Prurient - Garden of the Mutilated Paratroopers

While I certainly enjoy the incorporation of harsh noise and dark ambient music into my metal, I must say I’m not as well-versed in those genres as if perhaps like to be. Yet I’ve long enjoyed Dominick Fernow’s Prurient, a solo dark/industrial noise project with which he has been quite prolific, and particularly his 2015 album under the project’s moniker, the occasionally metal-tinged Frozen Niagara Falls. I reviewed his massive 2017 album, the nearly three-and-a-half-hour Rainbow Mirror, which took an intentionally more measured and atmospheric approach compared to Fernow’s usual bend toward more aggressive abrasion on albums like Unknown Rains and Frozen Niagara Falls. Despite the significantly mellower vibe of the album, I rather enjoy Rainbow Mirror and the focus on building ambiance more patiently through shifts of interesting textures of drones. Garden of the Mutilated Paratroopers, though, takes Fernow and Prurient back to the harsher, more overtly sinister realm of creativity that characterized Frozen Niagara Falls. While I am certainly no expert in the technical aspects of industrial noise music, I can at least advocate for this record’s fulfilling and dynamic experience of resonant volatile drones and manic noise explosions that satisfy in many of the same ways that metal in its most abusive forms does. While perhaps not as immediately immersive or as wild of a ride as Frozen Niagara Falls, Garden of the Mutilated Paratroopers is another fine example of Fernow’s proficiency with a wide variety of elements of noise and his ability to twist them into a consistently intriguing and engulfing forty minutes of unforgiving harshness.

Beltsander/10