Psyclon Nine: A Reckoning of Noise and Nihilism in ‘And Then Oblivion’

The forthcoming full-length studio album by Psyclon Nine, ‘And Then Oblivion,’ is slated for release on March 21, 2025, through Metropolis Records. Announced with an aura of finality and spiritual reckoning, the record signals not only the band’s return after a seven-year recording hiatus, but also the culmination of an artistic evolution that has shadowed the darker corners of industrial music for over two decades. Emerging from the charred edges of San Francisco’s underground, Psyclon Nine has long been a volatile presence in the overlapping territories of harsh EBM, industrial metal, and blackened electronics—a fusion that has since found new resonance amid a broader resurgence of genre-defiant acts reclaiming the industrial aesthetic for contemporary times.

For Nero Bellum, the band’s founder and sole permanent member, this album is far more than another installment in Psyclon Nine’s discography. He describes it as a “psychic purging,” a distillation of personal chaos, trauma, and spiritual implosion that has gestated over nearly a decade of emotional excavation and sonic experimentation. In statements shared ahead of the release, Bellum evokes the album as a site of exorcism and surrender—a work forged in isolation and shaped by both the creative rigor and psychological toll of sustained introspection. As the genre continues to evolve in increasingly hybridised forms, ‘And Then Oblivion’ emerges as a deliberate reckoning, not only with the genre’s traditions but with the intimate, often unsettling truths that have long defined Psyclon Nine’s artistic core.

Psyclon Nine Identity and Origins

Psyclon Nine emerged from the industrial undercurrent of early 2000s San Francisco, conceived by Nero Bellum—born Marshall Goppert—as a solitary, confrontational musical experiment. The project took shape in 2000, its name deliberately contorted from “Zyklon B,” the cyanide-based gas infamously used in Nazi concentration camps. This provocative nomenclature was not intended as endorsement but as a stark act of subversion, forcing audiences to confront the darkest perversions of human history while reflecting the band’s core themes of institutional violence, spiritual ruin, and the mechanics of control.

Initially rooted in the solitary world of digital composition, Psyclon Nine began as Bellum’s personal vehicle, one marked by an obsessive attention to sonic texture and lyrical extremity. His early compositions bore the hallmarks of harsh EBM and aggrotech—high-BPM drum programming, heavily distorted vocals, and religiously charged lyrics—before gradually incorporating more guitar-driven arrangements and metal sensibilities. As the project expanded beyond its studio origins, Psyclon Nine evolved into a full touring ensemble, with a rotating lineup shaped by the demands of live performance and the transient nature of the industrial scene itself.

By 2025, the band remains synonymous with Bellum, who continues to act as its central creative force—handling vocals, programming, guitars, and production with singular control. While live configurations have featured musicians such as Rotny Ford, Jon Siren, and Vlixx, these collaborators have functioned as satellites orbiting Bellum’s creative nucleus. The project’s continuity has been maintained not through stability of personnel, but through the unwavering clarity of its vision—a bleak, cathartic amalgam of sound and ideology that has resisted dilution or compromise across a tumultuous career.

Musical Style and Influences

Psyclon Nine’s sonic evolution reflects a deliberate trajectory from digital aggression to atmospheric devastation, mirroring the personal and philosophical shifts of its creator. The band’s earliest releases, including the 2003 debut ‘Divine Infekt,’ were deeply entrenched in the mechanised ferocity of harsh EBM and aggrotech—a subcultural offshoot of electronic body music defined by distorted vocal delivery, relentless sequencing, and club-oriented tempos. Within this framework, Nero Bellum established a reputation for invoking religious blasphemy, internal torment, and technological dystopia with a kind of militant precision, crafting tracks as abrasive as they were cathartic.

Over time, Psyclon Nine’s sound matured into something far more expansive and volatile. Albums such as ‘We the Fallen’ (2009) and ‘Order of the Shadow: Act I’ (2013) marked a distinct pivot toward industrial metal, integrating down-tuned guitars, blackened atmospheres, and slower, more cinematic arrangements. These works drew heavily from the sonic vocabulary of black metal and gothic ambient textures, resulting in compositions that replaced rhythmic immediacy with psychological weight. While the digital scaffolding remained intact, it was increasingly subsumed by walls of distortion, theatrical orchestration, and moments of almost liturgical despair. This shift did not abandon the band’s core themes—it magnified them. Bellum’s preoccupation with decay, sacrilege, and existential disillusionment found new resonance in a sonic landscape that felt both scorched and sacred.

