PLUTONIUM

Though you wouldn’t think it from the uninspiring album title and what appears to be a coat hanger (or is it a penis, Freud?) on the cover, Sweden’s one man-band Plutonium – the pseudonym of J Carlsson – is unremitting industrial black metal, a sonic mire of wave after wave of riff after riff and atmospheric dirge and sonic battery that forms an immediate and intense aural barrage that never lets up. Opener ‘A Tribute To The Tools Of The Cosmic Abortionist’, the title track, and ‘Zero Swarm’ are more black metal than industrial, whereas the tracks ‘The Misery King’ and ‘Nuclear War Incense’ have steady hammered beats that pound out their black metal battery. There are avant-garde elements here and there that, when combined with the darker elements and torrents of weighty guitar lines, produce dense soundscapes. The ambient tracks ‘Peace Keeper’ and ‘Det Döda Exemplets Makt (Two Minute Hate Part 2)’ use synth and industrial sounds that were perhaps inspired by ‘The Terminator’ or some 80s horror flick to create what are interesting atmospheric pieces dwarfed by the mechanised edifices that surround them. Closer ‘Hell Is All Around’ begins with a section that sounds, unfortunately, like a reject from Morbid Angel’s (atrocious) ‘Illud Divinum Insanus’ that thankfully transforms into a lengthy ambient portrait of hell. With intermittent tremolo-picked riffs and ostensibly random synth sounds akin to Gary Numan’s B-sides circa 1979-80 emerging from the soundscapes, it doesn’t quite reach the depths that Carlsson had perhaps hoped, sounding a little amateurish here and there. At once cold and mechanical in its precision execution, ‘Devilmententertainment Non-Stop’ has a vast array of sounds and atmospheres that range from the bleak to the coldest steel, Carlsson creating atmospheres of reverberating metal chambers and suffocating ambiences as tight as barbed wire. The production is top notch, each instrument a vital cog to the machine having its own space. And the tracks, in purposely veering from the predictable in terms of structure and sequence, make this an industrial black metal worth checking out.

LABEL:

FORMAT:

Self-released

Album

DEVILMENTERTAINMENT NON-STOP

Review by Jason Guest

RUNNING TIME:

47:19

RELEASE DATE:

2011

TRACK LISTING

1) A Tribute to the Tools of the Cosmic Abortionist
2) Devilmentertainment Non-Stop
3) Peace Keeper
4) The Misery King
5) Unintelligent Design
6) Zero Swarm
7) Nuclear War Incense
8) Det Doda Exemplets Makt (Two Minute Hate Part II)
9) Hell Is All Around

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:

Sweden

"At once cold and mechanical in its precision execution, ‘Devilmententertainment Non-Stop’ has a vast array of sounds and atmospheres that range from the bleak to the coldest steel..."