A review of Coil's "Moon's Milk (In Four Phases)"

As today is Winter Solstice, I decided to dedicate this week to Coil's "Seasons" collection.
Originally recorded in 1998 and released throughout the year from March to January of 1999 as four EPs, Moon's Milk (In Four Phases) is all four of the aforementioned EPs collected on two discs.

The first EP, Spring Equinox: Moon's Milk or Under An Unquiet Skull, consists of two tracks, both just a little over eight minutes, titled "Moon's Milk or Under An Unquiet Skull parts one and two". The first one acts more as a prelude to the second, rather than a distinct first part followed by a distinct second part. It's mostly droning voices and a few notes on an organs, flowing back and forth in a rather uninteresting fashion. I found my mind wandering while listening to this, although it does set a very somber, very ancient tone.
The following track, however, fills this solemn, holy place with sadness and beauty by employing a distant viola layered over the droning voices and sparse, listless organ.
Part two is the funeral of a god. While it's unsettling at times, mostly thanks to random sliding pitch changes*, it doesn't go too far.
One thing is for god damn certain, however, this does not make me think of Spring.

Next is Summer Solstice: Bee Stings. The first track, "Bee Stings" features some slithery, uncomfortable vocals backed by a repeating phrase of sad, regal music, something for a king who is dying in the sunshine, perhaps stung to death by bees. The ghost of a drum and some looped hissing, clicking lend structure to the otherwise simple song. There is also an unmistakable similarity between the chord progression in this and the chord progression in Nine Inch Nails' "The Day The World Went Away". Take a listen and see what you think...
Nine Inch Nails - "The Day The World Went Away"
Coil - "Bee Stings"
On "Summer Substructures", Balance sings in falsetto and it's startling and stark and beautiful. After a fashion. The lyrics center around water and drowning. It sounds very old; a proclamation given by a seer standing on the top of a lush, green mountain while a thunderstorm whips around him, his words chilling and prophetic.
Next, we learn that juxtaposition can be fucking awful as "A Warning From The Sun (For Fritz)" comes tearing at us, full speed and at full volume. My first thoughts were, "Ah! Fuck you!" but, once you get past the full minute or so of aural excrement, you get what sounds like Snarf reciting the prophecies of Nostradamus...which is a completely different brand of fucking awful.
The warning referred to in the title is "don't listen to this track".
Tucked away behind this turd is a live version of the last track on the next EP, called "Amethyst Deceivers". The live version has a totally different instrumental arrangement and features Balance without the vocal effects used on the album version. The result is some electronic fart noises darting in and out of some pretty vibraphone music with Balance sounding a bit like Richard O'Brien at an open mic night.

The next EP, Autumn Equinox: Amethyst Deceivers, begins with...well, I don't quite know if you'd call it keening or caterwauling...I leave it up to you to decide which or to never think about it again once this sentence ends. Whatever the case, that's what "Regel" is. And it's kind of hard to listen to.
But, as with "Summer Substructures" and "A Warning From The Sun", turnabout is fair play, and "Regel" gives way to "Rosa Decidua", one of the most glorious pieces on Moon's Milk. I have never heard anything like this on a Coil album. A man and woman (the first I've experienced during my journey through their catalog) provide the soaring, gorgeous, heartbreaking backdrop for Balance to take on the role of a priest or elder.

Rose, I hear your voice near to me

I've put away the poisoned chalice, for now

And lie down amongst the flowerbeds

Whichever stars we walk among

We both seek out the darkest red

The wine was turned to blood again

Without this blood we'd both be dead

I've wound myself tight into the headgerows

Let's see which way the winter wind blows

You are my shadow

Sadly, this...glory...is followed by "Switches", or, a robot kitten mewling and then screeching into a sparking electrical outlet into which is plugged a broken dot matrix printer.
Like I said, turnabout is fair play.
Things get good again with "The Auto-Asphyxiating Hierophant", where we see Balance once again cast as the holy man, although this is less of a sorrowful recitation as with "Rosa Decidua", and more of a nightmarish vision of the end times. The music is grand and soaring and full of portents and foreboding. The lyrics speak of the "construction of disasters" and "the black magic of the Earth" and the "crackling ice temples". Something horrible is coming, this holy man has seen it, but he might not think the world is worth saving.
The final track, the aforementioned "Amethyst Deceivers", has a lot more power here on the album than it does, live, on the stage. The main focus is on a guitar...an actual, holy-fuck-is-that-just-a-regular-old-guitar guitar playing a melody that sounds as eternal as these Amethyst Deceivers of which Balance speaks. The music tells of how legendary these beings are; that they are forever, unkillable, evil, cruel.

The final piece of this work, Winter Solstice: North starts off with "A White Rainbow", yet another component from the service that is being held throughout Moon's Milk; a hymn, in this instance. For some reason, they choose to ruin the end of this solemn, serene moment with dissonance and chaos, which is, of course, their choice to make; I'm just not sure why they made it.
Next is "North", a shorter, less interesting, yet somewhat soothing piece which features overlapping, stuttering voices that eventually flows into "Magnetic North", which becomes a hypnotic incantation over warm sheets of sound; the sound of the Northern Lights.

Blue sapphire six-pointed star / Deep ruby-red inverted pyramid / Red rose filling the skull / Yellow cube in the lower pelvis / Silver moon crescent below the navel / White-winged globe define the forehead / black egg within the throat / heaviness, heaviness

The final track has terrified me ever since I saw it, lurking there, at the bottom of the track list; it's called "Christmas Is Now Drawing Near". As the merest idea of Coil writing and recording a Christmas song is blasphemous, you'll understand how relieved I was when I discovered that this is actually just a version of the traditional Celtic song performed by the gifted Scottish singer, Rose McDowall (who also performs on "Rosa Decidua"). It's heartbreakingly beautiful, expressing both the warmth and happiness of Christmas as well as the loneliness and alienation is can also bring about. A truly stunning ending to what might be my favorite Coil album thus far.

There is so much beauty here. Usually tempered by sorrow or loss or loneliness and, occasionally, set alongside some of Coil's more familiar electronic graffiti, but real, hallowed beauty all the same. Above all else, Moon's Milk feels sacred whereas most of the sonic spaces Coil has created feel profane and godless, threatening and unwelcoming. This is less of a ritual and more of a mass and, again, the beauty here is just startling. I would go ahead and say something like, well, better not get used to it because I've grown to know what to expect from Coil, but, after Moon's Milk, I have to come to terms with the fact that I really have no clue what they're going to do next, and that makes me so joyous.

  

* Pitch changes which, when applied to the organ, remind me a bit of the opening sound wash of Nine Inch Nail's "The Day The World Went Away"...a track I'll be referring to at least once more in this review.