Introducing Indifferent Engine : a bold new voice in post-hardcore.
Emerging from the Cambridge underground, Indifferent Engine are one of the UK’s most exciting and unconventional new bands — a five-piece whose live performances blur the lines between gig, installation art, and visceral theatre. Known for their confrontational energy, vintage CRT monitors flooding venues in glowing static, and a sound rooted in chaos and craft, Indifferent Engine are not just playing music — they’re designing experiences.
Formed by vocalist and songwriter Adam Paul, a video game designer by trade, Indifferent Engine channel his dual creative lives into a wholly unique sonic and visual identity. The band don’t merely reference retro aesthetics — they live and build them. Alongside their debut album, they are launching their own Sega Mega Drive game, selling custom-built Tape Echo units and guitar pedals, and incorporating these into every aspect of their immersive performances.
At the center of this multimedia storm is their debut album, ‘Speculative Fiction’ – released via Church Road Records aka – one of the most exciting label in the UK. It’s a genre-bending, emotionally charged statement — one foot rooted in post-hardcore tradition, the other stepping into math rock precision, ambient abstraction, and raw vulnerability. Unsurprisingly, the band is already drawing comparisons to genre-defying acts like At The Drive-In, Oceansize, Tool, The Mars Volta, These Arms Are Snakes, Tool and Porcupine Tree — artists known for balancing sonic complexity with emotional intensity.
From the serene opening of « The Waiter », which gradually blooms from delicate loops into a towering, distorted climax, to the feral energy of « Crashing Into A Hillside In The Dead Of Night », Indifferent Engine make clear that no soundscape is off-limits. Tracks like « Lifetime Achievement Award » and « Pylon Cult » showcase their gift for chaos and control — panic-stricken screams matched with razor-tight arrangements, furious pace undercut by moments of stillness and dread. Then there’s « Bitcrush », a post-rock inflected piece drenched in ambience and emotional heft, closing on a sobbing vocal delivery that’s both intimate and unflinching.
Their ability to balance violent dissonance with melodic beauty shines in later cuts like « Verdigris » and « Primrose & Acetate », where shimmering guitars give way to warped riffs and unexpected tempo shifts, always retaining a sense of compositional clarity amidst the chaos, somewhere at the convergence between Post-Hardcore, Experimental Rock, Alt-Metal, Math Rock, Contemporary Prog, Post-Rock or Punk.
And yet, Indifferent Engine are never just loud for loud’s sake. There’s intention in every decision, from the circuit-bent sonic textures to the introspective lyrical delivery. Their use of samples — distressed voices, ambient field recordings, analogue glitch — adds layers of conceptual depth and sonic tension. The closing track, « The Captain », distills the band’s ethos into one final burst: a haunting looped phrase slowly engulfed in distortion and screamed catharsis, leaving the listener breathless and uneasy.
Speculative Fiction is a debut of rare ambition — emotionally raw, musically dense, and utterly unpredictable. It is not content to sit within the boundaries of post-hardcore. Instead, Indifferent Engine warp the genre into something new: a furious, beautiful amalgam of sound, tech, nostalgia, and narrative.
In an age where so many new bands feel algorithmically derived, Indifferent Engine are a necessary disruption — an analogue glitch in the digital noise.
