Album Announcement / Trailer: Prurient’s Frozen Niagara Falls
Profound Lore Records has set a date for American noise artist Prurient’s debut for the label. News of Prurient’s signing to Profound Lore dates back to the very beginning of last year. PLR labelhead Chris Bruni said Prurient (Dominick Fernow, also of Ash Pool) was preparing a “different” album. Prurient has released music in a veritable kaleidoscope of styles so “different” could mean anything. It was also noted that production is coming from Arthur Rizk, known for his work with Texan heavy metal band Power Trip.
Profound Lore Records is no stranger to releasing noise. Wold have released the majority of their albums on PLR. Last year PLR released a self titled collaboration between Full of Hell and Merzbow. It was on that album’s bonus disc, Sister Fawn, where Merzbow’s personality especially shone through. Profound Lore has also made a habit of signing established artists well into their careers. The brand new Leviathan record Scar Sighted is a perfect example of this. Leviathan released his first demo in 1998, and has been an active staple of the USBM scene since. Scar Sighted is his fifth full length album and first for Profound Lore (it’s also one of my favorite albums of the year so far).
You can check out a track from Prurient’s Cocaine Death (2008) below:
Prurient fits into both categories. While Fernow has played and recorded music in a variety of genres, his oldest project has also been a vehicle for a seemingly endless variety of noise. This artist is also well established, first releasing music on cassette in 1998, nearly twenty years ago. It’s safe to say that Prurient is one of the “biggest” names in noise, alongside the aforementioned Merzbow and Richard Ramirez. I personally count myself as a Prurient fan, having covered his music for this very website previously. I was excited to receive an email from from Toilet Ov Hell capo di tutti capi Joe containing information about Prurient’s upcoming 2015 album, Frozen Niagra Falls. This is the official press release from the PR mouthpiece of Profound Lore Records.
Prurient | Frozen Niagara Falls | May 12th, 2015 Profound Lore Records
Known as America’s most prominent noise figurehead, for nearly 20 years under the moniker of Prurient, Dominick Fernow has created a sonic entity unlike any other in the realm of experimental, ambient, and noise music respectively. Throughout a massive repertoire that consists of full-lengths, EP’s, splits, singles, limited cassette runs and 7” releases, etc., Prurient is one of the most important artists to define and reinvent the genre of noise music which in turn has made Fernow one of the premiere visionaries in the entire genre of experimental music.
Throughout the years, Prurient has been known to constantly shape shift its sound into many mutations and incarnations within the noise genre through massively layered walls of sound. Consisting of harsh feedback, tortured vocals, meticulous sampling, machine-like industrial pounding, entrancing synth work, enticing beats, and waves of electronica, these sounds create an aura that treads the fine line of harsh noise extremity and atmospheric beauty.
Frozen Niagara Falls, Prurient’s first full-length album since the 2011 game changer Bermuda Drain, sees Fernow deliver the most ambitious and massive Prurient album to date. A double-album clocking in at a near 90-minutes, this new Prurient album is set to define Fernow even more as a master within all the genres the band tends to crossover into.
In what encompasses moments familiar from the entire Prurient catalog along with creating something entirely new and different from what Prurient has previously done, Frozen Niagara Falls (in which its journey began to manifest in late 2013 and was finally completed on Valentine’s Day 2015) could very well be recognized as the Prurient magnum opus.
Song premieres, release details, and more information to come prior to May 12th, 2015 Frozen Niagara Falls street date. Watch the official album trailer here.
Frozen Niagara Falls
Produced by: Arthur Rizk, Kris Lapke
Mastered by: Paul Corley
Cover photo by: Becka Diamond
Design by: Nikolay Saveliev
Additional art contributors: Matt Kenny, Adam Gordon, Adam Marnie
Track Listing:
Disc One:
1. Myth Of Building Bridges
2. Dragonflies To Sew You Up
3. A Sorrow With A Braid
4. Every Relationship Earthrise
5. Traditional Snowfall
6. Jester In Agony
7. Poinsettia Pills
8. Shoulders Of Summerstones
Disc Two:
9. Wildflowers (Long Hair With Stocking Cap)
10. Greenpoint
11. Lives Torn Apart (NYC)
12. Frozen Niagara Falls (Portion One)
13. Cocaine Daughter
14. Falling Mask
15. Frozen Niagara Falls (Portion Two)
16. Christ Among The Broken Glass
You can check out a track from Prurient’s The Black Post Society (2008) below:
Keeping theme with the album’s title, the official trailer (linked again here) for Frozen Niagara Falls features two minutes of wintery scenes with increasingly heavy snowfall set to a pleasant ambient track, which becomes louder and a bit dramatic towards the end. It ends with Prurient’s diamond logo in the last frame. This may be music included on the album, but does not give much away as far what the album will contain. Profound Lore has promised an entirely new Prurient sound touching on everything he has done before. A recent Facebook update by Chris Bruni stated this would be “90 minutes of music. No fucking compromise.” I can only speculate Frozen Niagara Falls will harken to some of Prurient’s more intense works, like one of my favorites the recent Palm Tree Corpse (2011, not to be confused with the song “Palm Tree Corpse” off of his Bermuda Drain album). Ninety minutes of that style would make for a tremendously difficult listen. It could contain dancier numbers as well like 2013’s Through The Window, which features an interlude in between two longer tracks allegedly designed to powder your nose with coke/crystal/ketamine/whatever. Chris Bruni may be looking for his 2015 flagship record here, a noise album with crossover appeal to hit big on platform sites like 2012’s Sorrow and Extinction and 2014’s Labyrinth Constellation. We will learn more as songs are premiered. Stay tuned to the Toilet Ov Hell for new music roundups and a chance to catch those songs first.
Frozen Niagara Falls comes out May 12th, 2015.
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