Send "Prurient " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 This is not the plug-your-ears Prurient you've come to know and possibly love. In the world of 21st-century harsh noise, Dominick Fernow's one-man recordings have been among the harshest, the most physical, the least compromising. Earlier albums, like 2006's hellishly screeching Pleasure Ground, were overwhelming floods of feedback and heavy psychic ugliness. Like the earliest industrial music, Prurient's records were more than sonically off-putting. They felt pained, beyond urgent, the product of some need to loose inner turmoil into the world, coming as much from Fernow's body as his machines.Bermuda Ground isn't just pleasant by contrast with Prurient's old unholy racket. It's often actively enjoyable, albeit in a decidedly creepy way, rooted as much in familiar retro-rock moves as formless face-eating noise. Perhaps it's down to Fernow's time playing in the decidedly more accessible and anthemic synth-pop/post-punk act Cold Cave, but Bermuda Drain is full of distortion-free keyboard, perverse disco beats, moments of beauty, even hooks. Especially for those who feel they get enough aural abuse just walking down city streets, it's the first Prurient record they might throw on for reasons other than testing their pain threshold. Which isn't to say it's accessible, necessarily. It may owe more to the creeping dread of old synthesized horror flick scores than the splatterpunk intensity of exploitation gorefests, but Bermuda Drain still opens with the kind of scream and fried-circuit blast designed to clear the room of everyone but the hardcore. When he's not roaring like a metal frontman let loose on a rave tune ("A Meal Can Be Made"), Fernow's whispering in a way that feels intimate in a decidedly uncomfortable and icky way. And song titles like "Let's Make a Slave" should let you know that Fernow-the-songwriter isn't exactly penning happy-go-lucky new wave here....full text |
| Avclub |
| “If I could, I’d take a tree branch and ram it inside you / but it’s already been done,” Dominick Fernow coldly intones on “Palm Tree Corpse,” one of the least friendly songs on Bermuda Drain, the latest from Fernow’s long-running project Prurient. In a sense, those lines sum up Bermuda Drain itself. After a decade of forging the most jagged, invasive noise imaginable, Fernow has moved ahead, tempering his menace with a broader range of texture and tone. And yes, even melody. The result is Prurient’s strongest statement to date, and its best album. The disc is out for blood: After opening with “Many Jewels Surround The Crown”—a crushingly distorted, Goblin-esque dirge that could soundtrack a snuff film—Bermuda Drain offers a false sense of tolerability with the industrialized thrash of “A Meal Can Be Made.” The digitized riffs and bleak hooks evoke everything from Young Gods to Black Celebration-era Depeche Mode, a departure from Prurient’s usual Whitehouse worship. It’s also possible that Fernow’s recent tenure in the dark-wave outfit Cold Cave exerts a small influence, although “There Are Still Secrets,” the album’s most accessible song, still manages to sear skin with liquid-nitrogen synths and curdled screams....full text |
| Consequenceofsound |
| As Prurient, Dominick Fernow is one of the most widely respected and collaborated with artists in abrasive noise music. However, he may be getting as much attention in other circles for being a live synth player for darkwave scenesters Cold Cave (though Wikipedia suggests he’s only doing that because he lost a bet). Returning to his old noisy moniker, Madison, WI native Fernow is displaying a severely changed musical persona. Sure, there are aggressive, pulsating noises (including the screaming bleat that opens the record), but there are, quite surprisingly, moments approaching dance-ability and Mass-ready melody. Rather than relying solely on microphones and pedals, there are synths here playing off against the feedback bursts and insistent, lurching vocals. In many ways, the complex, rhythmically charged “Many Jewels Surround” is a shock to the system. Rather than the walls of abrasive feedback that would knock anyone sitting too close to their speakers over, this is a creepy 80′s horror movie soundtrack full of synth washes and bassy voice-over. “A Meal Can Be Made” takes the vocals to a gruff scream, while the beat is even more fluid and dancefloor ready. The shimmering, acidic soundtrack for more eerie spoken word on the title track is haunting, while the tooth-grinding metalic scraping of “Watch Silently” comes a bit closer to the gnashing noise Prurient had put out prior. “Palm Tree Corpse” follows, portraying something as close to that odd title as one could expect. Largely relying on waves of twinkling synths, the intermittent howls and jolts of feedback break up the swaying rhythm....full text |
Prurient lyrics
|
| |||||||||||||
