Death in Vegas re-emerge with new album ‘Death Mask’

5 Minute Read

Richard_Fearless_press shot by Elaine Kin_2025_3

Music

Richard Fearless has always operated at the margins—of techno, of rock, of dub—but with ‘Death Mask’, his first Death in Vegas album in nearly a decade, he plunges deeper into the void.

Due June 6, the record trades the sleazy glam of past work for something more austere, a corroded alloy of industrial weight and dubspace drift. If 2002’s ‘Scorpio Rising; was a neon-lit drive through Soho, this is the sound of a cargo ship groaning in the Thames at 3 AM, its hull vibrating with sub-bass.

Fearless cites Ramleh, Terrence Dixon, and Mika Vainio as touchstones, though the album’s DNA is equally indebted to the studio as instrument. An ancient Effectron delay, once wielded by Arthur Russell, sputters unpredictably; mixing consoles channel the ghost of King Tubby. “The machines started speaking,” Fearless says of the sessions, which splice live takes into dubwise mutations. The result feels less composed than exhumed—a suite of tracks that thrum with the intimacy of a diary entry and the heft of a rusted chain.

Themes circle mortality and place: Chingola, Zambia, where Fearless was born; Detroit, where techno’s pulse first quickened; the Thames, whose tides frame his Metal Box studio. Even the title, *Death Mask*, hints at preservation, a final impression hardened into artifact. Yet for all its bleakness, there’s a peculiar warmth here—the hum of overloaded circuits, the hiss of tape.

Death Mask arrives via Drone Records on vinyl and most of evil digital platforms. Pre-orders are live.

Live dates will follow, including festival slots and club shows, though it’s hard to imagine these tracks confined to daylight. This isn’t music for easy consumption. It’s music for when the power flickers, when the walls start sweating. Fearless, ever the alchemist, has turned grief into voltage.