Dominick Fernow has always been a polarizing figure in the noise scene: people either obsessively buy every limited tape he puts out, or they like to rant about him and his label on various noise message boards. So upon hearing that this album was going to be even more divisive than anything has yet released, my interest was definitely piqued. After hearing it a few times, it’s different, and yet not completely out of character in his discography.
 
I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect based upon the first two tracks that were released from Bermuda Drain."Many Jewels Surround the Crown," released as a Record Store Day 7" (and reviewed here) opens this album in a skewed, but still familiar way.While the level of restraint on that track was apparent, it also wasn’t drastically removed from some of the tracks on Pleasure Ground or And Still…Wanting.Here it seems to have even more polish, focusing more on the ambient synths and Fernow’s spoken word, with seemingly more of the noise stripped away.
While I didn't think that was completely unexpected, the second track, "A Meal Can be Made," which was released as a free MP3 a few weeks ago, is a different story entirely.I wondered how Fernow's time in Cold Cave might affect his other projects, and I think it's quite obvious here.It instantly reminded me of early Skinny Puppy with its abrasive, but still melodic layering of keyboards and stiff, mechanical rhythms, which is a good thing.However, the vocals were another matter entirely.Alternating between black metal screams and grindcore growls, the voice seems out of place.In my opinion, the "cookie monster" vocals can work in noise and the various permutations of metal because the dissonance surrounding them in the music creates a whole greater than the sum of its parts:it becomes an even uglier mess.When those vocals are pretty much alone and laid atop what really amounts to an aggressive synth pop track, they sound a bit silly.
So, I wasn't sure what to expect when I got my hands on the full album, it was either going to be a more fleshed out take on Fernow's previous work, or a misguided attempt at crossing over into "music".Thankfully the former is a better descriptor for the album, because the rest of the tracks here are far better than "A Meal Can Be Made."
There is one other track that has that whole Skinny Puppy/Rape & Honey era Ministry vibe to it, "There Are Still Secrets," which feels a whole lot more coherent as a song.Fernow is still screaming and barking the vocals, but the delivery fits better in the context of the song, and it doesn’t seem to jump around structurally as much as "A Meal Can Be Made" did.
Somewhere between mid 1980s industrial and ambient is "Let's Make A Slave," which turns down the aggro thrash but retains the bleepy synths and stiff rhythms.The title track and "Palm Tree Corpse" sound more like the dour, keyboard heavy Prurient stuff as of late, the latter throwing some of his usual screams on over its rather pretty ambient layers.When Fernow goes the spoken word route with his vocals, like on these two tracks, I think it works pretty well, especially since the pitch shifting and heavy effects are stripped away here
It’s only "Watch Silently" and, to a lesser extent, "Sugar Cane Chapel" that sound like the Prurient of yore, the former a mess of hyper-kinetic noise and feedback, and the latter taking the more keyboard-focused sound and covering it in layers of reverb and distortion.
I'm honestly not sure what to think about Bermuda Drain, because on one hand, it sounds like Prurient, but a more polished and developed one.Which is what is perplexing.To me, a "polished" Prurient is almost an oxymoron, and somewhat the antithesis of the lo-fi, seedy vibe associated with most of the releases, in all their Xeroxed and hand-dubbed glory.While other releases such as the Cocaine Death compilation were very professionally packaged and presented, the sound on the disc was still ugly and abrasive.Here it all has a professional gleam to it, which I wasn’t really expecting.
Fernow has certainly evolved into something beyond the feedback and harsh noise, but it is extremely hard to pin down. There definitely is some bleed over from his work with Cold Cave, and especially his Vatican Shadow side-project, but Bermuda Drain feels different than anything else he has done, regardless of the moniker used.Admittedly, I was hoping he would integrate a bit more of the black metal guitar sound that the alternate version of "Many Jewels Surround the Crown" 7" demonstrated, but not this time.As it stands, I can see how the hardcore noise crowd will hate this, but for people with more eclectic tastes, there's a lot here to deconstruct.
samples:
 
Read More
