Prurient Pleasure Ground

One of Prurient’s most captivating raids on the borderlands of power noise and symphonic doom rears its furious head once again for this epic gatefold reissue on Hospital Productions, 10 years on from its original release on double tape and then as a single vinyl pressing for the legendary Load Records in 2007.

Pleasure Ground stands as a key part of Prurient’s golden quadrant alongside The History Of Aids (2002), Black Vase (2005) and Cocaine Death (2008), its immolating rage renders Fernow at an early crest of his energies, consolidating the hi-pitch intensity and bile of his idols, Whitehouse, with the majestic, meditative inspirations of Black Metal and a more personalised bloodlust for unheimlich synth tones and pulsating electronic undercurrents.

Its four long tracks are riven with the paradoxes that make Prurient’s music so compelling and practically a genre unto itself, meting out a sound in Earthworks / Buried in Secret that’s simultaneously nerve-gnawing yet bleakly tender, or weighing up caustic harshness with a melodic vulnerability in Apple Tree Victim that appeals far beyond the bombed-out no mans land of pure noise to intersect with the entrails of EBM in the raging but poised thunder of Military Road - one of his finest moments, bar none - and coldwave pop and fetishistic synth themes in Outdoorsman/Indestructible.

If you’re willing to bite down you will find a depth of bittersweet flavour submerged beneath the tidal waves of white noise filled with nuance and vulnerability, slowly dragging you into the abyss.

Ultimately though, there’s no mistaking that in the end this album is just unflinchingly fucking heavy...