Saturday night local/Chicago-based industrial quartet I:Scintilla played their CD release show at Cowboy Monkey. The group played several tracks from their new full-length, “Optics”, for the first time in some cases.

The sizable bar crowd danced and head banged along to the band’s heavy, electronic-laden beats and infectious vocal hooks. Old favorites as well as brand new tunes garnered an energetic response from the audience.

“That was probably the best part, being able to play the new songs and people actually being excited about them,” said Brittany Bindrim, lead singer of I:Scintilla.

“Optics” features 12 songs, some of which appeared on their debut “The Approach”, and last summer’s “Havestar” EP. The band signed with Belgian label Alfa Matrix in February 2006, and released the “Havestar” EP the following August.

“A lot of the songs we felt that on ‘The Approach’ weren’t portrayed the way we actually wanted them to be recorded and portrayed,” Bindrim said. “When Alfa Matrix picked us up, they actually wanted to re-release a lot of stuff, but we wanted to write a lot more new stuff as well.

Bindrim said they chose a few songs they liked and felt had more potential to re-record for the new releases. “The Bells,” “Havestar,” “Translate” and “Scin” made the transition to “Optics.”

“We knew it would be a lot better, and the way that we wanted them to be the whole time,” she said.

The album is also available in a limited edition double disc package. The second disc features remixes from the likes of Combichrist, Angelspit and Clan of Xymox, among others.

“With our label, they always put out the limited edition two CD, and you can really kind of put whatever you want on the second CD,” said Jim Cookas, guitarist and programmer of I:Scintilla. “Sometimes they put unreleased stuff or they put filler music or live … but I think the best things to put on there are remixes. I think it’s better than unreleased crap that you obviously don’t think is good enough to put out.”

Bindrim said the title of the album came after many of the songs were written.

“With all the lyrics that I wrote, there were a lot of different perceptions and a lot of different topics; dealing with religion, the war in Iraq and politics; and more introspective things like addictions and self-destruction … it felt very fitting because we had a lot of different viewpoints,” Bindrim said.

On May 28, I:Scintilla will play the Wave Gotik Treffen festival in Leipzig, Germany. The four day industrial festival has 162 acts confirmed to play.

“The crowd is going to be at least three thousand which is the biggest crowd we’ve ever played to,” Bindrim said.