“While capturing footage for the last sequence I accidentally punched myself in the nose and started bleeding.” — Jon Weisnewski, NUCLEAR DUDES
NUCLEAR DUDES, the extreme solo project headed by Jon Weisnewski of Sandrider and Akimbo, released its debut album, Boss Blades, early this month on Modern Grievance Records. Today, a new video for “Lasers In The Jungle” featuring Dave Verellen of Botch has been premiered at Decibel Magazine.
NUCLEAR DUDES is a manic mix of extreme metal, synth-prog, powerviolence, and industrial noise. Or, as Weisnewski puts it, the project is a wild-eyed response to the question, “What if Carcass and Gary Numan were locked in a studio and had to figure out how to make a record together?” If that description sounds completely unhinged – well, it is. Yet the anxious showdown of whirlwind riffs vs. mercurial synths makes for mesmerizingly fun drama, likely leaving you tongue-tied and resorting to a gif search for “face melting” to describe your feelings.
Boss Blades was written and recorded by Jon Weisnewski with the exception of the guest vocals by Dave Verellen (Botch) and Irene Barber (Dust Moth), which were recorded by Matt Bayles at Litho Studios in Seattle, Washington. The album was mixed by Matt Bayles and mastered by Ed Brooks at Resonant Mastering.
With the new video, Weisnewski reveals, “The ‘Lasers In The Jungle’ video is a collaboration with digital artist Tony Arechiga. He used some low-fi video of us yelling and made them wild and insane. Dave Verellen helped out with vocals on this song. While capturing footage for the last sequence I accidentally punched myself in the nose and started bleeding.”
Decibel writes, “…created by Tony Arechiga, [the video] is an eye-twitch-inducing blast of morphing psychedelic colors and layers of images over a tune that starts ambient, offers a nod to Jane’s Addiction’s ‘Up The Beach’ and empties the tank like Ministry done blast-beat style. It’s like one of those Paul McCartney and Wings epics from the ’70s where you just don’t really know where it’s going next. And before you know it Verellen is screaming at you like you just kicked his cat. Not that I’d ever kick a cat.”
Tune in to Decibel Magazine to watch NUCLEAR DUDES’ “Lasers In The Jungle” video now at THIS LOCATION.
Boss Blades is out now on cassette and digitally. Stream the record and find ordering options at Bandcamp HERE and watch the video for the title track, also featuring Verellen, HERE.
With twelve tracks, Boss Blades is NUCLEAR DUDES’ longest and most complex release yet, beginning with the gargantuanly heavy title track showcasing the legendary roar of Dave Verellen (Botch), immediately followed by the sludgy, driving riffs of first single, “Manifest Piss Tape” – an intentional homage to Melvins’ early-2000s lineup and style.
While Weisnewski describes most of the album’s lyrics and song titles as “nonsense,” there are a handful of poignant moments buried deep within the silliness: “Lasers In The Jungle” sees him and Verellen avenging Carrie Fisher by skewering Paul Simon’s attempt to gaslight her in the lyrics of “Graceland.” The synthy, almost doom-like track “Many Knives” employs the crystalline voice of Irene Barber (Dust Moth), whose lyrical metaphors of floating knives beautifully describe the feeling of being stuck and seeing painful outcomes no matter what move you make. And the album’s most outwardly reflective track “Guitart” adds saturnine acoustic guitar under a sample of Grace Jones musing about gender and sexuality in an ‘80s interview – at least three decades before that topic reached mainstream culture. The album concludes with the slow-building, ambient turmoil of “A Special Torture,” gracefully reining in all the chaos of Boss Blades and giving it a solemn sendoff.
Boss Blades cover
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