mountain

Antisocial stuff:

https://www.facebook.com/Koolooz

https://www.instagram.com/k00l00z/

GO TO THE LAUNCH:

https://events.humanitix.com/k00100z-blood-mountain-ep-launch/

Reviewed by Mark Jenkins for Devil's Horns Zine. "Bringing you the music your parents warned you about since 2018 " PLEASE REMEMBER, SUPPORT THE ARTISTS (AND US) BY SPREADING THE WORD, FOLLOWING US ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND REPOSTING OUR WORKS...SUPPORT THE UNDERGROUND AND OUR COMMUNITY. THERE ARE NO COMMERCIAL GAINS. It’s like if you want to use this music purely as agro, then fine, because it is very fucking violent, aggressive music. It’s just that the common misconception is that I wanna go out there, or this music is made to go out there and fucking damage people. That’s the misconception. (Justin Broadrick, Godflesh)