Virginia native Thomas Deurig started out his post-punk/goth solo music project called The Purge in early 2013 as a studio experiment, heavily inspired by bands like The Cure, The Sisters of Mercy, Nine Inch Nails.
Debut eleven-track full-length album, “Waves” was released on May 2014, soon followed by the single “Tenacity”, before a long period of hiatus with just an occasional interlude with the single “Life Is Strange” in 2016.
Only in late 2017 the single “Faith & Trust”, in the wake of serious personal issues, pushed him to make The Purge a live solo act and to drop his sophomore album “The Bad Ideas We Build Worlds” the year after.
Since then he never stopped, as he has just shared his third LP “Rain” includes four originals and remixes by The Russian White, Gopal Metro, Heretics in the Lab, This Hollow Machine, and Red This Ever, anticipated by the music video for the titled-track.
Serving as a ‘prequel’ to the disturbingly haunted lyrical prose, the video gives a unique insight into the nature of the madness and opens new avenues of psychological associations between the mysterious incident and a debilitating mental illness debilitating condition. Confessional lyrics combine with the narrative style of the film to form dramatically intense swings moderated by a unique blend of sound, emotion and visual balance.
Buzzing, sputtering rhythmic throbs repetitiously fade in and out evolving into a subtle undercurrent for the rapid, hollow crispy beats synced by succinct semi-automatic laser beams to form bright, hypnotic atmospherics breathing ceremoniously as strong, breathy, emotionally charged vocals denying reality, pain, and mental disturbance hidden in the darkest regions of the mind causing a shift from humanity symbolized by startling sharp synth shrills as they foreshadow raw, primal, vociferous aggression heard in the high harsh ritualistic scream emitting, “I hate the rain!”.
Storms dredge up ghosts from the past inciting a dark and dangerous journey inside a man’s head where repressed memories erupt into a full-blown obsession albeit for a brief moment of clarity. The mental association made on that fateful night of the thundershower manifested into a chronic physical pain felt deep in the bones of the afflicted. A brief realization brings catharsis, “things stay the same when you’re afraid to change,” and resolution, “Now I don’t run from the pain” before falling into an eternal abyss where he no longer thinks of her name or feels any pain, his mind lies solely with the rain.
Combining David Lynch‘s cult classics ‘Lost Highway’ and ‘Blue Velvet’ suggestions to set the mood and tone for the shadowy black and white visuals, directed by Tarik Begic, featuring Angel Metro and Morgan Crespo as two ladies vying for one man’s heart in a wickedly bizarre love triangle ripes with jealousy, temptation, and black magic. Edgy modernity is established in the bright neon accent colours, placed sparingly on the beautiful monochromatic pallet, thus pushing the drama into an extreme zone commensurate with the emotional intensity set forth in the lyrics.
As we said before the man is on fire, as just yesterday Thomas unveiled another The Purge‘s album untitled “Honesty”, ‘a collection of, what I believe to be, the most powerful music I’ve ever put together’. You just have to check it out!
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