7. Prurient - Pleasure Ground [Load]

Last may, Hasselt, again. Prurient's sole emperor Dominick Fernow raped my ears for twenty minutes with an intense set of high end power electronics and a terribly piercing shriek. When music gets this physical it gets me in a blissful state and while my eardrums were starting to really feel the pain I only wanted more, more, more. That's when Prurient hit me. I'd been feeling his seminal 2005 release Black Vase before but it's unrelenting attitude scared as well. Maybe I wasn't ready, maybe it really was too much. Or maybe, I was just being lazy.

Enjoying Prurient isn't easy when you're just getting into harsh noise but all the lazy boys and girls who are into music and slag off noise as unlistenable and stupid really annoy the fuck out of me. Invest some time and try to get through it's harsh skin before making a complete universe irrelevant by laziness. It's a good thing Pleasure Ground is here to accomodate these jerks (ah!). It might be Prurient's most varied and melodic (!) effort to date, without losing any of his true harsh noise cred. But it's not as if he is trying to please the naysayers, Fernow keeps things on edge the whole time but if you make it through the first track called 'Military Road' you're almost in the candy shop. 'Military Road' has Fernow in line as a terrifying drill sergeant. When the first high end noise waves hit you, it's bleeding eyeballs, pulled out tongues and the spirit of S&M/black metal kvlt right in your face. It's a shrill and piercing sound that gets under your skin to fondle the nerves underneath.

After 'Military Road''s eins-zwei-drei torment things start to get a little more spacious. A little. It's still Prurient after all. Fernow's a huge black metal freak (with a huge boner for black/noise metal act Bone Awl) and that's starting to trickle down in his noise terror. 'Earthworks/Buried In Secret' has some heavy synth vibes going on, electro doom as opposed to electro pop. Not suited for hipster dance parties unless they're in need for some tragic deaths. Halfway during the track the doomy parts get traded in for blistering synth winds and Fernow's ever awesome rants from the gut. Goth has such a polluted personality now but this might qualify in the sickest of minds. Fernow himself has claimed Pleasure Ground as an electronic record with black metal and club trance influences and he isn't far off either. Better yet, he's completely on point. In his own sick kind of way then. 'Outdoorsman/Indestructible' feels like something floating around those two benchmarks, taking wing from minimalism more than anything else. A slow grinding horror mofo with nothing really attractive besides a few gong hits. Ugly ass track, I like it though.

With album closer 'Apple Tree Victim', Prurient has made his first coherent kind of noise song. It's sawing synths feel like something Xasthur would come up with were he more interested in avant-electronica than guitars. A few lines sum up a world of cruelty, vocals soaked in blackened disgust. Pleasure Ground feels like a noise rave party, sometimes euphoric and painfully extrovert and overall a crazy sorta new direction in Prurient's discography, illustrating his remarkable strength in so many ways. This one's a keeper.

Download | 'Earthworks/Buried In a Secret'