Huoratron

When most people hear the term "electro-house" these days, the stadium-packing ubiquity of the likes of Deadmau5 comes to mind. Huoratron's debut album, Cryptocracy, is destined to change that. Born out of the metal-heavy backdrop of Finland, Aku Raski brings the noise with his refreshing take on the genre. His bodacious 4/4 beats are smothered with the harshest speaker-shredding square-wave and saw tooth synth lines. This incessant digital distortion unifies the album aurally yet never falls prey to monotony. Cryptocracy begins with its title track, one of the more straightforward pieces here, and builds momentum all the way through to its demonic, gabber-tinged climax. There's a dubstep track halfway through the tracklisting, placing Raski's buzz saw synthesis in its natural setting, but where this would be an obvious choice for most producers, "Sea of Meat" happens to be one of the nastiest and slipperiest examples of the genre ever created. Rather than being a timely cash-in, Cryptocracy is a resurrection, in the way 28 Days Later breathed new life into the zombie phenomenon a decade ago. As Huoratron's consistently terrifying videos attest, this is the stuff brilliant nightmares are made of.