SPK returns as The SPKtR, heralding ‘The Last of Men’
Legendary industrial music pioneers SPK, led by New Zealander Graeme Revell, return under their latest pseudonym The SPKtR, with the provocative new single and video, ‘The Last of Men’
‘The Last of Men’ is the new single and video from The SPKtR: the next evolution of legendary industrial music pioneers SPK, whose legacy dates from 1978. A fierce new collaboration between Graeme Revell and Robert J. Revell, The SPKtR forges a modern incarnation of the original project’s radical spirit, sonic extremity, and cultural provocation: repositioned within the present context of humanity’s complex relationship with AI technologies. The first new release in nearly forty years since SPK’s final tour in 1987, ‘The Last of Men’ comes ahead of The SPKtR’s live debut at Wave Gotik Treffen in May 2026, and serves as a bold, clearly articulated manifesto from the project on their arrival in this strange new world.
The video for ‘The Last of Men’ premiered with New York’s Post-punk.com yesterday (24 March 2026, depending on your time zone), where Alice Teeple wrote:
“…along comes The Last of Men, and… kicks the case open and lets the sparks hit the carpet. This single arrives with the stink of machine oil, grave philosophy, gallery provocation, and club-floor panic, all at once, and it has the rare good sense to sound like a threat worth taking seriously. The Last of Men hits hard in the way it treats technology as contamination, extension, seduction, and diagnosis in the same breath… The theme is perhaps absurdly big – and more than a little controversial, but SPK were never a group for tasteful moderation. That idea courses through the single like poison in a bloodstream. The song stares straight at the collapsing fantasy of human centrality and finds terror, possibility, and a cold grin waiting on the other side.” – Alice Teeple, Post-Punk.com, USA
Responding to the controversy surrounding the use of generative AI in art and music, SPK’s founder and sole mainstay, Graeme Revell states:
“SPK has always worked at the fault lines of new technology — from scrap metal and samplers to AI. The outrage is never the point; the diagnosis is. Industrial culture taught us that humanity has always been hybrid — we are already technological organisms. The sampler didn’t kill music. The drum machine didn’t erase drummers. They changed the terrain.”
“AI is simply the contemporary coal face. It isn’t a shortcut or a replacement for artists. It’s an instrument — one that exposes how patriarchy, power and spectacle are already algorithmic. The real danger isn’t AI in art, but the invisible accumulation of power and money shaping an opaque technology. Perception and desire without scrutiny. By foregrounding it, we reveal the machinery. If ‘The Last of Men’ provokes discomfort, that’s consistent with SPK’s history. We don’t avoid the technological fire — we step into it and see what it exposes. AI is not the enemy of art. Unexamined power is.”
On the specific themes explored by ‘The Last of Men’ and its video, Revell continues:
“‘The Last of Men’ is not about human extinction. It’s about the end of a certain idea of Man — sovereign, central, in control. Is it a warning? Yes, if we cling to a myth of human exceptionalism while delegating cognition, memory and desire to systems we barely understand, we risk becoming decorative in our own civilisation. A celebration? Yes, of transformation rather than replacement. Humanity has always been prosthetic. Fire was prosthetic. Language was prosthetic. Electricity was prosthetic. AI is a cognitive prosthesis. The anxiety comes from the fact that this prosthesis talks back.”
“If there’s a message I’d stand behind, it’s this: We are not witnessing the end of humanity. We are witnessing the end of human centrality. Whether that becomes tragedy or metamorphosis depends less on the machines than on our willingness to evolve ethically, imaginatively, and politically alongside them. It’s always an investigation. SPK prefers probing thresholds rather than conclusions.”
Beyond the legacy of SPK, Graeme Revell is a renowned cult film, television and video game composer, whose credits include scoring The Crow, The Craft, From Dusk till Dawn, Sin City, Blow, Call of Duty, and Dune. Across decades of boundary-pushing work, he helped revolutionise film scoring through the integration of industrial sound design, culturally diverse instrumentation, and the human voice used as a raw, physical instrument.
With the addition of his son Robert, The SPKtR brings a new generational intensity — fusing SPK’s confrontational DNA with cutting-edge technologies, modern production techniques, and immersive audiovisual experimentation. The result is a future-facing hybrid of ritual electronics, guitars, cinematic brutality, and uncompromising experimentation.
Robert and Graeme Revell, live at VOD Fest, Germany, July 2025: photos by Pontus Aratoun
Watch: ‘The Last of Men’ by The SPKtR on YouTube:
‘The Last of Men’ by The SPKtR is out now from Bandcamp and selected streaming platforms. The SPKtR appear live at Wave Gotik Treffen, Leipzig, Germany on 25 May 2026.
Follow The SPKtR / SPK