Blawan doesn’t just make experimental music, he forges it in fire. His latest full-length effort, SickElixir, is the sound of metal grinding against bone, bass detonating through concrete, and some nameless thing whispering in the vents behind your skull. This isn’t a dance club record. It’s an exorcism cut into vinyl and then dressed like a rave. XL Recordings handed him the keys to the factory, and he rebuilt it as a nightmare funhouse: strobing, guttural, hypnotic. This is not an album that you listen to, rather it’s an album that swallows you whole and spits out the bones.
From the opening moments, the human voice becomes weaponized. Not lyrics. Not language. Just breath and flesh crushed through distortion until it mutates into an alien prayer. Vocals snarl, chant, and march in unison like a battalion of ogres in steel boots. The drums draw straight from the industrial lineage, all metallic clatter, syncopated machinery, and kicks that feel seismic. Beneath it all, the floor constantly shifts with shuffling static, scraping textures, and claustrophobic air. It’s dark. Not theatrical-dark. Not horror-movie-dark. This is post-trauma, post-industry, post-human dark.
And yet, Blawan makes it dance. Each track stomps with precision, like techno rebuilt from scrap metal and bad memories. One moment it’s troll-deep growls and alarm-synths blaring like evacuation sirens; the next, a hypnotic loop of spectral female vocals slithers through the smoke. Even at its most brutal, SickElixir has groove in its bloodstream. This is “ghoul dancehall.” This is the underground tearing open the sky.
The intent in the darkness of the album elevates it, greater than the sum of its individual parts. Blawan isn’t throwing distortion for shock. He’s channeling grief. Family trauma. The chaos of rebuilding a life across Berlin, Leeds, Paris, Lisbon. Every sound feels personal, like he’s dragging the past onto the dancefloor and forcing it to move. Across 14 tracks, he shapes a new language out of anguish and pressure, pushing his already ferocious style into a bold, future-facing mutation.
SickElixir is Blawan fully weaponized. A manifesto. A purge. A statement that industrial isn’t nostalgia, it’s evolution. It’s the most alive, dangerous, and necessary thing he’s ever released. And it hits like a steel-toed boot to the chest.
SickElixir by Blawan was released 10 October, 2025 on XL Recordings, LTD