Coil - Horse Rotorvator

×

Coil - Horse Rotorvator

Close

Coil - Horse Rotorvator
EAC/Flac (tracks) + Log + Cue = 361 MB | MP3 320 kbps = 111 MB | front cover | Rs.com
Industrial/Experimental/Electronic | 2002 remastered (original release: 1986)

Coil were an English cross-genre, industrial experimental music group formed in 1982 by John Balance —later credited as "Jhonn Balance"— and his partner Peter Christopherson, aka "Sleazy". The duo worked together on a series of releases before Balance chose the name Coil, which he claimed to be inspired by the omnipresence of the coil's shape in nature. Today, Coil are one of the most influential and best known industrial music groups. Horse Rotorvator is their second LP.

×

Coil - Horse Rotorvator

Close

AMG Review by Ned Raggett
The title Horse Rotorvator is explained in the liner notes as a device large enough to "plough up the waiting world," created from the bones of the horses of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The Bay City Rollers this isn't. On the group's second full album, Coil continue the refinement of brute noise and creepily serene arrangements into a truly modern psychedelia, from tribal drumming and death march guitars to disturbing samples and marching band samples and back. Balance shares the same haggard, mystic vocal delivery common to fellow explorers of the edge like David Tibet and Edward Ka-Spel, but he has his own blasted and burnt touch to it all. His lyrical subjects range from emotional extremism of many kinds to blunt, often homoerotic imagery (matched at points in the artwork and packaging) and meditations on death. As a result the cover of Leonard Cohen's "Who by Fire" isn't as surprising as one might think. Past guest Marc Almond appears again on the track with backing vocals, as well as adding them to "Slur," which is composed of an unsettling mix of harmonica, bells, percussion and whatever else can be imagined. Other guests include Almond's then-musical partner Billy McGee, adding a haunting, sometimes grating, string arrangement to "Ostia," which is about the murder of radical Italian filmmaker Pasolini, and Clint Ruin, aka Foetus, adding his typically warped brass touches to "Circles of Mania." Paul Vaughan narrates the lyrics on "The Golden Section," creating a stunning piece that in its combination of demonic imagery and sweeping, cinematic arrangements holds a common ground with In the Nursery. All the guests help contribute to the album's overall effect, but this is Coil's own vision above all else, eschewing easy cliches on all fronts to create unnerving, never easily digested invocations of musical power.

amazon.com Customer review
Doom-laden, grandiose, perverse…a masterpiece! March 28, 2003
By B.G. Shultz "pyfr" (Rockwall, TX USA)
This was Coil's second full-length release, and it is perhaps one of the most genuinely dark albums ever recorded. Most of the songs have a menacing sexual feel to them, and the subject matter is death and perversion. "Ostia" explores the murder of deviant Italian filmmaker Pasolini (who directed the sleaze-fest "Salo: 120 Days of Sodom"), while "The Golden Section" is a monologue about the erotic nature of death, set to a symphonic apocalyptic score. There are aspects of electronica to the music, but this CD of course predated the whole mainstream industrial/techno movement of the 90's, so it's more of a subtlety. There is an Eastern feel to some of the music, and "Penetralia" demonstrates how much of an influence this band was for artists like NIN and Ministry. The cover of Leonard Cohen's "Who By Fire" is outstanding, remarkably faithful to the original while still sounding like Coil. It goes without saying that, with song titles like "The Anal Staircase" and pictures of nude male statues, there is an undeniable homosexual theme to much of this material, but it's not something that is constantly thrown in the listener's face. I recommend this for anybody who is into disturbing, avant-garde industrial music to be dismembered to.