Trinity

YelworC broke up and deleted their recordings into oblivion long before their reputation started to grow. File swapping and Internet message boards made them the stuff of legend and whetted industrial music fans' ferocious appetites for their return. Now they're back and Trinity — their kickoff to a planned "concept trilogy" of albums — shouldn't tarnish their lofty reputation at all. A cacophony of synths and samples, Trinity recalls a pre-Opus Dei Laibach coupled with Skinny Puppy at their most theatrical. Like early Laibach, YelworC are great at weaving swoops of strings and horns with pumping electronics, but YelworC are all about the demonic in place of Laibach's love of the Teutonic. Trinity comes off as the album Hellraiser's Pinhead taps the steering wheel to while running out for a late-night pack of smokes. The lyrics are in the booklet if you care to keep up with the band's adaptation of Dante's Divine Comedy, but the album works fine without a close eye on the narrative. YelworC are more complex than their competition as they drop the beat once in a while, joyously muddle things up with noisy interludes, and add a bit of Duane Eddy-styled guitar; a breath of fresh air when so much of early-2000s electro-industrial sounds only a couple steps away from trance. Trinity finds this long-lost band crunching along like Depeche Mode never happened and "goth" wasn't something you could buy at the mall.