Wow. I made it. This is the final Coil album. Released in 2008, about five years ago.
Album opens with the straightforward structuring of "Careful What You Wish For" (a new element introduced every eight bars or so). The song itself is not typical. It builds into a cold, subterranean piece which gets menacing as soon as the mottled screaming rears its bloody head...."I please fuck my nightmare"...I think?
Jesus fucking Christ...
Very nice programming on this.
I'm just going to assume that Reznor did the distorted backing vocals at the beginning although he almost certainly did not.
Some great jagged textures, solid Coil.
This may not have needed to be 9 minutes, but, complaining about unnecessary Coil song length now is...well, just stupid.
"AYOR" is a straight up industrial dance techno remix of "It's In My Blood". The treatment of this reminds me a bit of what was done to Manson's "Kiddie Grinder" on the remix EP, Smells Like Children. This is active terror as opposed to the passive terror on the original version.
Another way to put it is that it sounds like a Coil remix of a Coil song...which it is.
META.
This is a nightmare you can strobe dance to.
There is a very "At The Heart Of It All" moment around the middle*, very nice.
Then it returns to what it's been doing for about four more minutes.
Again, I hate to beat a dead horse (and not record the sound for a Coil album), but this doesn't change and evolve enough to be almost ten minutes long.
"Nature Is A Language"...shit. Aside from some cool drums and nice organ in the background, it just goes nowhere and gets annoying...for almost ten minutes. And the vocals just get silly. Balance screaming "Can't you read???!?!?!?!?" again and again and again...ugh. At best, it feels like no effort went into this, at worst, if feels like a joke at the listener's expense. Bummer.
"Fire of the Green Dragon"** starts off nicely with some creepy jabbering, then an alarm and a beat that gets covered by skittering sonic insects. Balance informs us that "the earth that made you, will now eat you". Good to know, I will try to avoid the earth. He also tells us that he's "gonna give you honey, if I can", to which I say, "no fucking thank you, John."
Over time, some really nice layers pile up (are there evil, Soviet, Tibetan monks? because...they're here), but, overall, this runs into the same problems I've found on the rest of the album: aside from the random samples and manipulated loops and the occasional repeated lyrics, nothing really happens here, nothing changes. BUT, "Green Dragon" is the most interesting/least boring of these instances so far.
Sadly, like a lot of other stuff here, "Algerian Basses", while it has a really solid set up and instrumentation, just doesn't really go anywhere. Plus, it still feels long at five minutes. Towards the end, sounds begin to run down and melt, and it starts to get different, interesting, but then the song is over.
"Copacaballa" is very mid to late 90's electronica. Not bad, just dated. Balance utterly nails the vocals on this though, both the presentation (a cross between an evil wizard and a salesman) and the lyrics. The sounds and programming are also excellent. Cannot get over these lyrics...so alchemical, "I am with the hiss where all the magic is."
"Paint Me As A Dead Soul" is terrifying: heavy, wet and subterranean. The music rises up, all rotten harpsichords and broken, overloud music boxes, and locks itself in place so that you can focus on the lyrics. At the end, it fades like the last breath of a dying child.
New level of disturbing and creepy with atmosphere so thick you can bite it.
I've never been a fan of bands saying the name of a song over and over again, and "Backwards" is no exception. There's just not enough here. The music isn't cool enough to justify the lazy lyrics. The screaming adds some nice depth and texture though. Balance is sounding a lot like Clint Mansell and the song actually begins to sound a bit like Pop Will Eat Itself once you get into it. Which isn't necessarily a good thing...
The final track from the final Coil album, "Princess Margaret's Man In The D'jamalfna" feels vaguely carnivalian at its start. Like most of the album, there is some nice programming and chord progression, but, also like a most of the album, they aren't explored or evolved, just merely used as what they are, cool sounds. Feels like a waste...
I'm annoyed at myself for constantly repeating the same thing over and over "cool sounds, but not enough it done with them" "feels too long because there isn't enough expansion and evolution", but, fuck, that's what keeps happening. The whole album feels overlong and unfocused, as if it's either missing layers or they just let the tape run. Literally, minutes could have been taken out of this and it would have been better.
While, on the whole, there are good examples of how they've evolved as artist's over the years, this doesn't do them justice as their final release. Then again, with Balance dead by the time this was put out, who knows what this was supposed to be or if it was ever intended to be heard by anyone. I'd rather think that Ape of Naples was their final release, as that was a truly exceptional and stand out album.
* Nine Inch Nails' , not Coil's.
* Titles such as "______ Of The Green _______" always make me think of drug-induced hallucinations.
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