Vatican Shadow

Dominick Fernow, operator of the Hospital Productions imprint and known separately as Prurient, directs Vatican Shadow as a military-themed industrial techno endeavor. Fernow shaped its austere, abrasive electronics by pulling apart stems and individual tracks, isolating them on cassettes, then reassembling and heavily processing the fragments, all while invoking the grim facts of present-day U.S. combat operations. The project first surfaced in 2010 with the limited-edition EP Byzantine Private CIA, after which ten additional restricted releases appeared on Hospital Productions through 2011 and 2012. Its debut album, Kneel Before Religious Icons, arrived in 2011 and drew strong praise for uniting a stark conceptual vision with grim, unrelenting soundscapes.

Two further albums, Atta's Apartment Slated for Demolition and Ghosts of Chechnya, surfaced on the artist’s own label in 2012, while Ornamented Walls came out via Modern Love. Separate 12-inch releases that year included September Cell on Bed of Nails and Iraqi Praetorian Guard on Blackest Ever Black. Fernow also completed a European tour filled with forceful, lasting performances. The EP When You Are Crawling and the album Remember Your Black Day both followed in 2013.

Activity intensified in 2014 with six EPs later compiled as Death Is Unity with God and the full-length collaboration Games Have Rules alongside Function. A leaner production approach defined 2016’s Media in the Service of Terror, which reduced some of the earlier layers of noise. After issuing material under the Prurient name, Fernow returned to Vatican Shadow in 2018 with Rubbish of the Floodwaters, the project’s first EP for Ostgut Ton. A rapid sequence of further releases arrived over the next twelve months: Kuwaiti Airforce, American Flesh for Violence, and Church of All Hallow's Eve.