Plutonium is the brain child of one J. Carlsson who does everything in this Swedish industrialized black metal project. It’s been a while since I’ve heard a good example of the style (Havoc Unit  maybe?) , and while Plutonium checks all the boxes, it’s not a release I’m enamored with.

The check boxes that Carlsson fills out are competent enough; cold mechanical guitar tone, quirky song titles, robotic programmed drums and shrieks , surgical, atonal, mechanized steady riffs, a few cyber programmed atmospherics and an overall dystopian vibe all come together to certainly make an album that is instantly recognizable as industrial black metal.

But even with mixing caustic, mechanized blasts and more robotic chirps and beeps, none of the material quite hits home. The albums 53 minute, 10 track run time has a few solid moments such as the militant march of “Electric Barbwire Crown of Thorns” or the more standard melodic black metal of “Cortex Vortex”, but they are offset by tracks like  “The Inverted Panopticon Experience” and “Casque Strength” which is the same riff for both songs respective 6 and 7 minute durations, or “Renuntiationem” a puzzling 5 minute atmospheric/ambient number.

“Confessions Of A Suicidal Cryptologist” ends the album of a pretty solid example of the genre showing Carlsson has a grasp of the style when he’s not being more experimental and concentrates on cold mechanized riffs and howls. If he can focus on those a little more than the more experimental off kilter side he seems to favor.

 

[Visit the band's website]

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