Release Date August 14th, 2026
Format LP/CD/Digital
Genre Industrial Metal
Origin Denmark
Raunchy came out of Denmark in the late nineties and signed to Mighty Music for their debut in 2001, before spending the following two decades moving between labels such as Nuclear Blast, Lifeforce and Massacre. Across that stretch the band built a reputation on refusing to sit inside one genre, folding melodic death metal, industrial textures and electronic production into a single sound that never fully belonged to any scene. The lineup features Jesper Kvist on bass, Morten Toft Hansen on drums, Jesper Andreas Tilsted on guitars and keyboards, Lars Christensen on guitars, and Jeppe Christensen on keyboards and vocals. Mike Semesky joined the ranks in 2014 for "Vices.Virtues.Visions.", pairing with Jeppe on vocal duties ever since.
"Prisoner" arrives twelve years after that last record, with drum sessions dating back as far as 2021 and the rest assembled in fragments around day jobs and family life. Jacob Hansen returned behind the desk, a producer who has worked with this band since "Velvet Noise" and whose hand keeps the record's layers from turning into mush. Lyrically the album circles around repetition, time and being trapped inside your own patterns, without tipping into misery for its own sake. Musically the synths sit further forward than on earlier records, the choruses reach higher, and the two vocalists trade lines across tracks like "Designed Despair" and "Masquerade" in a way that keeps both halves of the band's sound present at once.
Opener "Frostbite" and closer "Prisoner" bookend the record with a sense of shape, while "Stranded" and "Higher Truths" lean harder into the electronic side than the guitars. The problem is length: at ten tracks past the forty minute mark, the middle stretch loses some of the tension the opening built, and a couple of choruses lean on the same melodic trick one time too many. None of that undoes the record. When electronic pulse, melody and aggression meet in the right ratio, "Prisoner" has genuine energy and emotional tension; when every layer arrives together, detail gets buried beneath sheer volume. Taken as a complete album, this is an ambitious return with excellent choruses and a dark electronic character, tempered by overlong construction and production that packs too much into its busiest moments.
|7.5
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