Berlin’s Aus return with a fresh slab of darkly evocative post-punk on their new EP, Der Schöne Scheine (The Beautiful One), a follow-up to the excellent 2020 second full-length, II.

Side A tracks Der Schöne Scheine and Zugvögel (Migratory Bird) revolve around the severe semi-spoken vocals, austerely detached through glacial disdain rather than disinterest.  These entwine with tautly clean yet coldly discordant, almost scratchy, guitars, while a bleak melodicism is injected by the haunting synths as the tom-led drums and resonantly melodic bass lock into their precise, relentless stride.  Meanwhile, the flipside track LSD allows a swinging bassline to forge an inexorable slow-build momentum before the vocals finally arrive for the song’s climax.  As ever, Aus deliver a consummate lesson in the exercise of rigorously enforced self-restraint to create an atmosphere of genuinely unnerving gothic intensity.