A review of Coil's "Scatology"

Yup, "the study of excrement".

And, yup, the album cover is an upside-down cross with a naked ass in it.

Here we go.

This is Coil's very first album (originally released in 1984) and I have NO clue for whom it was intended.

The more I learn about the band and their practices as far as releasing albums and their live shows...well, I seem to actually be learning less about who their intended audience was. So I'm just going to assume that they were making this for themselves, which is a perfectly valid reason for someone to make music. The fact that it somehow got out to the general public is a little harder to understand, but, hey, taste, am I right?

No.

The album starts with "Ubu Noir", a song that would be the perfect background music to a demonic church social/bake sale/sock hop...or maybe a masquerade where, underneath the guests' masks, there are only holes that pass into other dimensions... The looping, somehow swaggering, lunatic horns combined with the tolling of huge, sepulchral bells and the sound of what could be a man undergoing some sort of torture is...well, it's Coil. Pure Coil. This song tends to make the people I have played it for uncomfortable. Something is definitely wrong here.

The next track, "Panic" makes me uncomfortable...because it is so cringingly 80's and badly executed. The drum machine on this very well could be the same one that They Might Be Giants used on their debut album...also originally released in 1986. The handclaps certainly sound familiar... John Balance spends most of this song just yelling stuff and it's awful. It isn't scary or creepy, just really abrasive and obnoxious. And dated. It has a very Mighty Boosh vibe to it.
"Panic" is followed by another straight-up amazing Coil instrumental: the simple yet profound sadness and terror of "At The Heart Of It All". There is something lurking here... I can't think of many better uses of simple reverb and I know there does not exist a more effective and unsettling arrangement of clarinet, keyboard and piano. This is uneasy closure...a funeral for a beloved villain...a sexually abusive father who may or may not have been killed by the focus of his abuse.
"Tenderness of Wolves" combines a repetitive crashing sound, the sound of children in distress*, a badly strummed guitar and those horrible synthesized tooting whistles from the score to IT, which, while still pretty creepy, isn't nearly as epic and profound as ATHOIA. After a minute or so of this disturbing soundscape, we get Balance reciting what might be a nursery rhyme for very, very bad children in an insectile voice that just crawls right behind your eyeballs and starts kicking. It is quite annoying...much like the next track "The Spoiler".
This sound like a rambunctious sea shanty/waltz and, once again, reminds me of something from Mighty Boosh; I can actually see the Hitcher performing this. After about thirty seconds, one gets tired of Balance yelling "Spoilah! Spoooilah! The spooooooilaaaaaah!!", and yet, the song goes on...annoying and grating, the song goes on. I imagine that Rob Zombie really loves this and wants to make a retro-50's horror film based on it.
"Clap" is a little over a minute and I firmly believe that, somewhere, there is a forty-eight minute EP comprised solely of the individual tracks that make up this song. It opens with some of that bendy, shrieking guitar that is also featured in Prince's "Computer Blue", which, believe me, was very confusing. Then, a thumping, monotonous video gamey beat comes in and that's sort of it. This could have become something interesting...or that aforementioned forty-eight minute EP I mentioned, so, I'll just say I'm fine with this being the length it is and move on.
"Restless Day", like "Tenderness of Wolves" also has a nursery rhyme quality to it. It gets better with progressive listens, but not much. It almost sounds a bit like Primus at time... This one really doesn't stand out all that much. The vocals are less insectile and more nasal; I'm not actually sure if this is John Balance or Peter Christopherson on vocals.
Then, another perfect piece of murder music: "Aqua Regis". This is another track where, as soon as it comes on, everything around you becomes more dangerous and broken. If I didn't know better, I'd say that Trent Reznor sampled the massive clanking in this for his track "Reptile"**. This is so completely Silent Hill that one must question Akira Yamaoka's awareness of Coil; it's too easy to picture Pyramid Head slowly making his way into some flooded, subterranean lair while this drones on in the background.
Next, an act of invocation with "Solar Lodge". I really like the simplicity here. The thudding background and squalling guitars seem to matter less as soon as Balance start chanting the lyrics, again and again: they are basic, easy to remember, like a prayer... "See the black sun rise / from the solar lodge"
Dripping sewage and a huge, moaning guitar or horn of some sort coalesce with an occasional skittering hi-hat to form "The Sewage Worker's Birthday Party". Such an evocative title... The huge sound, whether it's a guitar or a horn, remind me of the Nine Inch Nails track "At the Heart Of It All"***. At one point, you can hear someone opening a present...maybe it's soap.
The first thirty seconds or so of "Godhead=Deathead" consists of the sounds of Balance (or someone) opening a package and then...well, that someone making love to bubble wrap. You don't believe me? Listen for yourself. Then, it becomes some bizarre polka, interrupted by Balance's anti-Christina grunting and squeaking, then back to the dance floor at Hell's most popular pub.
The penultimate track, "Cathedral In Flames" (a bit on the nose, eh, gentlemen?) has a huge and pompous (and faux) Grecian feel to it which just makes this already ridiculous song even more so. Although the lyrics, like that of "The Golden Section", have a Biblical feel to them:

Circle within Circle / And when that hour came / From words they passed to deeds / Spires, Spirals, and Stones rise / And in the distance, a cathedral in flames / Given a chance to recover his breath / And exposed to the process once more / The youth squirmed / In a shower of gold / That etched on his skin the words: 'Paradise stands in the shadow of Swords'

Pretty chilling stuff.

And then...the final track of Scatology...a cover of Gloria Jones' "Tainted Love".

Oh man is this the least accessible cover of anything ever. So, when Soft Cell covered this, it focused on the vulnerability of the lyrics, when Manson did his cover, he focused on the anger one might feel in this situation, but Coil's cover? Pure, black, soul-obliterating self-loathing. This isn't a guy with a broken heart pining for his lost love, this is a guy with a broken heart which has been stuffed with dead insects floating in formaldehyde. Add to these themes "death by AIDS (the subject matter of the music video)" and you've got quite the chart topper on your hands. Whew.

Scatology is so binary...you have tracks like "Ubu Noir", "At The Heart Of It All" and "Aqua Regis"; huge, soundscapes which spawn a variety of neverending vists one must never look upon...and then things like "Panic", "The Spoiler" and "Godhead=Deathead" which are just so...my-older-brother's-basement-4-track. After their very first release, the hilariously spare and unlistenable sixteen plus minute How To Destroy Angels EP (which consists of that "song" and then a track called "Absolute Elsewhere", which is a blank vinyl side), some of this fits right in and some of this is so...unexpected and...poppy. 

And I'm still wondering who was buying these albums and going, "Yeah...yeah, okay, I get it..."

While I don't think I'm going to really gain any deeper understanding as I continue my aural adventure, I'm certain that I will start to shit myself more often.

And that should be interesting.

Until next week.

* Something Marilyn Manson borrowed heavily from for hi s"he Hands Of Small Children"

** But I do know better; that the sample in "Reptile" is from The Poisedon Adventure.

*** Totally unrelated to the track of the same name from earlier on this album, although it's been speculated that it might be a reference.