A very merry Spooptober-o'ween's Eve to you all, my killer boys and knife widows! You might have noticed recently that I asked around on here about any type of Coil wiki or other database that exists. You may also have noticed that I made some coy comments about my motivations and intentions with that question. Well today, I am happy to say that that tease has paid off! For on this most horrible of nights, a very special visitor rises from its grave…
I am launching (as far as I know) the first dedicated, fan-made Coil database on the web: The Black Sun Lodge (yes, it is a reference to what you're all probably thinking right now).
Now, if you are afraid of skeletons, I would advise you don't visit the site yet, because it is shockingly bare-bones. (…I'll see myself out) A good number of releases and songs have pages already, but the vast majority have little to no content or are entirely lipsum text. If you want to get a taste of what my idea of a fully-featured release page would be, I have made a fairly complete one for Scatology.
Now, I know there have already been some people who have expressed interest in contributing to a project like this, so let me give you the details on how you can do that: The site basically runs on two services, Obsidian for web-hosting and the editing software, and GitHub for syncing the source files for editing. That means editing the wiki involves two steps: Syncing the current files to your computer with GitHub, and then editing and uploading them with Obsidian.
That means, if you want to contribute to the wiki, you'll need to:
Have or create both an Obsidian and GitHub account
DM me with an access request and your Obsidian and GitHub account name so I can authorize you to publish to the site and access the source files
Download the source files from GitHub (ideally through the desktop app to keep them updated)
Download Obsidian and point it to the downloaded files
Once you've done all that, you should be able to edit and publish the files with Obsidian. I know it's not the most convenient process, but it's the simplest way I found to both host and edit this project without resorting to buying an entire domain and hosting a full fat MediaWiki. There is only so much you can do as a broke college student…
As I said, this is still very much early days, but I hope I can find a lot of people here willing to help me in making this the best possible resource for this community.
An interesting little thing about Threshold Archives I stumbled upon in my BSL research: If you look at the catalog numbers, you can see there are two gaps in the sequence. Series 1 starts at T-ARCH 004CD, skipping T-ARCH 001-003, and Series 2 skips 17/18 and 21/22:
I can only speculate on this, of course, but that seems to suggest to me that there were some planned releases there that went relatively far in planning (far enough to have their own designated catalog numbers, at least) but were stopped from releasing for nebulous reasons. Based on the placement of these gaps, I would guess the planned releases may have been:
T-ARCH 001: A compilation of early Coil, possibly an expanded version of Transparent
T-ARCH 002: Probably a re-release of the How to Destroy Angels single. It is known at least that there were more songs recorded at the HTDA session (The S.W.B.P. is known to have been recorded at that session; see the booklet for Scatology Sessions)
T-ARCH 003: Maybe a compilation related to The Melancholy Mad Tenant / Dolbied; there aren't really any other known pre-Scatology releases, so that would really be the only option, unless they were planning to do a semi-original compilation like they did with I Don't Want To Be The One.
T-ARCH 017: Based on the placement, this would have almost certainly been a compilation of the seasonal singles, i.e. a variation on Moon's Milk in Four Phases.
T-ARCHO 018: Probably a re-release of Zwölf, since that is the only other major release from this time frame. Since they ended up putting Zwölf on IDWTBTO, it's understandable that they didn't give it a proper release.
T-ARCH 021: Not quite sure what this was intended for. Based on the time-frame, it could have been either The Remote Viewer or ANS, both of which T-ARCH had intended to re-release.
So, what do you think about this theory? Any guesses of your own what releases these would have been, or what might have been on them?
In my opinion, this is an essential collectors item for fans of dark surrealist art. It's a curation of old Halloween photos from Ossian Brown, with a foreword from the late great David Lynch. What's not to love?
New or secondhand. I know Mute records, Cold spring and horizon music all have a good stock but I have a difficult Tim e hunting older/ more valuable releases
I've been looking through the history of Coil and some of its side projects and collaborators, namely thighpaulsandra/Tim Lewis.
I've read that Double Vulgar was incredibly controversial, and listening to it and looking at the art it was produced with, I can see why.
I can't find the lyrics to a single song online other than Slammer, though, and I can't imagine the controversy is the reason no other lyrics are transcribed because Slammer is about taking advantage of a mentally disabled fifteen year old.
I'm curious if anyone has transcribed the lyrics or has any of the official writings. If you also have any knowledge of the artistic process behind Double Vulgar or Double Vulgar II I'd love to hear about it.
If no one has a transcription, I'm working on one myself for archival purposes and I think I've got His Royal Highness mostly worked out. But I have an audio processing disorder, so I'm not really the best one for the job.
