There are moments in an artist’s career that serve not merely as progressions but as definitive statements of purpose, when a new work ceases to be another entry in a catalog and becomes the very culmination of a long, deliberate metamorphosis. The announcement of ‘Age of Aquarius,’ the sixth full-length album from the French electronic composer James Kent, known as Perturbator, is precisely such a moment.

Scheduled for release on October 10, 2025, the album arrives not only as a highly anticipated work but as a philosophical treatise set to music, marking the final stage of a decade-long journey away from the neon-drenched nostalgia of synthwave and toward a more severe, intellectually rigorous role: a sonic documentarian for a fractured and belligerent present.¹

‘Age Of Aquarius’ is a concept album in the truest sense, a focused examination of how conflict, war, and the precarious state of individualism have become the dominant forces shaping modern society. This thematic weight signals a continued departure from the more personal explorations of his previous album, 2021’s ‘Lustful Sacraments,’ which centered on addiction and self-destruction.

The new record’s arrival will be facilitated by Nuclear Blast Records, a titan in the world of heavy metal.² This alliance is more than a simple distribution deal; it is a symbolic and strategic realignment. Aligning with a label synonymous with metal’s most formidable acts, Kent formally cements his project’s identity within a lineage of aggressive, challenging music.

It is the final, decisive step in a migration that has been underway for years, a validation of the industrial and metallic threads that have steadily overtaken the retro-futurist synth textures of his origins.

Perturbator: A History Written in Neon and Rust

The trajectory of Perturbator is a study in artistic self-definition, a chronicle of an artist systematically dismantling the very genre he helped to erect. Kent’s musical genesis was not in electronics but in the raw, abrasive world of black metal, where he served as a guitarist in several bands.

Around 2012, he pivoted, trading the guitar for the synthesizer to forge a solitary path. His early output, including foundational EPs like ‘Night Driving Avenger’ and albums such as ‘I Am the Night’ (2012) and ‘Dangerous Days’ (2014), was steeped in the aesthetics of 1980s cyberpunk cinema—the dystopian cityscapes of ‘Akira,’ the philosophical quandaries of ‘Ghost in the Shell.’

This initial phase culminated in his contributions to the soundtracks for the video games ‘Hotline Miami’ and its sequel, ‘Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number.’ These tracks did more than just gain him an audience; they effectively defined the aggressive, menacing edge of the burgeoning darksynth movement, a subgenre that stripped synthwave of its brighter sensibilities and imbued it with a palpable sense of danger.

Albums like ‘Dangerous Days’ and 2016’s ‘The Uncanny Valley’ were lauded for their world-building, crafting intricate, cinematic narratives through purely instrumental means—they were, in essence, scores for films that existed only in the listener’s imagination.

Yet, as the synthwave scene he pioneered grew into a global phenomenon, Kent became one of its most prominent internal critics. In interviews following the release of ‘The Uncanny Valley,’ he voiced a clear disillusionment with the genre, describing it as having become “formulaic, very codified,” and creatively stagnant due to oversaturation.

His artistic response was a calculated and decisive rupture. The 2017 EP ‘New Model’ was, in his own words, a “cutoff release,” a conscious effort to shed the “cheesy eighties synth schtick.” The music was cold, minimalist, and punishingly industrial, drawing more from the mechanical hostility of Nine Inch Nails and the austere precision of Kraftwerk than from the scores of John Carpenter.

The visual language followed suit; the vibrant neon color palette was replaced with stark, monochrome artwork, a clear signal of a new, more severe aesthetic. His 2021 album, ‘Lustful Sacraments,’ continued this evolution, serving as a “love letter to post punk” by weaving in the textures of darkwave and gothic rock, incorporating organic instruments like guitars and bass to create a sound that was more human, albeit tragically flawed.

This progression reveals an artist attempting to act as a corrective force. Synthwave, at its core, is a hauntological genre—a sonic exploration of a “lost future” as imagined by the 1980s. Kent initially mastered this form, but as the scene became inundated with imitation, he saw its potential being squandered on hollow nostalgia.

His subsequent work can be understood as an implicit critique of these limitations. ‘New Model’ and ‘Lustful Sacraments’ were arguments, made through music, that the synthesizer could be a tool for contemporary critique—of technology, of society, of the self—rather than just an instrument of retro homage.

With ‘Age Of Aquarius,’ this argument appears to reach its conclusion, transforming the sonic vocabulary of a stylized past into a direct confrontation with the turbulent realities of the present.

Dispatches from the Front Lines

The four singles released in advance of ‘Age Of Aquarius’ are not merely promotional selections; they are carefully sequenced dispatches that form a narrative microcosm of the album’s overarching thesis.

