Three times hooray! Legendary Humo's Rock Rally winner "The Hickey Underworld" has been reborn in its original formation. Younes Faltakh (vocals, guitar), Jonas Govaerts (guitar), Yorgos Tsakiridis (bas) and Jimmy Wouters (drums) have been busy working on their fourth studio album which will be named "Cold Sun" set for release on 13 march 2026 via V2 Records. With frontman Younes Faltakh whistling to the tune of falling missiles, "Euromancer", the first track off the upcoming new album, will have you dancing in the radioactive ash. Listen here.
“Mom, can we have Neuromancer?”
“No, we have Neuromancer at home.”
What you’ve got at home, though, is Euromancer — a timely new war dance by The Hickey Underworld, ungently stirred from a decade-long cryo-sleep.
With guitars detuned to Sonic Youth and a breakbeat boosted from The Prodigy, Euromancer drags you back to the halcyon days of the Judgement Night soundtrack — when you could still choke on a Flippo, porn came mostly on paper, and flannel shirts knew their goddamn place: tied loosely around a pudgy white boy's waist
The Hickey Underworld was founded by childhood friends Younes Faltakh and Jonas Govaerts. They named themselves after a song by The Nation of Ulysses, one of their favorite bands on Dischord Records, the legendary indie label of Fugazi frontman Ian MacKaye.
That Dischord influence is clearly audible on their self-titled debut album, released in 2009 on the French label Naïve. The album, produced by Bent Van Looy, Niek Meul, and Reinhard Vanbergen of Das Pop, also revealed the band’s more pop-oriented side — particularly in the breakout single “Future Words,” which received heavy airplay on Studio Brussel and Radio Willy.
From the beginning, the band paid great attention to their visual identity. The singles “Blonde Fire” and “Future Words” came with grotesque, surreal music videos — both shot by Nicolas Karakatsanis, the award-winning cinematographer behind Bullhead (Rundskop) and Cruella, and an early fan of The Hickey Underworld.
Three years later came their second album, I’m Under The House, I’m Dying (2012, PIAS), again produced by Das Pop and mixed by Dave Sardy, former frontman of Barkmarket — another hero of Faltakh and Govaerts. For the first time, Arabic sounds began to seep into their music, an element that Faltakh, who is half Tunisian, would explore further in his side project Arabnormal.
In 2015, the band released Ill on the same label, recorded by Niels Hendrix (Fence). The title proved somewhat prophetic: Jonas Govaerts developed a chronic hearing disorder and was temporarily replaced by Tim Van Hamel, the driving force behind Millionaire. Not long after the recordings, Faltakh decided to pull the plug on the group.
“The Hickey Underworld bled to death in the summer of 2016,” he said in Focus Knack.
Fast forward to 2023: during the lockdown, the itch returned. Faltakh, drummer Jimmy Wouters, and bassist Yorgos Tsakiridis found their way back to the rehearsal room. Original member Jonas Govaerts also rejoined. The band recorded two standalone singles in Millionaire drummer Damien Vanderhasselt’s studio — “Living On Big Foot” and “Wall On The Fly” — and reappeared on stage at several festivals that summer.
Not only was the desire back, but also the inspiration: soon after, The Hickey Underworld began recording their long-awaited fourth album. The sessions took place partly with Vanderhasselt and partly in Sweden, where producer Niek Meul has a studio. The band chose Cold Sun as the title — also the opening track of the album.