ADULT. - Kissing Luck Goodbye

After more than twenty-five years of activity, the Detroit duo made up of Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller have no intention of turning into a monument to themselves. If there was ever a temptation to smooth out the rough edges, "Kissing Luck Goodbye" wipes it away with a nervous laugh and a jolt of industrial electricity.

The project's tenth album (their fourth on Dais Records) is probably the most visceral, angry and direct work ADULT. has recorded in a long time. It's not simply a synth-punk or industrial-dance record. It's something closer to a chemical reaction: political rage, personal frustration and technological paranoia combining into a deliberately unstable sonic blend.

Work on the album was anything but straightforward. Health issues, equipment failures, an increasingly toxic political climate in the United States, and the loss of Douglas McCarthy, longtime frontman of Nitzer Ebb and a friend of the band, all created a heavy emotional backdrop. At several points, Miller and Kuperus even started to think the record was cursed: broken studio air conditioners, dead car batteries (their preferred method for listening back to mixes), and a string of setbacks that seemed to sabotage every attempt to move forward. But instead of freezing up, ADULT. did what they've always done: turn chaos into fuel. The result is an album that sounds sharper than much of their previous work, as well as denser and more aggressive.

The arrival of producer Nolan Gray helped redefine the duo's approach. The new recordings push Nicola Kuperus's voice to the forefront, making it the true emotional core of the record: screams, commands, mantras and laughter that swing between performance art and a declaration of war. The laughter, in particular, becomes a recurring presence. Not a liberating laugh, but something more unsettling. A kind of hysterical echo running through the tracks, as if it were the perfect soundtrack to the absurdity of the present.

"Kissing Luck Goodbye" thus becomes a laboratory of recycled noise and rhythmic tension, practically a giant sound library: old records dug up in thrift stores, field recordings, fragments of past sessions and everyday objects turned into instruments. Vacuum cleaners, mechanical vibrations, feedback manipulated through pedals and synthesizers: every element is bent and twisted until it becomes part of a dissonant sonic mosaic.

This controlled chaos perfectly reflects the album's central theme: living in a world where information, politics and economics function as a constant background noise. It's no surprise, then, that one of the sharpest tracks, "R U 4 $ALE", takes direct aim at digital visibility culture and the transformation of identity into merchandise. The message is brutal in its simplicity: chaos isn't a glitch in the system. It is the system itself.

If there's one thing "Kissing Luck Goodbye" proves, it's that ADULT. have never stopped fighting. Even a quarter-century into their career, Miller and Kuperus remain radical outsiders, more interested in disturbing than pleasing. Their new record doesn't try to offer comfort - instead it stares the world in the face and, with a twisted grin, throws its own noise right back at it.

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20/04/2026