Artists need love. First and foremost from the audience, but also a little bit from the critics. The English sound soothsayers from Coil were not amused when The Wire magazine failed to praise the second part of their »Music to Play in the Dark« series from 2000 to the skies. The band even made this known on their website. Whether this is why they abruptly discontinued their moon music phase in the same year to show all fearless listeners with the album »Constant Shallowness Leads to Evil« that they hadn’t grown up with industrial for nothing is speculation, but as a thought it’s pretty nice. Whereby the general image of the record standing around like an erratic block in Coil’s work is not entirely true. It’s definitely different from the more meditative stuff that came immediately before it, and has decidedly more frequency buzz. »Higher Beings Command« provides the rumbling drone introduction, »Beige«, »Lowest Common Abominator« and »Free Base Chakra« stay the course in an overtone-heavy way. Nevertheless, their previous record, »Time Machines«, was composed entirely of drone epics, even if they were less abrasive in comparison. »I Am the Green Child«, on the other hand, takes up Coil’s long-form ambient exotica from earlier solitaires like the track »Another Brown World«, with Balance singing the title as a mantra in a voice distorted by a computer. On the closing track »Tunnel of Goats«, they somehow have a thing for goats, the album finds its own tone. And it is courageously infernal; here the generators tear the air to pieces. Balance sings a few bars in between, then the synthesisers plough on again undisturbed. You have to be in the right frame of mind for this.
David Vunk
Scheurneus EP
Moustache