DEPLETED URANIUM “Origins”

By Dr. Abner Mality

Here is about 20 minutes of grinding pain courtesy of this uniquely named Canadian outfit. There’s a lot going on in this one and if I was a label like Relapse, I might take a closer look at DEPLETED URANIUM.

The band’s name song “Depleted Uranium” is just 44 seconds long but has a grind riff that sounds like a bonesaw cutting through somebody’s skull. It shows these dudes aren’t messing around. Yet the first half of “The Tear and the Flood” makes you wonder if you accidentally picked up a lost NIRVANA album with a laid back grunge sound. That is, before the flood of raging mayhem rips off your head in the second half of the brief song. So the band is not just content to play one type of grindcore.

The variety continues with “Alpha Particles”, which starts with REPULSION/PHOBIA style grind but deviates into a mathy kind of precision picking. The brilliantly named “Van Halen Radiation Belt” brings old NASUM to mind with a straightforward blast and now this sucker is really starting to kick your head in and we’re not even at the 8 minute mark yet. From there, the band continues the attack with a combination of straight grindcore brutality and the more mathy DILLINGER/CONVERGE type of extremity. The cuts are all cut to the bone and brief in length except for final track “Percentages”, which sounds like it was done in one take live in the studio and is almost five minutes of shifting riffage and crushing drums.

All in all, “Origins” pretty much kicked me in the balls and announces that here is a new force to be reckoned with in the grindcore world.

DEPLETED URANIUM