The passing of Metropolis Records founder Dave Heckman has been keenly felt by countless people in dark alternative music across the world over the past several weeks. To get a better sense of who Dave was and how he built and operated Metropolis Records, we're joined by label manager Jim Smith as well as several other friends and associates of Dave's. We also suggest checking out ReGen Magazine's tribute to Dave as well as The Philadelphia Inquirer's obituary. Our 2012 interview with Dave can be read here.

We're joined this week by the charming duo of DJs Hate Mior and Vernal Trash of Darkness Forever Toronto. The pair spoke with us at Terminus about making the most out of streaming platforms during the pandemic, and how the communities built and lessons learned during lockdown can be carried forward into the future. We're also talking about recent live shows from Gary Numan, Leathers, and Actors, and tour cancellations by Bauhaus and Dead Can Dance.

After a healthy run of interviews, we're back to our classic two albums format for this week's podcast. We're talking about the anxious and aggressive EBM laid down by The Invincible Spirit on their debut LP "Current News", as well as some post-millennial futurepop right from 2004 courtesy of State Of The Union's "Inpendum".

This month's Patreon-supported commentary podcast finds the Senior Staff careening through the over-caffeinated mania of Wulfband's debut LP. Offering a unique spin on neo-oldschool EBM, the mysterious Swedish duo use a plethora of structural and programming tricks to keep things redlining for a full half hour, and Alex and Bruce do their best to highlight some of them as detuned synths and grammatically fractured German swarm around them.

Shannon Hemmett of Actors joins the podcast this week to talk about the development and upcoming live premiere of her other project, Leathers. We discuss the project's embracing of smoother shoegaze and electropop sounds, preparing its music for live audiences, and how the heavy touring sched of Actors has shaped her approach to songwriting. We're also talking about the news of Front 242 beginning to step back from live touring.

Recorded just before her smashing performance at Terminus, this week on the podcast we're proud to bring you our interview with Louisahhh. Considered, impassioned, and substantive, this interview shares a great deal with the live rendering of music from her The Practice Of Freedom LP which Louisahhh brought to the stage in Calgary. We're also discussing the line-up of New York's just announced Flesh & Steel festival in December, plus an excellent article by Konstantina Buhalis discussing how recent social media trends are intersecting with renewed interest in goth culture.

Few first-time festival acts piqued our interest as much as Randolph & Mortimer, who made their North American debut at Terminus. The project's combination of groove-heavy EBM and subtly sardonic social commentary has intrigued us for years, and so we were delighted to sit down with Sam Evans to discuss how the project grew out of his backgrounds in techno and hardcore, as well as the socio-political perspective of the uniquely instrumental act.

We're back home and moderately well-rested (though as you'll hear not entirely organized) after a weekend of Industrial Summer Camp fun at Calgary's Terminus Festival. This is our recap episode, with discussion of each and every of the twenty-seven acts who took the stage at Dickens. There's also some brief discussion of the sudden passing of Metropolis Records founder Dave Heckman.

With one foot out the door to meet up with all of our fellow Industrial Summer Campers at Terminus today, we're doing a grab-bag episode of the podcast. Various bits of live news, forthcoming record announcements, luke-warm takes, and seething rants make up the entire body of this episode, so if you're the sort of person who normally tunes out after the first fifteen minutes of our normally formatted episodes, boy howdy do we think you'll like this one!

This month's We Have A Commentary bonus podcast has the Senior Staff casting their eyes back to 2009 and the release of Din A Tod's second and final LP Westwerk. While it's a record that offers some highly polished darkwave and post-punk, it also presaged a number of sounds to come, as well as taking some curious detours into strains of dance and rock music well outside of Our Thing.