If the collage style-artwork and anime-styled influence written all over Neo Dimes’ artwork for his 2026 effort isn’t enough to tell you exactly what the artist is doing then let me put it plainly: he’s a neo-industrial artist heavily inspired by cyberpunk and modern industrial giants like HEALTH. Of course that’s putting it into basics but the moment I took a peak at the cover art for Alone I immediately thought of AKIRA in all of its mighty glory. That being said let’s take a pause for a moment and digest who Neo Dimes is.
Denver-based musician Stephen Edmunds has a lot to say on his record that many of us are thinking in our heads: anger and revulsion against modern AI-tech domination, the oft-discussed themes of paranoia, persuasion, control, acceptance and how all three ebb and flow with one another. Alone is especially pungent in its nature as there’s a personal nature to it. Quoting directly from Edmunds he states, “I recently lost a career right as my daughter came into the world—a world where she has fewer rights than her mother did and where tyranny is creeping into every facet of life. We’re addicted to technology in our pockets that both opens us to the world and consumes us entirely. It’s omnipresent and inescapable, and I’m pissed off.”
The first single is gonna be something fans of HEALTH ought to eat right up; it’s a straight-up melancholic industrial-rock track with such soothing, backing ambiance. Catchy hooks and a glorious rising vocals to match it all. Angels hits in next and this one gets rid of a lot of the ambiance and heads right into traditional industrial-rock territory. A bit more raw in nature, with a lovely crescendo heading into the end. God’s Perfect Meme is a minimalist dancefloor single with a pulsating and ebbing beat; not enough for the raving crowd but hard and rhythmic enough to keep me swaying.
Trigger might have you thinking that its heading right into post-punk due to the lo-fi bass guitar intro but that slowly rises into a fun little drum’n’bass single. Perhaps the intro was a bit too long for my tastes but the build-up was steady; repeats of the song made me wish the intro was thirty seconds instead of a minute-and-a-half but what can you do? Obsidian also has a slow-building intro with vox and what I can describe as the soundtrack to overseeing a blossoming futuristic cityscape only to be distorted and twisted by heavy kickdrums and industrial grit. From there we get the back-and-forth tradition of quiet verses to dance worthy choruses.
Don’t think had me give that stank face that suggests you’re really into the song from the get-go as gut-punching rhythms filled my ears. A slow crawling industrial banger from start to finish. One Thing transfers us back to Neo Dimes love of melancholic beats complete with lighter drum’n’bass dressings in the background; it’s an alternative playground.
How to Love is Neo Dimes version of a summer love single complete with soaring vocals and lighter backing synths that suggest a lighter tone. Though I don’t think the entirety of the beat really worked for me; the xylophone-like beat that comes in around the three-minute and twenty second mark overpowers the rest of the beat while everything, including the vocals, float far away in the background and I can’t help but feel as if the song would be much better without the xylophone noises, as heard in most the rest of the song.
It Comes and Goes continues some of the tricks we’ve already heard from Neo Dimes, with it being a little different if not for the raw effort of the track. One of the last tracks on the album is a finisher, an outro that’s more akin to the end credits of a movie, or a scene where a massive revelation takes place with frenetic synths and calm vox. And for all the goths out there he includes a love-letter to Sisters of Mercy by covering their infamous single Lucretia My Reflection.
The only other minor critique I have about the album is that some of the tracks are a bit too long for my tastes in the sense that I feel as if everything the singles have to offer, that they have to show is shown long before they end. God’s Perfect Meme is a prime example of this, with the beat being great and fun and punchy but going on for a bit too long before I get this feeling that I want to move onto the next one.
Despite that and a few other minor complaints I have with the album, Alone is still a fascinating and fantastic debut that I think more ears need to be on. Neo Dimes is a complete audio-visual package with stunning artwork, creative songwriting, and a bunch of music videos that are gaining some decent traction for an up-and-coming industrial artist. Here’s hoping for more, and to see Neo Dimes one day tour with HEALTH, as I think they’d be a match made in Heaven.