The first, ‘Apocalypse Now,’ is the album’s mission statement. Described as a “visceral, dance-ready anthem,” the track is built on a foundation of “punitive kick drums and blasting synths”. The inclusion of Kristoffer Rygg from the legendary Norwegian avant-garde metal group Ulver lends an immediate weight and credibility to the track’s aggressive posture.

Kent himself describes the song as being about “the systematic destruction we cause to our own kind” and our “inability to coexist.” The accompanying music video, directed by David Fitt, powerfully visualizes this concept as a literal war of world leaders against themselves, a grim pantomime of power that questions its own cyclical, self-destructive nature.

Following this opening salvo is ‘The Art of War,’ a track Kent identifies as the “most EBM sounding one” on the record. It is a hard-hitting piece of electronic body music that embodies the sound of ideological battle, its title an overt reference to Sun Tzu’s ancient treatise on strategy.

Kent uses the song to critique a modern desensitization to violence, stating it is about “our propensity to make everything a spectacle and how we consume acts of violence as entertainment.” The third single, ‘Mors Ultima Ratio,’ plunges deeper into darkness. A “menacing, high-intensity instrumental,” its sound is explicitly inspired by “industrial music and black metal.”

The Latin title, which translates to “Death is the final accounting” or “Death is the final resort,” positions the track as the story’s nihilistic climax, a sonic representation of the ultimate and inescapable consequence of the album’s central conflict.

In stark and deliberate contrast to this aggression comes the fourth single, ‘The Swimming Pool.’ A “serene instrumental piano ballad,” it is a moment of profound quietude in an otherwise ferocious landscape. Kent calls it “simple, minimalist, and intimate,” explaining that it was inspired by a recurring dream of being lost within a vast hotel, endlessly searching for a swimming pool he can never find.

This surreal, melancholic atmosphere offers a necessary emotional counterpoint, suggesting a retreat into an inner world—a search for tranquility amidst the external chaos. When viewed in sequence, these four tracks map a clear narrative arc: from the declaration of external war (‘Apocalypse Now’), to the internalization of that war as spectacle (‘The Art of War’), to its destructive conclusion (‘Mors Ultima Ratio’), and finally, to a surreal and introspective escape (‘The Swimming Pool’). This progression mirrors the album’s broader stated structure, suggesting a journey from societal collapse to the sanctuary, however fragile, of the individual mind.

The Architecture of a New Age: ‘Age of Aquarius’

The conceptual framework of ‘Age Of Aquarius’ is built upon a dialectical structure, a philosophical argument presented in two distinct halves. “The first half of Age of Aquarius is all about conflict. The misanthropy and violence that lays in all of us,” Kent explains, before adding, “The second part of the album then talks about individualism.”

This structure suggests a movement from diagnosis to prescription. An examination of the album’s eleven-song tracklist allows for a tentative mapping of this arc.

The first six tracks, from ‘Apocalypse Now’ through ‘The Art of War,’ appear to constitute the chronicle of conflict. The subsequent five pieces, beginning with ‘12th House’ and ‘Lady Moon’—titles that evoke introspection and mysticism—and culminating in the ten-minute, Alcest-featuring title track, seem poised to explore the turn toward the individual as a potential resolution.

Further reinforcing the album’s intellectual depth is the curated selection of collaborators, who function less as guest artists and more as a council of creative allies, each representing a key facet of Perturbator’s evolved identity.

Ulver embodies the principle of fearless artistic evolution, having transitioned from black metal pioneers to masters of avant-garde electronica. Author & Punisher, the project of engineer Tristan Shone, represents the brutal, literal fusion of man and machine in modern industrial music.

The French blackgaze band Alcest signifies the potential for finding the sublime within extreme metal’s abrasive forms. Finally, a return of vocalist Greta Link, who previously appeared on Perturbator’s earlier work, provides a thread of continuity, connecting this new chapter to the project’s established history.

The album’s title itself contains the work’s central tension. The phrase ‘Age Of Aquarius’ is inextricably linked to the 1960s counter-culture, a signifier of a dawning era of peace, harmony, and enlightenment, famously celebrated in the 1967 musical Hair. Yet the music presented under this banner is its violent antithesis: dystopian, aggressive, and steeped in conflict. This contradiction is not accidental but is the core of the album’s critique.

Kent employs the title as a tool of profound irony, holding the utopian promise of a new age against the brutal reality of our current moment. The album asks a deeply unsettling question: Is our era of polarization and perpetual conflict a grotesque perversion of that dream, or is the painful struggle through this chaos, toward a hard-won individualism, the only authentic path to a new enlightenment?

