A review of Coil's "Queens of the Circulating Library"

One track.
Fifty minutes.
Let's fucking do this.

A rising tide of slowly undulating sound engulfs the listener...for almost a full, fucking hour.
Soon after the track starts, we hear the Queen herself declare the following:

I am a queen of the circulating library

I have declared an amnesty

All books may be returned without a penalty

Return the books to me

Return the books

Don't burn the books

You cut down the trees to make paper disease

It's in the trees: it's coming

Return the book of knowledge

Return the marble index

File under "Paradox"

The forest is a college, each tree a university

I am a queen of the circulating library

I'm here to answer your enquiry

All knowledge resides within me

Your membership has expired

You are way past expiry dates

Words, words, words, words!

You may as well listen to the birds

Her voice, which sounds great and has a lot of character, is bounced around and sped up and slowed down for about, oh, ten minutes or so, and then, around the twelve minute mark, the vocals stop and we are left with that ocean I mentioned before for, give or take, thirty minutes.
As the music wasn't offering much in the way of stimulation, I decided to make up a story to go along with this track:*

After the apocalypse, as there will certainly be some people left, there might very well be some libraries left standing as well. Perhaps a woman, driven insane by radiation poisoning or dehydration or Captain Trips/the T-virus/etc., takes up residence in one of these libraries and begins to go even more insane, thinking herself the last librarian on Earth, responsible for each and every book and, therefore, entrusted with keeping them all safe and in good condition. Eventually, her psychosis deepens and she believes herself to be, you guessed it, a queen, the Queen, in fact.
And queens, of course, make declarations such as those you see above all the time.

This took me about five minutes to come up with, so, when I saw that there was still more than twenty five minutes left in the "song", I went a little further...

If this apocalypse takes place after some advancements in technology (here's where things get really Fallout-y), perhaps the queen would also rule over the robot helpers that will, obviously, inhabit all libraries in the future. Instead of just wandering around proclaiming weird shit about her subjects, the books, she decides to delegate the responsibility to said robots, programming her voice into their speech centers and so on and so forth, until some Wanderer of the Wastelands (let's drop the pretense, this is basically DLC for Fallout 3) stumbles into the library and has to fight her crazed, catchphrase-slinging robot army until, finally, he confronts her rotted corpse, clutching some book...Goodnight Moon or something...and brings it back to some kid who gives him a modded MIRV or an awesome shotgun or a shitton of bottle caps.

Anyway, back to the album: this isn't so weird that it's interesting or challenging, it's just boring.
Here are some highlights from the rest of "Queens":

• Circa the 27 minute mark a quiet clicking noise starts in the background
• Circa the 29 minute mark, the clicking stops and the excitement dies down
• Circa the 32 minute mark there are a few tiny flutters of sound
• Circa the 34:30 minute mark there are some siren things
• Circa the 36 minute mark things melt a bit but are then put right back where they were

The sirens and flutters come and go, and then, after a very, very, very, very long and slow fade out**, "Queens of the Circulating Library" draws to a close.

Some questions from my end:
At what point did they look at each other and say, "Yeah, this is done."?
Was this just an exercise to see if they could fill a disc or to see how long one of them could hold down a key or something?
Was this a prank?
Whatever.
Never mind.
This could be most closely compared to Time Machines (but much more exciting due to those tiny little variations mentioned above), and it's just about as enjoyable.
To be fair, someone might call this relaxing.
Not sure who, but, it's possible.
And, with that, I say "goodbye" to "Queens of the blah blah blah"; may you never crowd my eardrums again with your ah, fuck, I'm done talking about this.

* One that fits in nicely with the world of Fallout

** Very.