They came from New Zealand to make noises like hell. Aucklanders Adrian Bird and Jordan Puryer are creeping onto your shores, lurching ‘round your cities; they’re dropping watery, terrible deaths at the foot of your door.

They used to be different. Different band, different name, different cast of characters. And they still play in that band, 1995 — technically, this is a side project — but something happened. Or maybe nothing happened, or maybe it all happened by mistake. Only Bird and Pruyer can tell you exactly how Mellow Grave startled into being, but I can tell you this: Once you’ve heard them, it’s like you’ve known them all along. They make music both familiar and dangerous: the sea at midnight, waiting to drag you under.

It’s like the Nine Inch Nails that never was. A skewed The Fragile spawned from a witch house universe with no expectation; just chaotic, nightmarish electronic tracks created by two people exploiting every possibility. Mellow Grave is at once metallic and fluid, direct and imprecise, sexy and sexless, with hip-hop and shoegaze and industrial burned perfectly into each other — and they’ve only been at it for little more than a year. Debut full-length Smoke Filled The Room, We Slept (featuring tracks from March’s Mellow Grave EP) feels so developed, it’s tough to imagine where the duo will have leapt by next September, or the September after that. And here’s hoping they see it through that far: Mellow Grave are among the most promising new bands to come from the seething electronic underworld.

Smoke Filled The Room is available digitally on Bandcamp now. Grab the LP from LA’s Living Tapes.

Wood Grain by Mellow Grave

Night Society – Hussle Club [MELLOW GRAVE REMIX] by Mellow Grave

DUST by Mellow Grave

- Rue Sauvage