The work does not simply depict conflict; it interrogates the very meaning of progress through this titular paradox.

The Ghost in the Machine

To grasp the importance of ‘Age Of Aquarius,’ one must situate it within the artistic traditions from which it descends. The most visible of these is the lineage of 1980s cinematic composers. The work of John Carpenter, Vangelis, and Tangerine Dream provided the foundational sonic vocabulary for the entire synthwave genre.

Kent adopted not only their tools—the warm analog synthesizers, the atmospheric pads, the driving arpeggios—but their entire methodology. His assertion that “I like to think of every album as a movie” is a direct continuation of their approach, which prioritized narrative and atmosphere above all else. With his latest work, however, he has moved beyond aesthetic emulation, using that cinematic language to score his own, far more critical and contemporary films.

Equally important, though perhaps less immediately apparent, is his connection to the history of industrial music and Electronic Body Music (EBM). By embracing the sounds of pioneers like Front 242, Kent aligns his work with a tradition that has always been inherently political and confrontational.

Where much of synthwave indulges in a comfortable nostalgia, industrial music has, since its inception, been a tool for critiquing a dehumanizing, technologically saturated present. This lineage provides the crucial “punk” element to Perturbator’s cyberpunk identity, grounding his futuristic aesthetics in a legacy of urgent social commentary.

This synthesis of influences places Perturbator at the thematic core of cyberpunk itself. The genre, in both literature and film, has always been defined by the fusion of “high tech, low life,” exploring transhumanism, corporate control, and societal decay.

Kent’s music has long embodied these aesthetic signifiers, from his project’s name to his album art. With ‘Age Of Aquarius,’ he moves from aesthetics to philosophy, using his sound to tackle the genre’s most profound questions: what does it mean to be an individual in a world of overwhelming technological and ideological systems? How does one maintain humanity when the very structures of society seem designed to erase it?

The Spectacle Live and In Person

The themes of ‘Age Of Aquarius’ are set to extend beyond the album itself and onto the stage with a major European and United Kingdom headline tour scheduled for late 2025. The selection of supporting acts for this tour—GOST and Kælan Mikla—is a deliberate and insightful piece of curation that transforms the concert bill into a living extension of the album’s narrative.

The lineup presents a triptych of modern dark music. GOST, a fellow pioneer of the aggressive, occult-themed darksynth sound often labeled “slasherwave,” represents the brutal electronic roots from which Perturbator has grown. His presence on the tour acknowledges the shared history and confrontational energy of the scene.

In contrast, Kælan Mikla, an Icelandic trio, embodies the more atmospheric and melodic direction Kent explored on ‘Lustful Sacraments.’ Their sound, a potent blend of post-punk, darkwave, and ethereal gothic rock, represents the other crucial pole of his recent influences.

This tour package thus functions as a live-action discography of Perturbator’s artistic journey. Each night, the audience will experience a curated progression: the past, represented by GOST’s pure darksynth assault; the recent past and present, embodied by Kælan Mikla’s gothic introspection; and the future, with Perturbator headlining, presenting the new industrial-metal synthesis of ‘Age Of Aquarius.’

It is a statement of identity, positioning Kent as the culmination of these related but distinct traditions of dark music. The event is not merely a concert; it is a guided tour through the evolving landscape of contemporary dark electronic artistry.

Beyond the Retrofuture

With ‘Age Of Aquarius,’ James Kent completes his metamorphosis. He has evolved from a master of a retro-nostalgic style into a vital contemporary artist whose work is urgently engaged with the present.

The album stands as the definitive statement of his project’s purpose: to use the sonic language of a fictional, stylized past to conduct a powerful and unflinching diagnosis of our actual, chaotic world.

The neon-drenched cityscapes and cybernetic fantasies that once defined his work are no longer an escape. Instead, they have become the lens through which he forces us to confront the real-world consequences of the very dystopian themes that cyberpunk and synthwave once treated as fiction. This is not a soundtrack for a retrofuture; it is the sound of our own precarious age.

James Kent’s artistic path has been a deliberate evolution away from the synthwave scene he helped define. How does this journey from genre progenitor to genre critic reflect the broader tension between artistic innovation and the codification of a musical movement?

References:

1. Cole, Ross. ‘Vaporwave Aesthetics: Internet Nostalgia and the Utopian Impulse.’ ASAP/Journal 5, no. 2 (2020): 297–326. ↩︎
2. Collins, Karen. ‘Dead Channel Surfing: The Commonalities Between Cyberpunk Literature and Industrial Music.’ Popular Music 24, no. 2 (May 2005): 165–78. ↩︎