PSYCLON_NINE

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. --

By Marc Urselli

December 8, 2005

One of this year’s newest and most refreshing artists in 2005 on Metroplos-Records is definitely the San Francisco based act, Psyclon Nine. This band is already signed in Germany on the Noitekk label, www.noitekk.de. Psychlon Nine released a debut album called Divine Infect, and are now back with a new conceptual CD called INRI. They prove that there can be a way out of the death valley of Harsh/Terror EBM. They have improved and developed a lot since their debut, and should now be able to gather more recognition than before. It is now time to get some insight about Psychlon Nine from their vocalist, [ner0]…

Chain D.L.K.: You recently signed to Metropolis Records, what was your reaction to the news, and how did you go about getting signed?

Psyclon Nine: I don’t really remember the party… That could either be a good or bad thing. We were all a little excited but I kinda knew that it was coming. Dave Heckman, the owner of Metropolis-Records, has been coming to our shows for a long time and we’ve been bugging him for a while. I think he was waiting for us to refine our sound and play out a little more before deciding to take us under his wing.

Chain D.L.K.: What are your expectations, now that you are a Metropolis act? How has the promotion been, and how are the sales for INRI going? Psyclon Nine: The sales were a lot better than the sales for Divine Infekt, and we’ve gotten a whole shit load more exposure in America.

Chain D.L.K.: What do you feel is the largest evolution between Divine Infect and INRI?

Psyclon Nine: I just didn’t want to write the same album again and I wanted to do whatever the fuck I felt like at the time… such as writing “The Feeding.” I knew that it was going to be somewhat controversial to have a black metal oriented EBM track on our album, but I really don’t give a fuck about what people think about me our my musical tastes. It’s my art and that’s how I felt like expressing myself at that moment. I’m not writing for a target audience. I’m writing for myself.

Chain D.L.K.: There are different versions of INRI for Europe and North America, correct? Psyclon Nine: Some of the stores in America wouldn’t stock INRI with the nudity on the front and I felt it was unfair to the kids who wanted to get our album in stores and couldn’t. So, we decided to create two different versions of the cover art so we could get into those stores. Besides that, Noitekk decided it would be a good idea to put the video for “Divine Infect” on the Euro version.

Chain D.L.K.: Why and how have you guys made such intense references to belief, the holy bible, and the Christianity as a whole? Has it anything to do with the daily influence of the church through street preachers in the USA? It seems like your points of view could cause some trouble with some religious hard-liners. How has the reaction been?

Psyclon Nine: Street preachers are funny, but they aren’t the problem (nor part of the solution). It’s religious zealots like G. W. Bush and his cronies that run our country and push the Christian morality onto our society as a set of standards that everyone has to live up to. I personally think this is absolute bullshit and I think that Christianity and it’s morality is an anchor on the advancement on the human race. I think instead of promoting Christianity and therefor teaching people to not think for themselves, we should promote free thinking so that our voting system will actually work. How can it work when everyone is exactly the same? People need to learn how to think outside of the box and grow the balls to hit rock bottom and exist outside of society in order to look at humanity from an outside perspective. Then they can see the flaws that Christianity (and all organized religion) have inflicted onto our evolution process. It’s just holding us back.

Chain D.L.K.: The track, “Requiem for the Christian Era,” features lyrics taken from a Hebrew prayer. How did you get these lyrics, are they correctly printed in your CD booklet? Psyclon Nine: Eric is Jewish (contrary to the popular belief that I’m a Nazi) and he sings as a cantor in his spare time at a synagog in LA. He got the lyrics from one of the prayers he was singing. It happened to go along with the theme of the album. I thought that it fit nicely.

Chain D.L.K.: The title INRI is an acronym form for Iesus Nazarenus Rex Ivdaforum. What is the meaning behind this, and how does your message, “Through his righteousness the earth defiled,” relate to this?

Psyclon Nine: It’s Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews: through his righteousness the earth defiled, and it relates to what I just said about the fact that his religion is ruining our world.

https://www.chaindlk.com/interview_archives/interview_images/PsyclonNine/PsyclonNine_pic1.jpg

Chain D.L.K.: What’s next for Psyclon Nine? Are you working on any other themes for a new conceptual album?

Psyclon Nine: INRI was a statement about the problems with the world. The next album will have my views of the solutions. We’re still slowly integrating the themes for INRI into the live shows… You’re going to have to come out and see us to see what I’m talking about. We’re touring all next month and plan to keep touring until it’s time to go into the studio to record our next album, which we’re currently working on.

Chain D.L.K.: You made a remix for Dismantled’s “Breed to Death.” Are there any other remixes in the works?

Psyclon Nine: Johan van Roy (Suicide Commando) just asked me to do a remix a couple days ago for his new album, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to do that. He’s been a big inspiration to us all (the father of “Terror-EBM”). I don’t do remixes for anyone that doesn’t inspire me and hold some place close to me. So I don’t think that we’ll be doing many more remixes after this. Although, Eric’s project, Everything Goes Cold, just did a couple remixes for UnterNull and Aryia.

Chain D.L.K.: Any final words you would like to add? Psyclon Nine: Again, we’re going to be touring a lot starting this fall with a new lineup, and we will be presenting new songs from our upcoming album here and there, so there’s always going to be something fresh with our shows. All info can be found at our web sites:

www.psyclonnine.com www.myspace.com/psyclonnine www.livejournal.com/users/psyclon_nine www.metropolis-records.com Oh, and if you haven’t got our new album yet then just fucking download it or something, you cheap bastards.

Visit Psyclon Nine on the web at: www.psyclonnine.com

One of the earliest known Psyclon Nine live shows with complete audio.

++ Archive/graveyard of San Francisco Bay Area industrial band @psyclonnine Submissions of rare photos, bootleg tracks, news, whatever else: