Cincinnati-based synth punks The Serfs — founding members Dylan McCartney (vocals, percussion, guitar, bass, electronics) and Dakota Carlyle (electronics, bass, guitar, vocals) along with Andie Luman (vocals, synths) — can trace their origins back to when McCartney and Carlyle were working the fryers at a local pub and generally wallowing in puddles of despair. 

The duo decided to express their grim outlook through the self-hypnosis of drums and synthesizers. After a couple of bungled attempts to play live shows, Luman joined the project, finalizing their lineup. 

The Cincinnati-based trio’s third album Half Eaten By Dogs is slated for an October 27, 2023 release through their new label home, Trouble in Mind. The album reportedly sees the trio putting a decidedly Midwestern spin on the modernist twitch of future-forward acts like Total Control, Cold Beat, Skinny Puppy, Dark Day, This Heat, and Factrix while being informed by the existential doom of our current moment — with the album’s material at points featuring doomed proclamations of natural and supernatural disasters. 

Last month, I wrote about album single “Club Deuce,” an icy, industrial-inspired banger built around glistening and shimmering synth arpeggios, burnt out, twitter and woofer rattling 808s paired with Lumen’s sultry cooing. Channeling early Depeche Mode and mid-80s New Order among others, “Club Deuce” is specifically designed to make you head to the dance floor and move — right now. 

“I thought of the idea for this song at first like a movie in my mind,” says Lumen. “It was the story of a fated man and a modern day Venus with complete and unrelenting control. The set was a quiet corner in a thunderstruck city with endless commotion in the distance. The whole thing glowing like a neon sign. ‘Club Deuce’ churns unhurried until it billows all around you and you’re caught like a fly in the jaws of a venus fly trap.”

Half Eaten By Dogs‘ latest single “Electric Like An Eel” opens with a brief burst of wailing harmonica, skittering beats, surging synth oscillations paired with icy and seemingly detached vocals. It’s a brooding dance floor friendly track that recalls New Order, Depeche Mode and others while evoking our uneasy, uncertain age. The band coyly elaborates: “An ‘electrophorus electricus’ swimming through a sewer on the moon, taking in the sights and making deals, stunning just to feel real.”