The band’s aesthetic sensibility bears the imprint of its influences, which range from the claustrophobic paranoia of Skinny Puppy to the transgressive drama of Nine Inch Nails and the nihilistic extremity of early black metal pioneers such as Mayhem and Burzum. Yet Bellum’s approach diverges in its deeply personal dimension. His lyrics, visual art, and production choices are informed as much by his own philosophical crises and psychological ruptures as by any genre conventions. Psyclon Nine’s catalogue reads less like a progression of albums and more like a series of sonic exorcisms—each one a meticulous rendering of inner collapse, rendered through a blend of synthetic violence and ritualistic atmosphere that remains defiantly singular within the industrial canon.

The New Album: ‘And Then Oblivion’ (2025)

With ‘And Then Oblivion,’ Psyclon Nine re-emerges not simply with a new record, but with what Nero Bellum frames as a personal reckoning rendered in sound. Described by its creator as “a statement of release, death, rebirth, and surrender,” the album functions as both an artistic culmination and a psychological rupture. Its conceptual architecture is rooted in the language of undoing—an attempt, through music, to purge years of inner torment, spiritual exhaustion, and creative obsession. Bellum, known for his cryptic candor and confessional intensity, has referred to the album as a “dark meditation,” a term that captures its dual function as both sonic construction and therapeutic unburdening. Born of near-constant touring, prolonged isolation, and an unrelenting introspective spiral, ‘And Then Oblivion’ is less a continuation of previous work than a disintegration of what came before.

The album’s production was helmed entirely by Bellum, whose reputation for exhaustive control over every element of Psyclon Nine’s sound remains undiminished. The recording spanned several years, with sessions marked by both meticulous layering and psychological strain. The result is a record steeped in blackened industrial noise, infused with an undercurrent of ambient dread and sharpened by the band’s signature electronic abrasion. Where previous albums navigated aggression through rhythm and texture, ‘And Then Oblivion’ lingers in the shadows between collapse and catharsis. The sonic palette alternates between fractured melodic fragments and overwhelming walls of distortion, evoking a kind of devotional nihilism that is at once haunting and strangely liturgical.

Visually, the album’s aesthetic adheres to the band’s established apocalyptic and gothic motifs. Its cover, saturated in monochrome desolation and religious disfigurement, aligns with Bellum’s enduring fixation on the iconography of collapse. The imagery is not ornamental but integral, functioning as a visual echo of the album’s themes—faith stripped to its bare bones, beauty corroded by grief, and identity consumed in the act of self-annihilation. In both form and content, ‘And Then Oblivion’ confronts the listener not with resolution, but with the unsettling possibility that oblivion itself may be the only form of release.

Boxed Set Preorders for ‘And Then Oblivion’ Nearing Sellout

As anticipation mounts for Psyclon Nine’s forthcoming studio album And Then Oblivion, the band’s limited-edition boxed set has witnessed an overwhelming response, with preorders selling rapidly and remaining inventory nearing depletion. The exclusive collection, released through Metropolis Records, offers fans a rare opportunity to obtain a curated selection of memorabilia tied to what frontman Nero Bellum has described as the band’s most personal and transformative work to date.

The boxed set includes an autographed physical copy of ‘And Then Oblivion,’ underscoring the deeply individual nature of the release. Also featured is a custom-designed T-shirt bearing exclusive album artwork, along with cassette singles of ‘Devil’s Work’ and ‘I Choose Violence,’ two tracks that further illustrate the record’s themes of psychological unraveling and existential revolt. Additional collectibles—such as a limited Psyclon Nine enamel pin and a commemorative poster—round out the offering, combining tactile nostalgia with the band’s longstanding dedication to visual expression.

Described by the band as their most ambitious merchandise release to date, the boxed set encapsulates the aesthetic, sonic, and symbolic dimensions of the album. Given the rapid pace of sales and the limited nature of the release, fans have been encouraged to secure their preorder before remaining sets are sold out. With ‘And Then Oblivion’ scheduled for release on March 21, 2025, the boxed set stands not only as a collector’s item, but as a marker of a defining chapter in Psyclon Nine’s evolving legacy.

