Vatican Shadow

***Death Is Unity With God finds DOMINCK FERNOW returning to the kind of feral, burned-out productions that dominated 2012's Ornamented Walls. This double LP includes 12 of the 20 tracks included on the original 2014 limited six-cassette release of Death Is Unity With God, in advance of Modern Love's triple-CD edition compiling all the material. It clocks in at an hour and a half and features some of the most compelling productions from Fernow yet. Nodding to classic Muslimgauze, but also inspired by the parallels between religious fundamentalism at home in the USA and abroad, the oppressive atmospheres and destroyed rhythms isolate the gutted toil and drone in "It's to Come," while "F.B.I. God" reduces the drums to scorched blasts against some harrowing, darkside chords. The quasi-speed torment of "Manufactured Silencers Under Direct Orders" ends the A-side with dread, flowing into the haunting chorales and chiming percussions of "Living On and Off At the Shadows Motel" and the scything techno roil of "Small Explosives and Blasting Caps Inside the Pages of a Phonebook," before a particularly effective chamber-like meditation, "McVeigh Figure," draws aesthetic lines between ambient black metal, Coil, and early Autechre. "Waco Postmortem (Murrah)" ends the set operating nearly out of earshot with those incredible, sashaying synth motifs persisting in their struggle against the patina of hiss and exasperated rhythms blurred around the edges.