If there's one person I revere when talking about noise it's Dominick Fernow, better known to the shadowy corners of the noise world as Prurient. There's something about his approach to the sound which for me puts him at the top of the tree, forcing music that could easily be simple, throwaway distorted jams into so much more. His last full length album proper 'Pleasure Ground' cemented this for me as Fernow buried layer upon layer of woozy synthesizer melody beneath his token screams and distortion adding a dimension to his work he had only previously hinted at in passing. His mixture of early 80s industrial music, pure New York noise and misanthropic black metal has made him a singular character in the scene, avoiding comparison with genre champions Wolf Eyes or even Merzbow simply due to the fact that when you play a Prurient record it can only be the work of one man. This latest slab of green wax (which I should warn you is already sold out at the source!) continues exploring the themes he explored on 'Pleasure Ground' and the recent 'Cave Depression' box-set (well worth tracking down if you haven't managed to grab it already) as he liberally spreads a wall of demented, volcanic noise over the kind of synthesizer melodies that wouldn't be out of place on an Emperor record. This is black metal as seen through the eyes of a schizophrenic lunatic, or noise produced by someone dying to escape the trappings of an increasingly lazy scene; serious music, for seriously intense characters. At times you become hypnotised by the suggestion of theme, by the chants and screams, drawn into its allure and convinced you are hearing something you're not, and if the mournful motifs at the end of 'Tied to Stone' don't have you begging for more maybe you need to find another hobby. Genuinely intense music doesn't get any better than this - utterly mindblowing material! BOOMKAT