AN NCS PREMIERE: URANIUM — “CORROSION OF EXISTENCE”

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Oct 232025
 

(written by Islander)

If there were a Cookbook for Cataclysm you might find a recipe that called for a base stock of hurricane, whisking in blizzards blown by the four winds, a strong helping of avalanche, handfuls of human viscera (explosively ejected), a seasoning of sewage to taste, and everything drenched in lethal fissionable material hot enough to glassify sand and stone. Listening to the music of Uranium, it’s easy to imagine they found that recipe but then altered it for transmutation into sound because it wasn’t sufficiently ugly or painful.

There are other ways of trying to preview the music. Sentient Ruin Laboratories calls Uranium an “American nuclear black industrial weapon”. They call the monstrous tracks on Uranium‘s new album Corrosion of Existence “plutonium-fueled auditory terror” and “an unimaginable cauldron of destruction”. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: URANIUM — “PURE NUCLEAR DEATH”

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Sep 182023
 

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 »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: CELESTE, FUMING MOUTH, URANIUM, TUMANDUUMBAND, MECHINA

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Sep 092023
 


Celeste

A lot of new music came out over the last week. All I can do today is lightly scratch the surface, like a friendly cat who touches their human companion’s skin with claws that let you know they’re there but without drawing blood — though some of the music here might feel like blood is being shed.

I got a very late start this morning, and so depended on late-breaking alerts from some of my NCS compatriots and a couple of other acquaintances rather than methodically clawing through my immense list of links and letting my own impulses determine the choices.I’ll probably be more self-directed in assembling tomorrow’s blackish column. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: URANIUM — “AN EXACTING PUNISHMENT”

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Jan 102023
 

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 »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: GOJIRA, NIGHTRAGE, SHADE OF SORROW, AGELESS OBLIVION, [4672], VICTORY OVER THE SUN, URANIUM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Mar 272021
 

 

In yesterday’s round-up I burrowed deeply into the underground and surfaced with a collection of six songs that I thought were insane and unnerving in different ways. Today I’m on a different tack, leading off with some bigger names and then tunneling into underground depths again.

In addition, all of the following tracks were recommended to me by NCS colleagues and other friends. They didn’t let me down; hopefully you won’t feel let down either. There’s so much genre-spread here that you ought to find at least something that strikes a chord.

(I should mention that my friends didn’t just send me music. They also made me aware of the news that Meshuggah is recording a new album, and that it will feature the return of Fredrik Thordendal, trading places with Per Nilsson. They also passed along an announcement, accompanied by the photo of Peter Tägtgren above, that Hypocrisy’s new album has been completed.) Continue reading »