SIGNAL #002: Ultra Ego EP – Souldz, Into the Pale Abyss, Fille de minuit

Lan (Slayxdoll) spotlights the 'Ultra Ego' EP and the new single 'Noir'. [Label: Moretin]

[01 // Ultra Ego - Souldz]

'Ultra Ego' pulls no punches, immediately setting the tone for a hypnotic descent into sexy darkness. It's the good stuff that fully embodies the EBSM genre.

Listening to this is like being stalked by nefarious, otherworldly spirits that don't just want my soul, they want to play with it, they want to stretch it out and see how far I can bend before I break. It has such a high energy, danceable quality to it, despite invoking such a dark visual in my mind.

Halfway through the song, the feminine, mechanical vocal stabs lend a gorgeous texture to a very industrial, sharp, aggressive track.

My only complaint about the song is that it's too damn short. I need more! But I'll settle for the rest of this gorgeous EP.

[[02 // Flammer - Souldz x Into the Pale Abyss]]

Like a murderous giant, slowly but surely stomping towards me, carving an inevitable path, I feel this song driving towards me without relent.

The track starts with that thumping feeling — almost like a swagger — that giant coming straight for me, and with clever use of industrial noises, effects, sirens, and risers, it continues to build up energy and tension before breaking down into a glorious, eerily heaven-like soundscape of pads. But this reprieve won't last long. It serves as contrast before the song reaches its crescendo, demanding me to wake up from my momentary reverie, wiping away any thought patterns other than "feel the overwhelming beat, feel it everywhere in your body."

[03 // Chaos - Souldz x Fille de minuit]

This track gives me chills. There is a primitive part of my body that feels genuine fear and tension while listening to this track, and that's exactly how powerful EBSM should make me feel. I want to cower, I want to run, and I want to dance.

I feel myself in a black void with nothing around me except for flickering shadows that creep and linger, moving in erratic ways as the plucky, downright evil sounding synths play discordantly beautiful melodies over top of a grinding bassline and relentless drums.

[04 // Absolute - Souldz]

I don't think I'll be sleeping tonight, at least not without nightmares plaguing me. If our discerning readers can't guess by now, that is the highest compliment I can give an EBSM track.

Not only is the bass nasty and snarling, like a gut-punch, but again, I want to highlight the plucky, discordant synthlines that are a throughline within the 'Ultra Ego' EP. It's unsettling, it's contagious like a viral infection, and it makes me want to move.

[05 // Noir - Souldz (Single)]

This track sounds like a descent into madness. Wonderfully discordant, staccato synths — gorgeously altered by a prominent flanger effect — dance with a groovy, heavy bassline, and then come those deep choral stabs, a hallmark of the genre that Souldz uses to great effect.

In the finale of the song, I'm treated to those plucky synths playing a devilish melody — a signature sonic tool of Souldz for creating terror in the listener — but this time they sound like steps that if walked down, lead to insanity.

And of course, I do walk down them. As I descend, in those final moments of 'Noir', there is a droning pad that sounds like my demise.

This type of imagination-capturing world-building is something I love about EBSM. It's a genre that doesn't just want you to dance, but to imagine darkness, to be enveloped by it. EBSM is truly the sexiest type of music, at least in RADAR's opinion, and what Souldz has captured here is a distillation of that sexy, hypnotic horror energy.