In spite of their history of controversy, Combichrist are actually sitting at a rather comfy spot in their careers: the band, once fuelled by infamy on records like 2005’s ‘Everybody Hates You,’ have (relatively) mellowed out over the years, now happily sitting atop the aggrotech scene. After 2024’s self-titled saw LaPlegua dipping his toes into full-blown industrial metal, new album ‘The Venom In The Mouth Of God’ feels like a return to the project’s roots, bringing Combichrist back into the fold of electronica. The results are middle of the road.

If ‘The Venom…’ is worthy of any praise from the outset, it must be noted that the record feels far more focused and cohesive than ‘CMBCRST’ before it: where that album had its fingers in a variety of pies, from the dissonant synth leads of ‘Children Of Violence’ to the marching industrial riffs of ‘Heads Off,’ the band’s newest project is more consistent in its presentation. These thirteen tracks act like pieces of a conveyer belt, perpetually driving the listener forwards into another blast of pulsing synth music. Those chugging guitars are still present and accounted for on ‘Desolation,’ but it’s the drums and keyboards that lie way out front in the mix this time around— Combichrist are still here to get you headbanging, make no mistake, but ‘The Venom…’ simply doesn’t fit the label of ‘industrial metal’ like its predecessor did.

And for what it's worth, LaPlegua hasn’t earned his seat in the aggrotech sphere by luck: though the electronica you’ll find on his latest work isn’t quite as striking as, say, hit song ‘This S*it Will Fcuk You Up,’ it’s nonetheless pretty infectious in its grandest moments. ‘ODR’ is a momentous opener, thrusting you straight into a towering collection of galloping rhythms and fuzzy synth textures that manages to be quite imposing in its assembly— it’s no surprise at all to see the record finding its footing whenever it lets itself off the leash, as the driving beat of ‘Feraline’ and ‘Demons Wanna Be Summoned’ will attest to. On ‘Venom’ and ‘The Way We Want To Be Seen,’ Combichrist sink into a skulking pace, not unlike a piece of trip-hop: the albums subsists only on the intensity of its performers.

The band’s ferocity acts like a crutch, then, that holds up ‘The Venom…’ in its entirety: we described the record as middle of the road because LaPlegua and company simply aren’t able to sustain that aggression for this hour-long listen, and you don’t want to be there whenever the mask slips. Outside of the fun bursts of energy that you’ll be clinging onto when all is said and done, this is a rather lethargic listen, choked by mid-tempo number after mid-tempo number. You’d expect a song entitled ’S.T.F.U’ to inspire some fury, but no, the cut blurs together with ‘Born Deströyer,’ ‘The Future Is A Memory’ and, frankly, much of the rest of this winding tracklist. Even LaPlegua himself sounds tired throughout the record, a comment that completely undercuts the faux-rebellious ‘RISE.’

It should probably go without saying that the lyrics across ‘The Venom…’ are quite awful— even at their best, Combichrist’s albums were never literary masterpieces— but it’s the seriousness with which LaPlegua attacks them that really drives home just how childish and surface-level these songs are. The frontman honest-to-god sounds like Lou Reed when he rambles his way through ‘Only Here For A Good Time’ and ‘Second Ending (We Have Been Here Before),’ both of which would’ve been better served as instrumental cuts (or, in the case of the former, as a forgotten b-side), and his critiques of capitalism and authoritarianism are no more thought-provoking than what you might find on a late-stage Muse record. Too often across these thirteen tracks, Combichrist forget where their strengths lie, and aim their sights a little too high because of it.

At the end of the day, Andy LaPlegua knows what he’s doing: it sounds like aggrotech, it moves like aggrotech, it’s aggrotech. What ‘The Venom In The Mouth Of God’ is lacking is a real sense of urgency— you can hear just how at home Combichrist are on this record, and it does a massive disservice to their signature brand of industrial madness. The man says it himself on the album’s closing track: “we have been here before.”