The word ‘URGH’ sounds like some kind of brain-expletive euphemism that would come out of our collective mouths upon catching a glance of the current timeline. When that same negative energy meets the sonic industrial wall of Mandy, Indiana, however? It’s meeting an exorcism from everything which makes you wish you could escape this world through the experimentally based Manchester band’s uncanny ability to process a hellscape and transmit it into a kinetic rage rave. That approaches a delightful, delirious — and more pointedly, angry — maximum capacity on their four-piece second album.

Peering back at the seismic-shifting slabs of concrete architecture behind Mandy, Indian’s 2021 breakthrough EP, …, or the more cinematically-scaled electrolysis of those same materials on their 2023 debut full-length, i’ve seen a way, it’s astounding to realize that what already sounded like a force created within its own pressurized vacuum was only the beginning of where that same distinct energy’s potential would lead to where it has today. If it sounds simultaneously discombobulated and friction-forced, that’s because they’ve harnessed every atom of the present times’ polar intensities through their nerve endings, rendering a movement of body that doesn’t necessarily have a focal direction beyond thrusting forward and scraping toward a way out.

Beguiling circuitry remains their sound’s connective tissue, yet spliced and cut vocals complimented by damaged free jazz on “try saying” as well as pulmonary-throbbin techno on the billy woods feature, “Sicko!”, and “Cursive” layer in new ways to transform existential terror into actions of resistance. Vocalist Valentine Caulfield’s French tongue need not any interpretations to detect her ire throughout it all. If there were any question about that, the album’s torched closer, “I’ll Ask Her”, ensures the f-bombs targeted toward pure evil are universally-resounding.

Highlights: “try saying”, “Sicko!”, “Cursive”

Mandy, Indiana’s URGH is available now on Sacred Bones Records.

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