It’s been an interesting day at our site today. We began with my compatriot Andy‘s review of a well-hyped death metal album that he lauded for (among other things) its “outlandishly proggy approach” and “indulgently weird wavelegths”. Now we’re following that with something that has all the elaborate nuance of a atomic detonation.

Don’t get the wrong idea — Uranium‘s weaponization of power electronics, industrial noise, and black metal (among other ingredients) does create weird, head-twisting experiences, but in service of channeling mental ruination and inflicting terror on a seemingly world-ending scale rather than exercising a listener’s higher faculties.

In their sonic assaults, Uranium grasp the “godliness” and horror of nuclear annihilation most famously summed up by Robert Oppenheimer‘s somber yet shattering (and all too accurate) reflection: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds“.

Not for naught, Uranium have named their new album Pure Nuclear Death, and it’s the album’s title track we have for you today. Continue reading »

Almost two years ago, still in the depths of the pandemic, I stumbled across a single named “Trinity” by a one-man weapon named Uranium. It made a startling impression, and left me both eager and frightened to discover the entire album that it was allegedly a part of, a record named An Exacting Punishment. Now I, and all of you, will get that chance, because Sentient Ruin will release the album on January 27th. The label describes the mission statement:

“As the band’s name aptly hints at, Uranium was conceived as an aural vessel to explore the outer limits and the most irreversible states of complete human disintegration, and the incineration of its most defining and triumphant achievements; namely society, progress, technology, and civilization, with nuclear power being the conduit and ultimate engine of the greatest and most horrific forms of total annihilation mankind could ever face.”

To accomplish this horrifyingly bleak and ruinous goal, Uranium have chained together and weaponized power electronics, industrial noise, and black metal, and shrouded it in a hellish atmosphere of awe, terror, and degradation. Continue reading »