Shamanic Faultlines by Golem Dance Cult – Album Review
By Ellie Victor
Shamanic Faultlines is the latest outing from Parisian-Australian duo Golem Dance Cult – and it’s their most immersive, disruptive and sonically visceral album yet. Following 2023’s cult favourite Legend of the Bleeding Heart, this new record sees Charles Why and Laur leaning further into their own darkness, conjuring a cinematic stew of industrial sleaze, post-punk chaos and ritualistic gothic groove.
Opener after the intro ‘Call of the Wendigo’ is a slab of cursed vinyl dug out from some dusty ‘90s rave crypt. Its Contino Sessions-era Death in Vegas drawl offers scuzzy guitars snarling over seismic beats. The effect is both hypnotic and unhinged – a beast lurking beneath neon strobes.
‘Caveat Emptor’ lurches in next, a snarling, looping chant of a track that wouldn’t be out of place on a Pop Will Eat Itself B-side – all aggressive repetition and menacing sample-flavoured swagger. There’s a distorted sloganeering to it that feels more protest than party, the kind of track that dares you to dance and panic at once.
“Industrial romance”
Then, just as you think you’ve got the rules down, ‘Beach Stroll with Pasolini’ throws a spanner into the machine. Slower, stranger, but still unmistakably GDC, it’s a woozy, noir-lit interlude dripping in gothic haze. Think Bauhaus on the backstreets of Marseille, smoking clove cigarettes while muttering French curses. If Shamanic Faultlines has a palate cleanser, this is it – though it tastes more like absinthe than lemon sorbet.
By the time ‘Pretty at Dawn’ emerges from the fog, the dual vocal dynamics start to take centre stage. Laur’s signature gravel-throated growl is paired beautifully with Inga Liljestrom’s ghostly, luminous counterpoint. It’s a high-contrast pairing that lends the song a tragic, cinematic weight – industrial romance played out over broken beats and burnt neon.
While nods to Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson are impossible to ignore, there’s also something more eccentric here – a thread connecting Dead Can Dance’s ritualistic melancholy to the chaotic genius of Leeds’ own long-lost Age of Chance. Golem Dance Cult’s genius lies in their refusal to neatly slot into a genre. Instead, they construct new ones out of smashed-up relics from post-punk’s basement and glam rock’s attic.
“Creative friction”
The record’s midsection bristles with threat. ‘Escher Drawings’ is pure sonic assault – easily the album’s most punishing track. Laur’s vocal veers into pure, scorched-earth rage as the band unleash the kind of relentless drive usually reserved for the darkest corners of thrash or doom. It’s ugly and beautiful at once, like watching a cathedral collapse in slow motion.
But it’s on the closing title track, ‘Shamanic Faultlines’, that the band deliver their masterstroke. Opening with a pulse and growing steadily into a churning, shape-shifting epic, it twists and mutates like some sonic Lovecraftian horror. By the end, it dissolves into an ambient coda – part dream, part exorcism. It’s haunting in the truest sense, the kind of ending that lingers in your chest long after the speakers fall silent.
There’s a lot to digest on Shamanic Faultlines, but that’s precisely the point. Golem Dance Cult aren’t here to spoon-feed melodies or polish edges. Their music is all intention over perfection – a swirling, fizzing, crackling ball of creative friction. Every track is layered with grit and soul, and every moment feels like it might combust.
If rock’n’roll still has the power to disturb, seduce and energise in equal measure, this record is the proof. Part ritual, part rave, part requiem – Shamanic Faultlines is an album best experienced with the lights down low and your third eye open.
Ellie has spent over three decades dissecting riffs, rhythms, and rockstar egos, all in pursuit of the perfect review. Her music writing journey began at 12 with a glowing 10/10 diary entry for Echo and the Bunnymen, and she’s been chasing that high ever since. Armed with encyclopaedic knowledge and a soft spot for the sonically daring, Ellie will review anything that’s put in front of her – as long as it’s on vinyl.
