Australia’s Schkeuditzer Kreuz is about to embark on their second tour across Europe from September to October 2025, in support of the third album, Swan Grinder (August 2025). Live dates are currently booked through Central Europe, South Caucasus, Spain, and UK, with more to be confirmed. Variously termed “Industrial Synth Crust”, “D-beat Raw Synth Punk”, and “One human and some machines making noise, in the face of it all”, Schkeuditzer Kreuz is a mutant post-apocalyptic hybrid: an intersection between harsh, confronting, mechanical noise and the comparatively raw, organic materials of hardcore, crust, and d-beat punk. It is a noise wrought from the anguish and despair of Antipodean punk veteran Kieren Hills, from a cabin that he built in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Australia.

Since 2020, Schkeuditzer Kreuz has released two full-length studio albums: Isolated and Alone (2021) and No Life Left (2023), alongside a raft of singles, videos, EPs, split-releases, compilation tracks, and remix collaborations. As a live act, Schkeuditzer Kreuz remains in constant live demand worldwide: touring extensively across the UK and mainland Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, and recently touring Australia with pioneering UK industrial legends ATTRITION (Oct-Nov 2024) and US anarcho-breakcore outfit, DECIDE TODAY (Dec 2024-Jan 2025). Kieren has since become a touring live member of ATTRITION (Oct-Nov 2024), with ATTRITION / Schkeuditzer Kreuz tour dates together in 2025 including shows in Thailand, Hong Kong, and England. Critically acclaimed, Schkeuditzer Kreuz has received high praise from the likes of Louder Than War (UK), CVLT Nation (US), Sonic Seducer (Germany), Auxiliary Magazine (US), Side-Line (Belgium), Cave Dweller Music (US), ReGen Magazine (US) and untold others.Playing in bands for over 35 years, Kieren Hills began his journey into underground music in New Zealand, during the late 1980s, before relocating to Australia with riotous Wellington NZ punk rock group, S.M.U.T., in 1993. He turned up a few years later in Stuttgart, Germany’s Murder Disco X; followed by countless Sydney underground bands, including crust punk / d-beat merchants Vae Victis; hardcore legends Dark Horse; and deathrock / gothic punk outfit Death Church, to name a few.

Beyond punk, Kieren traces his discovery of noisy industrial and experimental electronic music to his youth in New Zealand, influenced by a previous generation of punk musicians who had begun to explore different possibilities: Skeptics, Gordons, Headless Chickens, Froit Head, CeLL, Invisible Dead, and Children’s Television Workshop among them. These local groups in turn led Kieren to the music of Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire; Laibach and Einstürzende Neubauten; Ministry, Big Black, and Butthole Surfers. In later years, Kieren also became a fan of Australia’s Knife, Religious Observance, and Kollaps; and KUBINE from Yokohama, Japan. Following “the wreck of the plague year twenty-twenty”, Kieren says, there was a “greater affinity with machines, making the creation of Schkeuditzer Kreuz inevitable.”Swan Grinder is the third full-length Schkeuditzer Kreuz album, mastered at The Cage by ATTRITION‘s Martin Bowes, and scheduled for release in August, followed by the European tour in September and October 2025.