Hieroglitch – IIIII Album Review | Industrial Techno from Melbourne

There’s something profoundly unsettling about brutalist architecture: those monolithic concrete structures that seem to exist outside of human scale, reducing inhabitants to mere functions within a machine. Hieroglitch’s IIIII operates on similar principles: rhythmic industrialism stripped of ornament, titled with Roman numerals as blunt as inventory codes, draped in cover art depicting grey Soviet-era structures that could house a reactor as easily as they could flatten the spirit. This is music as infrastructure, functional, relentless, and designed to keep you moving through the machinery of daily existence.

The Melbourne-based producer’s sixth release of 2025 marks a decisive pivot from his previous work as Worgor, a project steeped in dark ambient textures and black metal atmospherics that channelled doom and noise into impressively brutal solo statements. Where Worgor thrived on suffocating intensity and metallic aggression, Hieroglitch strips away the guitars in favour of experimental techno and IDM sensibilities. Yet the DNA remains intact: that same attention to production detail, that refusal to offer sonic respite, that commitment to atmosphere as weapon. Created entirely on a small Eurorack setup in a single uncut recording session and mastered by Garry Brents of Gonemage, IIIII is rhythmic industrial techno that positions itself alongside the post-industrial prowess of Ancient Methods or Vatican Shadow, vocally barren, conceptually stark, and defiantly utilitarian in its presentation.

What unfolds across these four tracks is less an album than a living organism, pulsating through distinct phases whilst maintaining an unbroken forward momentum. The opening ‘I’ establishes the template: thudding kick drums that feel engineered for endurance rather than euphoria, layered with percussive oscillations that scrape and grind against the beat’s skeleton. There’s a meditative quality to the repetition, the way industrial machinery achieves a kind of hypnotic rhythm when observed long enough. But Hieroglitch refuses to let the listener settle into pure trance as grit peppers the proceedings, screeches fade in and out like warning klaxons, rough textures rise and fall across the soundfield. By ‘II’, the project has established its ecosystem: this is music that breathes, contracts, and expands whilst never abandoning its rhythmic anchor.

‘III’ introduces heightened variation, allowing harsher timbres to ride atop the persistent pulse, creating moments where the clinical precision threatens to fracture into chaos before reasserting control. The beauty (if that’s even the appropriate word) lies in how Hieroglitch balances brutality with functionality. This isn’t noise for its own sake; it’s carefully calibrated to sustain focus, to guide the listener through mental workloads and capitalist tedium. The final movement, ‘IIII’, maintains this balancing act, neither escalating to cathartic release nor dissolving into ambience. It simply continues, because the machine always continues.

The minimalist titling scheme – I, II, III, IIII – functions as more than aesthetic choice; it’s an ideological statement. In refusing descriptive language, Hieroglitch mirrors the very systems his music soundtracks: bureaucratic, reductive, designed to prevent individual expression from disrupting collective function. Coupled with that brutalist cover art, the effect is deliberately oppressive, each numeral the kind of blunt instrument wielded to beat submission into the working classes. There’s dark humour in creating functional work music that’s also a critique of the conditions necessitating such music. You need industrial techno to survive your desk job precisely because your desk job has reduced you to a function requiring industrial techno.

Yet for all its conceptual rigour and sonic accomplishment, IIIII suffers from a peculiar limitation: at just over twenty minutes, it’s simply not long enough. This might seem counterintuitive, praising an album by lamenting its brevity, but experimental techno of this calibre serves a specific purpose. When you’re deep in service sector monotony or battling through essay deadlines, this kind of heady, persistent rhythmic framework becomes essential infrastructure. Hieroglitch has crafted something tier-above in both sound design and production detail, music that genuinely earns its place in the post-industrial canon. The problem is that mental workloads last longer than twenty-three minutes, and when this EP concludes, you’re left searching for something equally substantial to maintain that focus. It’s a backhanded compliment: the music is too effective, too necessary, and thus too short (it should be noted, IIIII is ⅙ releases this year, so there is a workaround for those forward-thinking enough to line up such a queue).

IIIII represents a decisive maturation for Hieroglitch, demonstrating that the producer’s gifts translate seamlessly into techno frameworks. Where many experimental techno releases blur into interchangeable grey (often intentionally), this stands apart through sheer craft and commitment to its brutalist vision. It’s music that asks nothing of you except to keep moving, to remain functional, to persist through whatever concrete corridors you find yourself trapped within. In 2025, when the machinery demands we all become infrastructure, Hieroglitch has provided the appropriate soundtrack.