Search - Coil :: Live Four

Frightening Good Album

Derek de Koff | New York, New York | 04/09/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This album brought the 23 out of 2003 for me. "I am Angie Bowie (Sine Waves)" feels like an attempt at deprogramming some hapless electro cultie with a deaf-defying barrage of drones; "An Unearthly Red" is flat out one of the most heroically monsterous songs I've ever heard, and for me captures the sense of the last two years in ten panic-ridden minutes (it sounds like George W. Bush having a six-year-old's temper tantrum that gives way to a red-button-pushing bout of delirium tremens); and I have listened to "The Universe Is A Haunted House" so many times over and over again that my better half has threatened to move out of our house on occasion (that's his way of saying he likes it, too). It's one of my top five favorite songs of all time. Coil have long made songs that I listen to open-mouthed the first time I hear them, not quite believing they could actually exist. Absurd, audacious, frightening, prankish, moving, and transporting, Coil are true visionaries and this album encapsulates everything that is so wonderful about them. It is live in every sense of the word. I would have donated blood and limb to have seen this show, but owning the CD is the next best thing. This album is so good it could give you a nervous breakdown. If it does, you'll be all the better for it when you come back around."