In the east rises an ugly specter with the setting of the peaceful sun. Each day brings an expanded opportunity of eternal lifeless winter, a new big bang followed by cockroach earth. Coming to terms with the near-certainty of future nuclear war proves a nearly impossible task even for those who are the most informed on the subject, since the resulting wasteland evades all logical description and reasoning. However, we must awaken every day knowing that we may return to dust tomorrow, that our skin only stands two keys away from vaporization.
To force this unspeakable horror into our heads, Uranium takes it upon itself to deliver the most unbelievably heinous account of a post-war world imaginable. If war makes no sense, this record somehow makes even less, as all organized thought melts away in the mushroom cloud. The remaining pillar of fear screams out in lobotomized anguish. Where other records we have discussed on this blog capture sublimity, An Exacting Punishment captures the polar opposite, a sight so ridiculously horrifying as to completely upend human thought and humble even the most pompous of people.
Though most of us agree that nuclear ought never to occur, deterring such a future proves difficult when people at all levels of the hierarchy fail to understand the consequences of such a disaster. The concept of an attack without survivors makes no sense to the human mind, and as a result warlords dare to push the limits of wartime technology. Music may never exactly nail the sensation of witnessing crimes against humanity, but if artists evade the herculean task of putting us in the most unenviable shoes imaginable, we may press on to the future without much fear of such a catastrophe. A lack of fear leads to lack of respect, and a lack of respect leads to all systems go.