The Devils Work Tour and European Return

Beginning in early July and traversing cities from Edinburgh and Madrid to Helsinki and Hamburg, the tour highlights the band’s continued resonance within Europe’s dark music enclaves. Psyclon Nine will be joined on select dates by Antania and Pretty Addicted, both acts known for their own theatrical extremities and genre-defying performances, ensuring the lineup will deliver a convergence of intensity and spectacle. Notably, appearances at key festivals such as Castle Party in Poland and Amphi Festival in Cologne will see Psyclon Nine perform exclusive sets, further amplifying anticipation within devoted subcultural circles.

The tour is not merely a series of performances—it is an invitation to witness ‘And Then Oblivion’ transfigured into ritual. For those drawn to the band’s charged aesthetics and cathartic energy, VIP packages are now available through their Bandcamp page, offering a deeper level of intimacy and access. As Nero Bellum prepares once again to bring his fractured liturgies to the stage, the Devils Work Tour promises to serve as both an extension of the album’s psychic purging and a communal act of unmaking—performed city by city, night after night, across a continent primed for collapse.

Psyclon Nine’s Legacy and Discography

Over the course of more than two decades, Psyclon Nine has carved a singular, often controversial path through the margins of industrial music, leaving behind a discography as turbulent and unflinching as the cultural spaces it inhabits. Their 2003 debut, ‘Divine Infekt,’ introduced listeners to a world of programmed hostility and distorted religious iconoclasm, firmly rooted in the harsh EBM tradition then thriving in underground clubs across Europe and North America. This early incarnation of Psyclon Nine was clinical in its digital aggression, but already hinted at the baroque theatricality that would later define the band’s more expansive work.

The 2005 release of ‘INRI’ marked a critical moment in the band’s evolution, and remains one of its most widely discussed albums. It built upon the template of its predecessor with a more aggressive sound palette and a pronounced thematic focus on religious inversion and societal collapse. The album’s stark visual imagery and lyrics—often interpreted as confrontationally sacrilegious—further cemented the band’s reputation as a provocateur within an already transgressive genre. But it was ‘We the Fallen’ in 2009 that came to represent Psyclon Nine’s creative zenith for many longtime followers. Sonically brutal and narratively dense, the album wove elements of industrial metal, gothic atmosphere, and tortured lyricism into a work that felt simultaneously personal and apocalyptic. Its slow-burning intensity and unrelenting emotional bleakness earned it a lasting position within the canon of post-millennial industrial releases.

Nearly a decade after ‘We the Fallen,’ the band issued ‘Icon of the Adversary’ in 2018—a darker, more metal-oriented record that leaned heavily into blackened textures and slower, heavier instrumentation. It was both a sonic departure and a reaffirmation of the band’s core sensibilities, offering a more solemn and ritualistic form of expression than the rhythmic assaults of earlier work. With ‘And Then Oblivion’ set to follow this lineage, Psyclon Nine’s discography reads as a chronicle of descent, each record pushing further into the interior terrain of grief, transgression, and spiritual fracture.

Psyclon Nine’s influence within the industrial music ecosystem is complex and deeply polarising. The band commands a devoted cult following that spans the industrial, goth, and extreme metal subcultures—communities often united less by genre than by shared fascination with extremity, spectacle, and emotional catharsis. Their live performances are intense and theatrical, often embracing chaos as part of the ritual, and frequently described as more exorcism than concert. Critics and fans alike have noted the band’s refusal to dilute its message or moderate its aesthetic, a stance that has garnered both reverence and rebuke. For some, Psyclon Nine represents an uncompromising artistic vision, uninterested in trends or marketability. For others, its relentless focus on suffering, destruction, and nihilism verges on alienating. Yet it is precisely this tension—between alienation and intimacy, collapse and construction—that has come to define Psyclon Nine’s enduring, if uneasy, place in the contemporary musical landscape.

San Francisco and the Dark Industrial Scene

Psyclon Nine’s inception is inseparable from the fertile and often overlooked subcultural terrain of early 2000s San Francisco. The band emerged at a time when the city’s dark electronic scene was in a state of flux, reshaped by the waning influence of traditional goth and the ascendancy of more aggressive, electronically driven subgenres. While industrial music had long found a home in the Bay Area—anchored by clubs like Death Guild and venues such as DNA Lounge—Psyclon Nine distinguished itself early on through a uniquely hostile sonic architecture and a confrontational live presence. Though contemporaneous with acts like Grendel and Tactical Sekt, Psyclon Nine was far less polished, deliberately steeped in volatility rather than precision. Their performances were both ritualistic and combustible, more akin to black metal incantations than typical club fare, and yet they drew loyal followings from the goth-industrial circuit that frequented these spaces.

