Coil - The Ape Of Naples FLAC

The album I have the rather unfortunate pleasure of reviewing. The final album from England's Coil. The capstone to a journey that encompasses the years 1982 to 2005 and encapsulates so many differing phases, personnel, visions, highs and crushingly brutal lows.

Last albums from artists who have been a constant to you for as many years as Coil have been to me are very weighty affairs, indeed. "The Ape of Naples" is no different. It is a palpably intense affair of chaos incarnate.

Comprised of tracks recorded at Trent Reznor's Nothing Studios in New Orleans back in 1996 and also of new works which feature some of Jhonn Balance's final performances, this release is a dark and nihilistic one. It is very similar in tone to their bleakest album ever, 1987's "Horse Rotorvator". Except that this time, it's not their friends who are dying all around them, it is Coil itself that is in it's own final death throes.

The works from the Backwards period are classic Coil just as the band's website proclaims, especially "Heaven's Blade" which features some of Balance's most lucidly deranged lyrics ever. "There's blood in the sun, but I'm not afraid. I cut myself with Heaven's Blade. Inside the wound I found my wings and walked away from this human skin. I stand before the sun, rise up and see the shape of things to come it's all just the same..." Resigned and resilient, Balance carries his torch as if to light his own funeral pyre whereas with a song like "It's in My Blood", he sounds almost possessed and driven by forces beyond his control. The words, if there are any, are indecipherable. An incantation laced with the deadliest nightshade.

Of the new songs, "Tattooed Man" is a rather continental affair with an accordion setting the tone to an almost waltzy brand of music. It's opiate in tone and very pretty with it's lazy, drifting swells of churling synthetic atmospheres washing over you. "Going up", a "cover" of sorts of the classic Britcom series "Are You Being Served" theme, closes "The Ape of Naples" with a mournfully classical arrangement gently sending you off into the darkness which, as always, is something to see.

Balance utters the same phrase over and over as the final tendrils of sound fade into the nothingness which is now all that will issue forth from Coil as the name becomes overgrown by gnarled years now at an end; the legacy becoming legend.

"It just is..."

This would be the last album from Coil, being released after the untimely death of vocalist John Balance. Angelic organ chords open the first track – Fire of the Mind, with Balance setting the mood of the whole album. “Angels are mathematical” is one line that stands out in the lyrics which lead us to the fact that humans are only animals that eventually die. The Last Amethyst Deceiver is a reworking of a previous Coil track and is kept in motion by Christopherson’s progressive sequences. Tom Edwards adds marimba to the track which would follow through other tracks on “The Ape of Naples”. The Last Amethyst Deceiver progresses with some piano embellishments later on, leaving the track’s spacious ambience to support Balance’s mournful vocal. Triple Sun sounding good with it’s later mellow synth brass, reminds me of the live album recorded at All Tomorrows Parties. Heavens Blade produces some interesting rhythm, that is not as obvious in the rest of the album, but I feel the recordings don’t need to be a tyranny of obvious rhythm. One of the stand-out tracks for me was the reworked Cold Cell, with its late arriving modulated strings and sub double bass – save us from the death penalty. Going Up creates darkness with the camp television theme to Are You Being Served. François Testory lays down a high range vocal to complement the bootlegged vocal recording of John Balance taken from a live Coil concert in 2004.
I loved the packaging of this release with the painted cover artwork and fold up lyric sheets. This is one of the most interesting albums I have heard in a long while.