PRURIENT - Bermuda Drain

If you’ve read any article on Bermuda Drain, Prurient's new album, you’ll probably have read that Dominick Fernow’s approach for this record has been severely influenced by his time spent working with Cold Cave, especially on their latest release Cherish the Light Years. Let's just address that now—while yes, they do share similar qualities initially, the end products could not be more different from each other.

If you’re at all familiar with Prurient’s previous efforts, this one might throw you for a curve. While most of his records are very in tune with groups like Whitehouse or The Sodality, Bermuda Drain strays from Fernow’s power electronics roots and takes on a dark wave approach. If you’ve ever fancied yourself a fan of early Ministry or Black Celebration-era Depeche Mode, this album should strike a chord with you. There’s nothing pop about this. Musically, this album just piles the melancholy on more and more, until closing track "Sugar Cane Chapel." Fenrow has maintained the ferocity in his vocal approach for most of this record, but takes breaks from screaming and shouting to deliver spoken passages, sometimes barely above a whisper.

Industrial leanings remain, with a harsh wall sometimes washing over the melody. The songs themselves have been restricted to no longer than three or four minutes each, and the feeling of endlessness found on records like Pleasure Ground is gone. Everything just feels more focused. His lyrics, while still touching on sexuality and other taboo subjects, feel more thought out and poetic, and we might have his Mother to thank for that (no, really—she’s credited in the liner notes!).

Dominick Fernow is a king of multitasking. Besides performing as Prurient and with Cold Cave, he's a member of many other groups (Ash Pool, Vegas Marytrs, Vatican Shadow...), and also runs his own label and record store (Hospital Productions). You would think that by this point exhaustion would diminish the quality of his work, but thankfully it’s only getting better.