Live Four (2003...a) [Coil...CD]

01 I Am Angie Bowie (Sine Waves)
02 Last Rites Of Spring
03 Are You Shivering?
04 Amethyst Deceivers
05 A Warning From The Sun
06 The Universe Is A Haunted House
07 Ostia
08 I Don't Want To Be The One
09 Bang Bang [Sonny Bono]
10 An Unearthly Red

Notes...

Recorded in Prague on October 29 and Vienna on October 29, 2002.
Also issued in the Live Box.

Review...

This documents the Coil concerts that took place throughout Europe in the fall of 2002. As such, it is the most eclectic of the four discs, containing four songs that have never been on an album, and several other songs rarely performed in their live shows. "I Am Angie Bowie (Sine Waves)" opens the disc, with its mind-scraping oscillations and Balance's absurd shouts of "I am Angie Bowie! No!" For the next song, Coil resurrect the long-discarded track "Last Rites of Spring" from Gold is the Metal, and expand it into a 10-minute excursion paying homage to the author of Naked Lunch and Electronic Revolution: "William S. Burroughs is hallucinating is space," intones a confident Balance. "Are You Shivering?" and the omnipresent "Amethyst Deceivers" are more or less faithfully reproduced here. John Balance's playful audience-baiting is in rare form on "The Universe is a Haunted House" as he darkly intones "I'm not here..." out of the left stereo channel, then answers "I am there..." from the right. The song unexpectedly mutates into a shattering reprise of Coil's acid rave classic "Windowpane." The mix is just right on this disc, with vocals and music well-balanced and reproduced crisply for home listening. "Bang Bang" is the rare instance of Coil covering someone else's song, in this case a Cher (!) ballad penned by the late Sonny Bono. Balance's delivery is solemn and haunting, turning the song into an icy murder ballad, although I can't help but be amused by Coil's outrageously campy choice to cover this song. The disc ends with the scary bombast of "An Unearthly Red," a noisy, industrial invocation of war: "I didn't want to do it!" screams Balance, "God told me to do it!" A computer-animated flight simulation ending with a harrowing crash into the World Trade Center accompanied this song in concert. - Jonathan Dean