28 years of decay
Rafael Elias’ musical journey began taking shape in the 1990s. A devoted heavy metal fan since age 12, his desire to form a band and create his own compositions intensified in 1998. That year, at age 17, discovering Napalm Death became a turning point, solidifying the sonic aesthetic he sought: the raw, abrasive force of grindcore. This impulse led to the creation of Atomic Bomb, a project conceived and executed through a fully intuitive, independent method — initially shaped by the lack of resources. Unable to acquire traditional musical instruments, form a band with real musicians, or rely on formal training, Rafael developed a unique and ingenious production process: vocals were recorded using simple, improvised microphones; the instrumental base was built from layered samples extracted from audio CDs of other bands; and the final assembly of all layers was done manually in Audacity.
In this context, noise and technical imperfections were not flaws, but intrinsic elements that became aesthetic, language, and the project’s unique sonic identit.
Recordings under the names Atomic Bomb and Hellthoven continued until 2006. However, during this period, the project remained mostly personal and hermetic. Exposure to a small audience often resulted in criticism. Far from feeling discouraged, Rafael interpreted these reactions as validation: he had successfully subverted a style that, at the time, was celebrated by its followers as the ultimate rebellion against the sanitization and standardization of the music industry — grindcore.
You Can't Stop The Bomb
The survival of a project started by a 17‑year‑old in 1998 — with no support, no money, and no audience — should have been impossible.
It moved from dial-up connections to Wi-Fi, through corrupted media files, lost flash drives, and hardware failures. Yet the recordings were never lost. Against all logic, and even against the creator’s decision to terminate it, Atomic Bomb remains more alive than ever.
It exists outside the control of others’ wishes or opinions, and refuses to die.
This is the story. No fiction. No mythology. No delusion. Only facts — and the continuity of an entity that has survived for nearly three decades because it was never meant to disappear.
The three soldiers from 1916
The image of the three soldiers used throughout Atomic Bomb has been part of the project since its creation in 1998. It was taken from a printed encyclopedia, chosen not for historical accuracy or ideological meaning, but simply because it carried a weight that matched the atmosphere of the project. The photograph stood out immediately: unlike the typical sepia‑toned, high‑brightness images of World War I, this one was unusually dark, almost blue‑black, with low clarity and a somber palette. It looked more like a shadow than a record. No edits were made — the image appeared exactly as it was printed. At the time, the creator believed it was a World War II photograph. There was no information about nationality, allegiance, or context. The image was used purely for its tone, not for its origin. When the original Atomic Bomb files were lost in the 2000s, the image was lost with them — and when the archive resurfaced unexpectedly years later, the same unedited 1998 scan was among the recovered material.
Only in 2026 was the true origin identified: the soldiers belonged to the British–American side of World War I. This discovery came decades after the image had already become inseparable from the project.
Atomic Bomb does not represent nations, governments, ideologies, or political positions. The soldiers are not symbols of patriotism or allegiance. Their presence reflects something else entirely: the condition of individuals caught inside an industrialized war, masked, anonymized, and transformed into extensions of a system larger than themselves They are the embodiment of a condition: men trapped inside an industrialized war, surviving in toxic environments, wearing masks that erase individuality and transform them into instruments of a system larger than themselves.
Their appearance in the project was never a deliberate choice of side. It was one of many elements that emerged in a way that felt less like selection and more like inevitability. Atomic Bomb does not belong to any country. It represents a force without borders, without ideology, and without national identity.
ABRAMUS ID: 11035291 / IPI: I0076018772
CAE: 1343163183 / IPN: 11643350