Psyclon Nine
General Information
Psyclon Nine is a musical group from the San Francisco Bay Area. While their early efforts are generally categorized as aggrotech, their more recent material has incorporated a disparate set of influences, notably Black Metal, creating a more accessible and inventive output but remaining reasonably under the umbrella of industrial music.
Band Members
Psyclon Nine has three permanent members:
- Nero Zero
- Vocals, songwriting, programming
- Josef Heresy
- Live guitar and keyboards, lyrics, samples
- Eric Gottesman
- Live bass and keyboards, orchestral arrangement, programming
Filip Abbey of the Maryland band Abbey Vain has played live drums for the band on occassion.
History
Early Days
Psyclon Nine began in 2000 when Nero (then using the name Marshall Carnage) and Josef began working on a more guitar-oriented industrial project, influenced by bands like KMFDM and Ministry. As the project became more cohesive, it veered strongly in to the realm of aggrotech, influenced heavily by albums like Suicide Commando's Mindstrip. They played two small but successful local shows, the second opening for another San Francisco area act, See Colin Slash, as a duo. Shortly thereafter, Nero recruited See Colin Slash's front man, Eric Gottesman, as a second live keyboardist.
Divine Infekt
After building up a strong reputation locally with a home-recorded three-song demo and a number of notoriously violent concerts, Nero met Noitekk head Marco Gruhn at a San Francisco Grendel show, and persuaded him to sign the band. The band's first album, Divine Infekt was recorded shortly thereafter, produced and engineered by Da5id Din of Informatik, another industrial band on the local scene. The title track was remixed by the popular European aggrotech act Tactical Sekt. The album was released in 2003 and was well received by clubgoers and aggrotech enthusiasts, although many critics considered it derivative.
The band toured lightly in the US and Europe in support of the album, playing with bands including Dismantled, Nocturne, Feindflug, Aslan Faction, Grendel, and American industrial rock figurehead Martin Atkins on his spoken word tour.
INRI
Several tracks for the followup album had already been in the band's live rotation for some time when writing began in earnest. Those tracks were Lamb of God, Nothing Left, Rape this World, Faith:Disease, and an early, much different version of Feeble Mind. By the time the album began to take shape, the band had signed in the United States with Metropolis Records.
After several months writing at home, the band had produced a complete album's worth of demo material. Most of the songs focused on Christianity (some actively hostile towards it, others discussing its history and effects on people,) and the title track became INRI. The demo version of Lamb of God appears on the Noitekk compilation "United I." Psyclon returned to Da5id Din's studio for mixing, and the completed album was released in April of 2004 on Metropolis in the US and Noitekk in Europe.
The new album was far more diverse than Divine Infekt, and includes several songs with heavy emphasis on metal-infused guitar. Hymn to the Angels' Descent is perhaps the most distinctive song on the album; fast and heavy guitars, dramatic orchestral breaks, and hard electronic sounds are all prominent. Other tracks range from dancey Terror-EBM to a slow, dirge-like rendition of a traditional Jewish prayer.