THE DARK.FM push their electronic-heavy sound further on Redline with Kent Osborne
THE DARK.FM have released their new single Redline, bringing US rapper Kent Osborne into the fold for a tense, distortion-heavy collision of low-slung riffs, electronic programming and rapid-fire vocals.
Arriving after Thai Angel and the band’s recent appearances at Furnace Fest and Sick New World Festival, Redline leans hard into the harsher edges of their sound. A hulking Drop-E guitar figure anchors the track while the production repeatedly fractures around Osborne’s verses, giving the song an intentionally overloaded, volatile feel.
Vocalist Craig Johns Jr. said he had wanted to work with Osborne since first hearing his music around the time they were due to share a bill.
“I first heard Kent Osborne’s music a few years ago when we were set to play a show together, and became a fan on the spot,” Johns Jr. explains. “He’s doing some seriously cool shit. As I was building out the instrumental for Redline, it was becoming pretty clear there wouldn’t be any singing on it, and I was set on the idea of having him jump on it with me.”
A riff built to rupture
Johns Jr. says the arrangement began with the song’s central riff before the band shaped the verses around Osborne’s delivery, using a distorted mix bus to make the track buckle under the impact of the kick drum.
“The man’s a powerhouse, he has all these different voices and can come up with whole verses in seconds, it was a blast to record,” he says. “The song started with this giant Drop-E riff which became the intro and chorus, and then I wanted the verses to sound like the song was exploding so I put a distortion right on the mix bus, set up to saturate when the verse kick hits so it breaks up while he’s rapping.”
He adds: “It comes together as this hyper-aggressive track, densely layered, electronic and riffy, but still leaves a lot of space for Kent’s vocals. Before he left the session I had him record a ‘sample pack’ of spoken word lyrics from the song so I could scratch them up across the track, and that, to me, felt like the final touch it needed. Not to discount that ending, of course.”
Watch the official video for Redline here.
The band will play Los Angeles’ The Roxy in December before joining the ShipRocked cruise in January.
THE DARK.FM live dates
- 09 December 2026 – Los Angeles, The Roxy
- 24–30 January 2027 – ShipRocked, Hard Rock Vacation
