Transfixiation

Editors’ Notes This Brooklyn-based trio’s fourth album, Transfixiation, is both an aggressive assault on the senses on its leanest, meanest tracks (“I’m So Clean,” “Fill the Void”) and an eerily beautiful flex of the band’s unique musical existential muscle (“Lower Zone”). Frontman Oliver Ackermann emerges as a spiritual descendent of Ian Curtis’ uneasy sense, and bassist Dion Lunadon carries the weight of the band’s melodies in his fluid, often-percussive lines. New drummer Robi Gonzalez holds things together by keeping the songs moving. For the brutal “I Will Die,” the band went straight to tape, while other songs (“Deeper,” “Supermaster”) sound more carefully calibrated.