In Wesley Eisold's universe, anything worth saying is worth saying loud. The New York musician's second proper record as Cold Cave is as bright and emphatic as a field of neon exclamation points, full of frantically palpitating drum machines and 900-mile-an-hour synths. His strategy is simple: Spike the bitter fizz of early electro-industrial bands like Nitzer Ebb with a double dose of the Cure and wait for the rush to kick in.

What could have amounted to insignificant sound and fury is rescued by Eisold's unerring gift for melody: The chorus of "Villains of the Moon" is full of desperate lovelorn throb, and "Racing Around the Church" thrashes and pleads like New Order having a panic attack. Eisold's also got a healthy sense of humor. "They say the meek shall inherit the earth," he pouts in "Underworld USA" before concluding, "God, that seems like so much work." Turns out all that volume was just a distraction; like any self-respecting goth, all Eisold really wants to do is mope.

Listen to "The Great Pan is Dead":

Gallery: Random Notes, Rock's Hottest Photos

“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”