Gold Is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders)

In many key ways Coil’s path over the years was far less a conventional album-plus-singles approach and more of a continuing process in which material emerged as it did that documented, sometimes in fragmented fashion, their work and experimentation with compositions and songs as they chose. The first of many such collections they released, 1987’s Gold Is The Metal (With The Broadest Shoulders), looked at outtakes from sessions including Scatology, Horse Rotorvator and their hoped-for Hellraiser soundtrack, plus planned single and further album efforts. A good example of the latter is “Paradisiac,” a slow grind stomp originally intended for an ultimately unfinished predecessor of Love’s Secret Domain. If by default it’s unfocused, their ear in this particular era for found sound approaches, electronic beat and sample experiments and twisting lyrical language for their own purposes is fully on display, from the Thai boxing match audience sample underscoring the focused melody and rhythm of “Thump” to having Peter Christopherson deliver a rare lead vocal on “Boy In A Briefcase.”