Omaha electro-punk outfit The Faint rose to prominence when their brand of glitchy, endof-times-so-let’s-dance vibes were everywhere in America: the early years of the Dubya administration. Nearly two decades later, the band’s sweaty, pulsing purges are more important than ever. And Egowerk , The Faint’s first studio album in five years, packs half a decade’s worth of anxiety-ridden, dance-floor jams into 11 tracks. This time, Faint frontman Todd Fink has largely turned his pen from diagramming our darkest sexual impulses to skewering another obsession: technology. On first single “Chameleon Nights,” over a skittering, tumbling synth rattle, Fink deadpans, “Everybody’s talking, but we don’t know shit/ You fight, I fight; it’s an ego trip/ It’s a video game and you’re an avatar/ What you fake becomes what you are,” and the track sounds like the scariest RPG you’ve never played. This is dance music for the doom-obsessed, with looping, screaming keyboards and jittery bass lines across tightly wound percussion—ripe for the dankest, dirtiest, most leather-filled clubs. Sonically, The Faint are clearly reaching back to their early-2000s Danse Macabre heyday—these tunes are a far cry from the robust arrangements and string sections that the band reached with the divisive 2004 album Wet From Birth . Instead, Egowerk has echoes of minimalist ‘80s darkwave clicked up several notches. The sound isn’t revolutionary anymore, but the band rips through these robot-horror songs with more energy than they have in years. It’s metallic, but it’s guaranteed to get your blood pumping.