Night City Kuang Xi

Night City's Industrial Rust Is the "Encryptor/Decryptor" Of Humanity's Bleak Future (Early Track Stream)


Industrial music is anti-establishment to its core, from the way it challenges conventional and topical tastes to how it galvanizes instrumentation. Collyn McCoy’s new industrial metal project Night City furthers this approach. On his debut EP Kuang XI he foresees a planet of decay and scum. He offers a glimpse at the release’s underbelly on the track “Encryptor/Decryptor,” which you can listen to here before Kuang XI’s full release on March 11 through Dune Altar.

On “Encryptor/Decryptor,” Night City imagines a future wasteland owing to humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels (although that doesn’t seem quite so dystopian so much as it is predictive). Mutants are the only remaining species on the planet, and they scavenge mankind’s droppings for nourishment. “Encryptor/Decryptor” is as depraved as these mutants, mirroring their desperation and the filth they shovel down their throats to survive. It’s hedonism laced with gnawing textures. The breakdown during the track’s second half pantomimes the mutant’s realization that their predicament – and Earth’s desolated state – was a product of corporate pleonexia. It’s a jagged pill to swallow, and Night City chases it with battery acid.

Regarding “Encryptor/Decryptor,” Night City states:

“Encryptor/Decryptor” takes aim at the capitalist propaganda machine, specifically with regard to fossil fuels. It is set in the very near future, after man-made climate change has rendered Earth uninhabitable for humans save for a band of mutants living deep underground in the subway tunnels, coal mines and missile silos their ancestors left behind. They come to the surface only at night – because the daylight sun and extreme heat would burn them to a crisp – to scavenge the remains of the long-extinct surface-dwelling society. From scraps of ashen newspaper the mutants learn that the planet’s fate was entirely preventable if not for the greed of the despots, criminals, autocrats, and oligarchs who profited from the earth’s destruction.

Kuang XI releases on March 11 via Dune Altar.