?Scorched earth electro-mind fuck meets skull-driver harsh-realm shit? would be a description typically synonymous with albums that are coming out like this these days. The difference between this album and its contemporaries is that it really is terrifying in a guttural, soul-shaking way ? the kind of document of a person that proves that he would rape that tiny hole in your ear all the way to the pink chewy center of your brain without thinking twice to ask if you would prefer a mind catheter or the devil?s butt plug to get you in the mood.

Fernow?s brand of noise doesn?t bother to heed to the margins of listenability, but on the contrary is outright in its contempt for such conventions, speaking specifically of the 15+ minute screamer Roman Shower that appropriately opens the album. It is by and large the most unbearable tune on Black Vase and is something of an impaled, foreboding infant at the foyer of this 72 minute noise tower with its unwieldy microphone swinging high-end expose and generally callous manner ? its enough to drive the uninitiated back to their candy-ass pole dancing and wet t-shirt anthems. What follows are a few tracks that are a little more endurable if you?re already used to chest-pounding gorilla-sized torrents of rasping electronic dirges. Silent Mary begins as a sputtering overdrive incident, dribbling out erratically like canine drool at double speed interrupted indignantly by a rush of distressed throat wrenching and maniacal war-drum lines that seem to prompt the beginnings of an unwilling sex slave?s descent into violent indecency. Looking at the lyric sheet now I wasn?t too far off, although 100% of the time it is impossible to make out what is being yelled ? an attribute of Prurient?s legacy??? Geh. Sorry Robin is surprisingly upbeat (for a Prurient joint) with an almost, dare I say, funky bass line kind of action which of course is obliterated a minute later by vintage blurghherveitcnnaaaaasshshshhsh. The rest of the album fluctuates between the aforementioned themes of the first three songs coupled with a unexpectedly ?ambient? finisher making Black Vase far too long and vexing for passive enjoyment. Listen to this one in a pool of boiling vinegar, goats blood and broken glass and see horrible things. 8/10 -- Andrew Zukerman (27 June, 2006)