PSYCLON NINE
“ICON OF THE ADVERSARY”
Album Review by Dark Juan

9/10

Psyclon Nine are: Fucking vicious, man!

Nero Bellum – Vocals, guitar, synth
Rotny Ford – Guitar, synth
Sevin – Synth

I am becoming increasingly drunk and I am becoming more nihilistic by the second. This makes Psyclon Nine a magnificent choice to listen to as my desire for vengeance against those who have wronged me and my furious anger grows… This is a vicious, serrated edged weapon of war rather than a musical record. It’s a grim, black, oil stained, mechanical flaying machine composed of wicked steel blades, roaring engines and death by being sliced into tiny, quivering pieces.

Psyclon Nine are interesting insofar as they started out as a pure aggrotech band, which is how they came to my dubious attention. They were a suggestion because I had listened to some Suicide Commando on Spotify once and I liked what I heard so I got a copy of Divine Infekt and I was off. They were a fine terror EBM/ aggrotech band, but they only really became of supreme interest to me when they released Crwn Thy Frnicatr, as that was when they discovered that aggrotech and metal were perfect bedfellows and decided to amalgamate the two. What an unholy pairing it is. It’s a biomechanical monster that spits face melting acid and could rip you in two just by flexing its muscles. It’s a bleak, grey skied, sub zero beast of a record is Icon Of The Adversary. It’s colder than taking your mother in law to the South Pole and not lending her your jacket. It’s colder than the cold shoulder you’d get off your wife when she discovered you pleasuring her two sisters and her mother simultaneously with an inflatable marmoset and a number of Mars bars.

So, what does it sound like, I heard literally no one cry? It’s the sound of the end of the world. It’s utterly murderous aggrotech twinned with drums that sound like heavy artillery and razor guitars that would take your head cleanly off your shoulders if you got too close. It is the perfect amalgamation of the two most violent musical genres in the world and they are aiming straight between your fucking eyes, because you deserve to die. This is not music; this is recorded evil and preserved murder. It’s claustrophobic and a damned uncomfortable listening experience. It’s bleaker than Morecambe and the vocals from Nero Bellum could flay the skin cleanly from your face. It’s a hard edged, visceral scream that seems to take actual form before burying itself to the hilt in your head. I have seldom heard such repressed violence in music. Only The Berzerker has ever come close to the level of unalloyed, acid spitting fury on this album. This record is one small step away from ripping your fucking throat out with its teeth and drinking your blood in great, desperate gulps. Then it will hold you down and watch the light fade from your eyes as you die. And it will smile a bloodied, razorblade smile at you and defile the fuck out of your corpse. Therefore, considering I have been using colourful exposition, you would expect me to judge it to be good, yes? You’d be wrong. It’s fucking excellent. I loved every last laser beam song on this album. There isn’t a name for this music yet, but I am going to call it technogrind – it has the electronic harshness of aggrotech but it has the blistering fury that only metal can give and it provides an experience I haven’t had since the days of Marc Heal and Cubanate, only even more spectacularly ultraviolent, psychopathic and apocalyptic.

Buy this record. I command you.

The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System awards Psyclon Nine 9/10 for a magnificently warlike record.

TRACKLIST

Christsalis
Crown Of The Worm
The Light Of Armageddon
Beware The Wolves
Warm What’s Hollow
Behold An Icon
When The Last Stars Die
And With Fire
Give Up The Ghost
The Last

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