Prurient – Frozen Niagara Falls

As with the rest of Prurient’s unforgiving discography, Frozen Niagara Falls is an assault on the senses with barely a moment of respite, however in what has been described as Dominick Fernow’s “magnum opus”, the suffocation lies not just in the noise but the emotionally battered destruction within. Amid the scatter of gunfire of Myths of Building Bridges, the dystopian soliloquy of Shoulders of Summerstones, and the John Carpenter-esque synthesis lies a ditchwater destitution, like a distress call from a war torn country.

The album’s centrepiece Greenpoint encapsulates the dystopian journey of the album best; a lonesome guitar galvanising silt and muck into a pulsating techno rhythm only to disintegrate, allowing a plaintive voice remind the listener that ‘you don’t want to hurt anyone’, all the while electrostatic feedback constantly stabs and slices in the background. Frozen Niagara Falls digs beyond human emotion into a dizzying journey of large scale disaster. [Jon Davies]