Bleep

Manchester institution Modern Love present the complete version of the six-cassette saga Death Is Unity With God on CD, originally released under his Vatican Shadow alias. As always with Fernow’s work, it’s uncompromising material where sandblasted soundscapes and dilapidated rhythms are entwined with political and religious critique in a similar vein to the late, great Muslimgauze. Whilst some of the short snippets such as ‘Fort Hood Again’ and the frantic ‘Machine-Gunning Of The Davidians’ work to set the oppressed atmosphere, others immerse us in it completely; such as the severe, pitiless cadence of ‘Texarkana Resistance’ or the coarse drones on ‘McVeigh Figure’ which force a more introspective mood. Specifically for this special release, Ear-damaging pieces ‘Small Explosives And Blasting Caps’ and ‘Inside The Pages Of A Phonebook’ have been segued together, allowing the brittle flow of the former gently degrade into the arid guitar twangs of the later, whereas the fading, exhausted transmission of ‘Waco Postmortem (Murrah)’ is a fitting closer for what must be Fernow’s most committed and substantial work to date.