I know harsh industrial and experimentalist noise isn’t everybody’s thing. It isn’t really mine, if we’re being honest. But every now and then a probably-already-caustic artistic progression like that of Dutch two-piece All Are to Return veers into body-horror, or psychological horror, or in the case of “Arcology,” the band’s new single, a sandpaper-to-the-consciousness wash of unkind noise.

All Are to Return earlier in 2025 released their Līmen EP, for each song from which a video was made. One, for “The Augur,” premiered here. I’m not sure if the same thing is happening for “Arcology” or not, and I guess sometimes you just have to resign yourself to a thing being obscure. In a world surrounded by information, where data is traded as a commodity, having to wait for questions to be answered feels like part of the band’s aesthetic. Time will answer or it won’t. All Are to Return — the duo of F and N — draw a curtain of distorted drone over the piece’s five minutes, but for sure you can find yourself lost in it during that time, the soundwaves their own kind of undulating mantra, hypnotic for those either at or able to align to the frequencies.

And that’s really the question here, with “Arcology,” All Are to Return more broadly, or, zoomed out from that, any avant garde or experimentalist noise — which as much as it’s a genre has never been one geared toward accessibility — can you get to the level of expression the band are on? Do the evocations hit home as the line of synth before about the four-minute mark in “Arcology” recalls past better-futures already dissipated in a hellscape present? It can barely seem to be music, or words, but does it speak to you?

Thematically, All Are to Return purport to be exploring the endgame future of modern capitalism. Will you still pay rent or are we all just waiting for life itself to become a subscription service with a privacy agreement no one reads and a premium tier with increasing infiltration of advertising. As to how we got here, surely some know and others have a variety of guesses, but it doesn’t matter since if anything was ever to be learned from the horror-show the lesson would long since have been revealed. In All Are to Return, I hear our present moment, unfiltered. Years that new lows yet to be spiraled upon will have us pining for as “simpler times.” Imagine that for a minute.

Now you’re ready for “Arcology.” You’ll find it on the player below, followed by a quick quote from the band and more audio for your perusal.

Enjoy:

All Are to Return, “Arcology” premiere

“This is the edifice of the future. Incorporating dichotomies of in and outside – those who belong and that which is other. Conforming to corporate logics of profit and margins dictating entry and expulsion. It is the ultimate structure of enshrined privilege – the ark of capital – while the rest of us swelter and sink.”

All Are to Return, Līmen (2025)

All Are to Return, III (2024)

All Are to Return on Bandcamp

All Are to Return on Soundcloud

All Are to Return website

Tags: All Are to Return, All Are to Return Līmen, Limen, The Netherlands, Utrecht

This entry was posted on Friday, August 1st, 2025 at 6:12 am and is filed under audiObelisk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.