At the broader level, Psyclon Nine arrived during a post-millennial resurgence in harsh industrial music—a moment defined by the hybridisation of dancefloor-oriented EBM with the bleak atmospherics and ideological aggression of extreme metal. While this movement found footholds in European cities such as Berlin and international hubs like Los Angeles and New York, Psyclon Nine’s brand of sonic nihilism retained an unmistakably American—and specifically West Coast—edge. It was raw, unfiltered, and spiritually scorched, less concerned with genre orthodoxy than with emotional rupture. Their sound embodied a form of cultural disaffection endemic to post-9/11 America, channeling dread not through irony or critique but through a kind of devotional despair. If San Francisco’s dark scene once flirted with theatrical morbidity, Psyclon Nine converted it into a scorched-earth gospel, leaving behind a legacy that remains both foundational and disruptive within the subgenre’s evolving history.

The Cult of Psyclon Nine

Psyclon Nine’s enduring appeal extends well beyond its recorded output, rooted as much in visual iconography and performance ritual as in music itself. The band’s aesthetic draws heavily from gothic horror, religious inversion, and the symbolic language of decay, presenting a universe steeped in ruin and revelation. Stage costumes resemble vestments torn from some forgotten ecclesiastical order—robes shredded, faces smeared in ash or blood, gestures invoking liturgies of desecration. These visuals are not ancillary, but integral to the band’s identity, transforming each live appearance into a kind of mass for the broken, a space where catharsis eclipses entertainment. Psyclon Nine’s performances have long occupied the unstable ground between concert and invocation, with frontman Nero Bellum assuming the role of both preacher and penitent, often delivering lyrics with the conviction of a man possessed. Chaos is not an accident—it is ritualised, cultivated, and, in many cases, inevitable.

The devotion surrounding Psyclon Nine is equally theatrical. The band commands a fiercely loyal global following, drawn from overlapping communities within darkwave, goth, and metal subcultures. This following has not merely endured the band’s stylistic shifts and long recording absences—it has evolved alongside them, sustained in large part through digital intimacy. Platforms such as Facebook and Bandcamp serve as more than promotional tools; they function as gathering places for a dispersed congregation, where fans dissect lyrics, share artwork, and recount transformative live experiences. Bellum, for his part, has deepened this bond through a series of solo livestreams and improvised performances that strip away the spectacle, offering raw glimpses into the artist behind the persona. These sessions—often intimate, unscripted, and emotionally vulnerable—have fostered a connection that transcends typical fan interaction. For many, Psyclon Nine is not simply a band, but a vessel for spiritual extremity, a community forged in darkness, and a rare constant in a genre landscape known for its volatility.

Conclusion

With ‘And Then Oblivion,’ Psyclon Nine delivers a record that feels both conclusive and combustive—a work forged in isolation yet intended to resonate outward with seismic effect. It is not merely the next entry in a discography known for its brutality and ritualism, but a statement that reflects the full arc of Nero Bellum’s creative and psychological unrest. In describing the album as an act of release and surrender, Bellum offers something markedly different from the spectacle of provocation that defined earlier chapters of the band’s history. What emerges instead is a document of survival—less concerned with shocking its audience than with purging the residue of a decade spent circling the void.

Still, the question lingers: does ‘And Then Oblivion’ represent an ending or a rebirth? The ambiguity seems intentional. Psyclon Nine has always inhabited liminal spaces—between genres, between sincerity and performance, between ruin and ritual. What remains constant is its unrelenting confrontation with despair, and its ability to transmute that despair into sonic architecture. In a musical landscape increasingly defined by polish and predictability, Psyclon Nine continues to stand defiantly at the margins, its vision smouldering at the crossroads of electronic horror and industrial prophecy.

Readers who have followed Psyclon Nine through its many incarnations—or are encountering its discordant gospel for the first time—are invited to share their impressions of ‘And Then Oblivion.’ How does this latest release sit within the band’s troubled lineage? Does it signal a creative rupture, a closing chapter, or something altogether unexpected? As always, we welcome thoughtful commentary on the band’s evolving sound, its place in the broader industrial tradition, and the personal resonances its music may provoke.