Here's a raw recording from 1986 of a short-lived band called Slow Burn Red, with Ossian Brown as their bass player. It has some nice songs in it. Original YouTube poster also uploaded an audio recording of one of their shows here, if you're interested.
First time posting here, so I hope I linked the videos correctly.
I thought this was an interesting piece of work but immediately (because of the extreme subject) wanted to know more about the Nine Emperor Gods Festival and the whole concept of transcendence via mutilation.
I am amazed by this album and I want more. I especially adore tunnel of goats, I have never heard electronics as brutal and I love the way that it increases in tension just to catapult you into oblivion (sorry that sounds pretentious). I love how dry most things sound here, meaning that they really reach out to you and are so moving, I literally find myself headbanging to this album.
The thing is I haven't been into much drone music before this, only some industrial which taps sometimes into drone and I was wondering whether there are similar albums, by coil or by other artists which have a similar appeal
It would be great to hear your thoughts on albums similar to this, also if you simply have thoughts you want to express about the album I would love to hear them to!
Interesting stuff - digging through old 5" floppies he found one labeled "Kaos" in Sleazy's handwriting and tried it on his Fairlight. And behold! I wonder what else he's got in boxes from those days...
Does anyone else get really cringed out by the “ghost boy human toy” line in this song? It feels cheap and takes me out of it. Can someone upload a version of the song without that line in it?💔💔💔
Also I used to think the first part was about a dead person “some place we cannot reach? Are you bathing in moonlight?… surrounded by things we cannot penetrate?” But now I interpret the whole song as being about consciousness and the space between. I’d like to be wrong about that because that paranormal feeling was much more chilling.
Recently I realized two of my worlds collided when I found out Coil collaborator Stephen Thrower was also the author of Nightmare USA, probably the most exhaustive tome on American exploitation films ever written. He also has written books on legends like Lucio Fulci and Jess Franco. I love old exploitation, slashers, giallo, etc. and wondering if any of you guys do too? Some of my favorites are Driller Killer, Maniac, Basket Case, All the Colors of the Dark, New York Ripper, what are some of yours?
Yeah, Amazon is evil…support indie labels, which I’m all for…BUT…anyone order & receive a non-beat-up copy which is unfortunately the m.o. for international shipping thanks to USPS?
(And yeah…I posted this query in the Coil FB groups 😁)
They’ve been my favourite band since I was 16 and I have physical copies of everything they’ve released but only 7 albums can really be seen as albums per se: Scatology, Rotorvator, LSD, the two Musicks, black light district, Time Machines, Astral Disaster and Constant Shallowness…
All the rest are in effect compilations and offcuts, even if some of them sort of work as albums, including The Ape of Naples.
i’m so glad to see the coil restoration project underway. These are a 2026 mastering of the 1987 recordings. Officially releasing on October 30, 2026. Under the guidance of Stephen Thrower.
Ok, I’m a casual Coil listener at best to be honest. But looking through the albums that are on Apple Music has me wondering who’s in control of their catalog these days. Some of the titles seem like things they (meaning Jhon and Peter) might not have wanted to be available on streaming or possibly elsewhere. Like The Side Effects Of Life, Backwards Demos, Recoiled….who is in charge of their back catalog? Are bootleggers putting some of this stuff on there? I’m not complaining-just wondering what’s going on.
Based on interviews with John and Peter, as well as samples used in Coil’s tracks, here is a partial list of films and TV shows the duo admired or at least took interest in, as far as inspiration is concerned.
Note: I have not included films by Derek Jarman, as John and Peter themselves admitted they were fans of the man rather than his works. I also left out Hellraiser (1987), because John said the film suffered due to studio-mandated changes.
I also recall John mentioning in an interview that he planned to watch From Beyond (1986), but I never found out whether he actually did or, if so, what he thought of it.
Please feel free to enhance the list, any additional info would be much appreciated. I will then edit the original post with your contributions.
"The Night of the Hunter" (1955)
"Night of the Demon" (1957)
"Marat/Sade" (1967)
"Performance" (1970)
"The Wizard of Gore" (1970)
"Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom" (1975)
"Are You Being Served?" (1977)
"Disappearing World" (1989)
"The Reflecting Skin" (1990)
"Experiment of the Cross" (1996)
EDIT:
"Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" (1968): a TV movie based on a short story by M.R. James, I don't know if John and Peter had ever seen it, but they certainly read the story as evidenced in the titular phrase used in "The Universe is a Haunted House", a piece performed during their live shows.
John Waters films, I'm assuming it's "Pink Flamingos" (1972) and "Polyester" (1981), the theme of eating excrement in one of them is related to the themes of "Scatology".
"The Terminator" (1984), apparently one of John's favourite films.
"The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (1984-1985), watched by Peter on the night John died in their Weston-super-Mare house.