Music review: Foetus - Nail (1985)

Long time no see (I'll explain why in the next post)! Continuing on my favourite albums review mission with its first industrial rock entry.

And what better choice than J.G. Thirlwell, the crazy Australian who arguably invented the genre in the early 80s? But inventing something doesn't mean you're always the best, and here I agree with the public opinion that his Foetus project only took off with the preceding Hole LP, peaked with this and slumped until the release of Flow 16 years later; not that Thaw and Gash are bad, just not on the same level.

I thought it'd be hard to determine what I love in such a motley and complex sound, but it was obvious once I put it on (I always write album reviews while listening): the groove and catchiness. Almost poppy in their head-bobbing potency, one of the rare albums that can make me get up and "dance" in my living room.

The feat is even more incredible when you realize how ambitiously experimental the whole is. To give you an idea, this sounds like what a much rawer Mike Patton at his best (that'd be Angel Dust or California) would be trying to reach.

Let's again indulge in a familiar exercise of adjective piling: manic, dramatic, an hilarious but bad acid trip. Let me try to paint a picture on your mind's canvas: an endless vaudeville show taking place on a wheeled platform made of rusted steel (à la Silent Hill) wildly descending down a spiral road to hell, and you're the only audience strapped in the middle of the hundred seats, crying and howling both of laughter and fright. A bit like the obligatory ghost train in B-list horror movies with an abandoned attraction park.

Yet still body-moving groovy. 10/10 even if find "DI-1-9026" a smidgen weaker than the rest.