Coil - Horse Rotorvator (1986)

Coil was an English cross-genre, industrial experimental music group formed in 1982 by John Balance—later credited as "Jhonn Balance"—and his partner Peter Christopherson. 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 remains one of the most influential and best known industrial music groups.

Horse Rotorvator is Coil at the apex of their industrial-noise period, or at least it's as close as Coil got to what we normally think of as "industrial rock". It's an album that launched a hundred (a thousand is kind of pushing it) industrial-goth bands. The drum machine stomp of "Penetralia" sounds just like Ministry's Land of Rape and Honey yet it predates that particular watershed album by two years. This is Coil at their loudest, and according to Jhonn Balance at least the album's apocalyptic mood was largely informed by the horrific suffering that was being felt by Balance and Peter Christopherson's friends and the wider gay community that Coil was a part of, due to what was known at the time as GRID (Gay-related Immune Deficiency), now known as AIDS.


Tracklist
01 - The Anal Staircase (04:02)
02 - Slur (03:31)
03 - Babylero (00:51)
04 - Ostia (The Death of Pasolini) (06:24)
05 - Herald (01:03)
06 - Penetralia (06:11)
07 - Ravenous (03:27)
08 - Circles of Mania (05:02)
09 - Blood from the Air (05:33)
10 - Who by Fire (02:38)
11 - The Golden Section (05:51)
12 - The First Five Minutes after Death (04:46)