URANIUM CLUB - HUMAN EXPLORATION REVIEW

The Minneapolis Uranium Club open their first album, Human Exploration, with a song titled Black Semen. Do with information that what you will. While not an especially sexy song, it's certainly an auditory pounding. Black Semen's flabby, crass guitars and violently cantankerous, thrashing drums are suited to the likes of Minutemen or Mudhoney. Alas, this isn't straight-out punk rock or old-school grunge - it's subtle, but The Uranium Club is also deeply influenced by the likes of DEVO and Talking Heads. Human Exploration is noise pollution for the criminally insane, composed for oddball existentialists and all kinds of foul-mouthed tightwads. Be it robbing a gas station or passing away under the knife, Uranium Club's off-kilter vulgarity is as radioactive and subtly sickening as the name suggests, and there is no escape once the needle hits the groove. Blistering distortion guitars, girthy bass, and blood vessel bursting drums continue with absurd consistency across each track, drilling themselves into nearby ears, listening or otherwise. Rafter Man is either a breakup song or a lament for well-hidden victims: signed, sealed, and delivered with the cold realism of Dexter Morgan or Hannibal Lecter. "Goodbye Life, Hello Freedom", the singer (if he can be called such a thing) squawks, pushing over the eternal edge in Vanishing Point. Even the more joyous tune Sun Belt descends into a god-fearing delirium, detailing "a new kind of cancer", diverging entirely from the frivolity of the precedent verses. Left-field lyrics are second only to a smattering of schizoid, histrionic lead guitar licks, crying out in harmony and/or agony across the album, especially on the final track, simply titled Outro. This viscera is unrelenting until the album's final blast of guitar feedback. Human Exploration will peel the gunk off your brainwashed brainstem and stick around long enough to leave its own blend of snarling, sardonic grime in its place. If you're not faint of heart, you have no excuse not to open your head to the assault of Uranium Club's first record.

Human Exploration is out now via Static Shock Records' bandcamp

A note: I am not affiliated with The Minneapolis Uranium Club in any manner, official or otherwise, however, I am obligated to issue the following warning for the modern music lover, bound to the ways of the internet: The Uranium Club are a postmodern organization in a great many ways. Not least of these practices is The Club's total lack of online presence whatsoever. Outside of their music on standard streaming services, what you will find on the world wide web regarding the Minneapolis Uranium Club is often disappointing. If you are the type who often finds yourself inclined to, as some do, obsess over bands and their individual members, you will no doubt be colossally disappointed by the garage rock evasion tactics used by The Club at every opportunity. Not to mention, of course, the colossal dearth of any licensed merchandise, with only a select few Uranium Club vinyl records remaining in existence. No official Uranium Club merch is to be found on any third-party site. Live bootlegs and short concert clips are the only luxury rarity the most diehard of Uranium Club fans can share with one another. The band may as well be invisible, but isn't that the idea? The Minneapolis Uranium Club would rather leave their car keys in the microwave, swaddled in tinfoil, than score any acclaim by compromising their irreplaceable, unhinged swagger.