Priest - Chaos EP [Yellow]

Chaos EP is Priest stepping sideways from the synthpop and EBM foundation that's built their name, four tracks pulling in 90s big beat and ambient textures, pressed here on yellow vinyl.

The mysterious Swedish duo have spent recent years building a genuinely serious reputation in the darker corners of synth music, Body Machine and Dark Pulse both landing to real acclaim, the latter winning Album of the Year at Sweden's Synthsläggan Awards. Rather than repeat that formula a third time, this EP goes looking for new ground, keeping the icy synthpop and EBM machinery underneath but letting big beat's breakbeat energy and ambient's patience creep into the mix. It's a genuine detour rather than a full reinvention, and it suits a band whose whole appeal has always been staying a little unplaceable.

World on a Wire opens the EP at its most propulsive, breakbeat urgency colliding with the duo's usual cold synth atmosphere. My Lonely Heart carries real emotional weight beneath the machinery, closer to the band's EBM roots than anything else here. Nukeface leans hardest into the ambient textures, patient and genuinely eerie, and Tria Prima III closes the EP on the record's most abstract, exploratory note.

Four tracks that prove an already acclaimed project can still wander off script and land somewhere worth hearing. Priest clearly aren't interested in repeating themselves.