Industrial goth club quartet Mandy, Indiana return with a fuller and more expansive sound on their sophomore LP, URGH.
Release date: February 6, 2026 | Sacred Bones Records | Facebook | Instagram | Bandcamp
Resilience is something the whole world is going to have to familiarize themselves with, if they haven’t already. Back when I did kung fu, I learned to be like bamboo; flexible, but sturdy and strong, able to withstand the winds and strikes that life throws at you without cracking, connected to the earth, and ready to snap back at that which tries to knock you down. In many ways, the sophomore album from an artist is a test of resilience. For Mandy, Indiana, the Manchester-based goth/industrial act, the sound of resilience, frustration, and heavy lifting is the title of their second album and debut for Sacred Bones Records, URGH.
2023’s i’ve seen a way cast an immediate spell on me. Mandy, Indiana employs Valentine Caufield’s often distorted vocals (almost exclusively sung in French), Scott Fair’s guitar and production skills, Simon Catling’s synths, and Alex Macdougall’s drums into cinematic sounds that veer between anxious, danceable, and introspective. On i’ve seen a way, the band came into the world sounding, at times, familiar, but more importantly, unique in the modern goth-club scenery. After two years of tours, writing, and recording, Mandy, Indiana have unflinchingly expanded their sound and crafted not only a worthy successor to their debut, but an album that blows way past it. In doing so, Caufield and Macdougall both underwent multiple surgeries during the writing and recording process that added physical challenges to the shaping of URGH, making the album all the more impressive.
Grating synthesizer distortion welcomes us into a crushing bass synth line as higher pitched sounds and percussion glitch in and out on opener “Stevastopol” before giving way to something that sounds like a ballet orchestra recording on a damaged cassette. It is jarring at first, but the whimsical conclusion helps serve as a mental overture of URGH. Be prepared for anything. “Magazine”, for example, presents itself as something that could make a dance floor pop, but turns into walls of pulsating sounds that calls to mind Swans or Savages levels of intensity. While the immaculate “try saying” juxtaposes trash can clamor drums with a chopped up sample of a woman asking, ‘honey, is that you?‘, jaunty acoustic guitar, and Caufield’s spoken word lyrics. This song is like three other songs smashed together on a sampler and remixed into one cohesive thought.
Mandy, Indiana‘s willingness to deconstruct and recreate their own compositions makes each track its own unconventional journey. “Life Hex” channels the industrial intensity of Author & Punisher as much as it calls to mind The Knife. Meanwhile, “ist halt so” transposes a sense of funk’s quirkiness into a blend of art-punk and deconstructed club with a build of frantic toms and hand-claps before going full hardcore techno for a moment. The chaos is similar to last year’s hexed! by aya. If that wasn’t wild enough, “Sicko!” swings through with a guest verse from indie-rap stalwart billy woods which includes the line, ‘harm reduction is hiding the body so they can keep hope alive,’ in a breakdown of the psychosis that is our modern existence.
Though, Caufield’s own lyrics grapple with the world at large, as well. “Dodecahedron” is a plea against apathy in the face of oppression while “ist halt so” is like a rally cry for a unified humanity against the ghouls that seek to oppress us, closing with the line, ‘they tried to bury us/they didn’t know we were seeds.’ The final track, however, packs a well-deserved punch in the face of bro-culture and the underlying misogyny of protecting sexual predators through normalcy. Sung in English, this track was made to be heard and understood by everyone and is the most punk thing I have heard in a while, dripping with a haunting accuracy in its portrayal of hypocrisy and gaslighting and men’s overall refusal of accountability.
I knew Mandy, Indiana was going to be a band I would follow as long as they exist the second I heard the first track on i’ve seen a way, but URGH took every preconception I could have about what they would do next and shoved them aside for something all the more bold and exhilarating. Though another song or two would be welcome, URGH’s 35-minute runtime hits fast and hard, favoring more heft and abrasiveness than their relatively calmer debut. Mandy, Indiana have proven themselves to be architects of massive sound, as if through their frenetic beats, obelisk stabs of synths and jagged guitars, and cinematic sampling they were channeling the collective frustration of the world and letting it rip through the mesh of your speakers letting the sound of our shared resilience flood the air.
