Coil's first official full-length album,
Scatology, is one of the essential landmarks in the group's discography and, moreover, one of the '80s industrial scene's more vital and influential recordings. This is the first part of the essential
Coil trilogy that also includes
Horse Rotorvator and
Love's Secret Domain. The 1984 album exhibits the group at its early industrial stage, in transition to the undefined genre of astral noise psychedelia that
Coil would inhabit for the following decades without peer or precedent. The core duo of
Peter Christopherson and
John Balance are joined by
Clint Ruin (aka
Jim Thirlwell), whose role in the production cannot be underestimated, as well as
Stephen E. Thrower,
Throbbing Gristle's
Alex Ferguson, vocalist
Gavin Friday of
the Wolfgang Press, and one
Raoul Revere (who is in fact British camp pop legend and
Soft Cell vocalist
Marc Almond). "Restless Day" is a haunting rumination that defies description, other than being an utterly essential self-defining moment in the
Coil paradigm, with an atmosphere hanging in the tense space between harsh noise and harmony that apparently causes time to cease. "The Tenderness of Wolves" features the vocals of
Friday in one of the more poetic moments of the '80s post-industrial sound. At the album's somber end, this outstanding work finishes with a rendition of "Tainted Love" featuring
Almond, who had made the track a new wave hit with
Soft Cell. Here, however, the tune is given a bleak slow-motion version that could be read as a tragically suggestive commentary on the AIDS epidemic of the era. The album was originally released on Force & Form/Some Bizzare, and was the subject of numerous bootlegs and illegitimate versions. For the record, the 2001 version on Threshold House/ World Serpent is the only version authorized by the group. Maybe the numerous LP and CD versions that have appeared since its original release are suggestive of just how vital the album is, not only in the
Coil discography but to the industrial electronica scene as a whole.
Scatology is nothing short of essential. ~ Skip Jansen, All Music Guide