This Wilderness ‘Sorry About Tomorrow’ Review: new industrial duo marry blues, beat poetry and industrial angst in powerful debut.

[rating=4]

This Wilderness are a new NYC based project featuring vocalist Robert O. Leaver and Jim Coleman, an experimental electronic artist best known for his work with defunct industrial noise-rockers Cop Shoot Cop.

They’re making their musical début with Sorry About Tomorrow (out May 4th via Wax and Wane). The album (which also features contributions from fellow Cop Shoot Cop alumnus and ex-SWANS instrumentalist Phil Puelo), is an uncompromising, haunting affair that weaves punishing electronic textures and soulful vocals to powerful effect.

Things kick off with Full Time Woman, whose bubbling sonics recall Aphex  Twin over Leaver’s serrated beat poet delivery, followed by Brdthwr, a industrial banger full of snarling synth stabs and eerie drones.

Sociopolitical woes rear their ugly head in the surly PONK (People of North Korea), while Lonely Woman is all restraint and suppressed tension.

Sorry About Tomorrow never hits one over the head with blunt aggression. Even though there is a distressed mood throughout, its offset by subtle funk and jazz inflections, from the skittering Almost X to the atheist album closer D.O.G., which sees Leaver spouting doubter declarations: Down On God…just not working not around here…my faith is a fever fading fast…

His sullen, insightful lyrics are expertly married to Coleman and Puleo’s dystopian soundscapes, making Sorry About Tomorrow’s a soundtrack perfectly suited for our ever tenuous present.

Buy This Wilderness’s Sorry About Tomorrow on Amazon: