Rhys Fulber, a cornerstone of industrial music through his work with Front Line Assembly, Delerium, and Conjure One, steps into a charged past-future reverie with Memory Impulse Autonomy, his first solo release for Artoffact Records. A restless architect of sound, Fulber’s fingerprints are all over modern electronic music, from collaborations with Fear Factory, Paradise Lost, and Youth Code, to studio sessions with Sinéad O’Connor and Sarah McLachlan.
Memory Impulse Autonomy pulls taut the line between Fulber’s early inspirations—Cabaret Voltaire’s experimental chaos, Portion Control’s skeletal punch, Skinny Puppy’s dystopian dread, and the Brutalist industrial techno he has been hammering into form in recent years. The album nods to the clatter and cut of early eighties electronics but drags it forward, welding skeletal synths to dense, pummeling beats that throb and churn with mechanical menace.
Dark techno single The Abyss, featuring the unmistakable vocals and lyrics of William Maybelline (Lebanon Hanover, Qual) thrives in a space where nostalgia is stripped of sentimentality. Fulber channels the restless energy of his youth, when primitive gear and unchecked imagination sparked something primal. It hums with the spirit of Fulber’s early electronic exploration, battered and reborn through years of sonic warfare. It is a track wired on history, but built for a world still begging for revolution.
The Abyss is part of a collection that resonates deeply with Fulber: “The title refers to fond memories of my roots in making electronic music and the excitement and passion I had for these sounds that were new at the time,” he says. “That style is embedded in me. Going back to them allowed me to make music on impulse, and many of the instrumentals were created from studio jams….The vocalists are new artists who are inspired by a similar era.”
The video offers a lo-fi, documentary-style dive into a whirlwind city sprint with Qual, who stalks through streets and rooftops with stoic precision. From grainy cab rides to rapid-fire urban leaps on rooftops, the clip captures a raw, restless energy. Qual’s presence looms: deadpan, deliberate, and detached – as concrete blurs beneath neon and noise. It’s part tour, part transmission, delivered at hyperspeed with Fulber’s elegant post-industrial chill pulsing beneath the chaos.
Watch the video for “The Abyss” below:
While Memory Impulse Autonomy tips its hat to the past through the gnarly Richard H. Kirk-style cut-ups of All Of You Go To Heaven and the eerie Tangerine Dream sequences of Baaderzeit, it lands firmly in the now, pulling in voices from the sharp edge of contemporary electronic music. William Maybelline, Barkosina (Years of Denial), and Hamburg’s rising icon Konstantin Unwohl (aufnahme+wiedergabe) all leave their mark.
Visual legend Steven R. Gilmore provides the album’s stunning cover art, continuing a legacy that spans Skinny Puppy, Nettwerk Records, and beyond.
“The concept for the album is not a total replication of the past, except in the case of the artwork, which recalls that era at its peak,” says Fulber.
Fulber is not interested in nostalgia. With this album, he gleefully shreds the past apart, salvaging raw emotion and stubborn rhythms, then reassembles them into something harder, hungrier, and humming with a relentless drive toward the next collapse.
Memory Impulse Autonomy will be released on September 5th, 2025, on Artoffact Records. Listen to The Abyss below and order the single here.
Follow Rhys Fulber:
Or via: