This came rather as a surprise. Just when Teste's The Wipe is getting re-rubs from some of the scene's top names, we witness the return of one of the band's members, Dave Foster, under his Huren moniker. This alias has been more or less dormant for over a decade now, as Dave has been busy touring with the Canadian synth pop band Junior Boys, as their live drummer. After eleven years of slumber, he is back with a brutal four tracker on Zhark, the label for which he recorded the vast majority of his Huren material.

The 12" kick starts with the torrid MRTVI (which means "dead" in Croatian by the way), and it's all glowering techno pressure: hoofing kicks, hefty snares, distortion fuelled pressure and the bass line getting all crooked and grinding two and a half minutes deep. Malevolent and grimy to the bone. Eight minutes of linear and dry industrial grit. Proper subterranean, wall to wall concentration of rippin' drums and slashing loops.

Nuklearni follows in its footsteps, with speaker rattling breakbeats and old schoolish whistle blows tossed in for some good dance floor bonanza. Don't let those mislead you, as right beneath them lurk scraping noises, and by the time the track moves in its second minute, a whole new tonal path is unleashed, with the beats going mental, and the bass compartment gaining in ruggedness. It's a short one, so come well prepared as a lot of intensity comes around in just under four minutes.

Flip the record over and things get slightly deeper with Sentionaut. It's still a proper 4x4 beast, yet the groove is more on the percolating side of things, and the invasive, ascending tonal thrusts sound like the arrival of oblivion committed to wax. The whole track is basically one nervous build up, but the real treat is that the actual climax never drops. It's all tension accumulation, metallic sounds and bits steadily join the mix, roiling bass rhythms and the more elements added, the more you're looking forward to that take off! Yet it never happens... Awesome though!

Tikto Rekonfic picks up the rasping pounding aesthetic of MRTVI. Reduced minimalist dance floor destruction: hypnotic and stripped down to the core essence melodic patterns spin around harsh beats and illicit, thrilling bass response that is as centripetal as any I've recently heard. Proper darkness right here.

Very, very worth while release. Welcome back, mr. Foster. We haven't had any Teste or Huren material for what seems like eternity now, and we're getting rained upon with it for the moment! While this is fine industrial fodder through and through, old Huren followers beware: this is, in my ears, his most accessible release under that moniker yet. Not only that, it's the most straightforwardly techno sounding one as well. You will recollect how Huren dropped a series of highly challenging releases blurring conventional techno with industrial, rhythmic noise and dark ambient. While this is quality, it's pure techno on the menu here, admittedly covered in seventy seven shades of black. Those expecting another ground breaking adventurous EP like "Barracks" might be disappointed at first, although technically there is no room for disappointment here. Four dark tracks for the brooding big rooms. Dave Foster in top shape and true to his own self. Might not be as stylistically diverse as some of his older material, but if you're in the mood for some perforating industrialesque tools, look no further. After all, the stuff on this 12" will go down better in clubs today than any track off of "Ordet" or "Tinseltown"... Anyways, I like this one plenty, very glad I picked it up, strangulated noise courtesy of one of the scene's true dark knights.