[Cover photo credit to Laurence Watson – L-R: John Balance, Peter Christopherson & Stephen Thrower]
Mute, in conjunction with Threshold House, has announced a partnership that launches with four early, often overlooked, works by Coil, which will be remastered and released with restored artwork, previously unseen imagery, and new sleeve notes.
Originally conceived by John Balance, Coil swiftly became a duo with Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson (Throbbing Gristle) and after their 1984 debut release, the one-sided 12” single How to Destroy Angels, they were joined by Stephen Thrower. On the recordings in the series, Coil are John Balance (1962-2004), Peter Christopherson (1955-2010) and Stephen Thrower.
The series will launch with 1987’s Gold is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders), the third in a trilogy that began with Scatology and Horse Rotorvator. Where Scatology and Horse Rotorvator are well known, the period immediately after is sometimes less known and the band fell under the shadow of mainstream homophobia. Gold is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders) will be released on limited edition vinyl, CD and digitally on 30 October 2026. The track “Cardinal Points” is out now.
Gold is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders) draws on work that had been sidelined during Horse Rotovator’s sequencing. It takes “textural and instrumental pieces and shapes them into a fully-formed album.”
Thrower describes it as:
…the culmination of a ‘magnum opus’ in the artistic sense, the closure of a trilogy – Scatology, Horse Rotorvator and Gold is the Metal – rounding up even our most jagged, cryptic, frictional, intemperate materials into a final balanced form.
For this reissue, the album artwork has been reconstructed by Thrower and his partner Ossian Brown (a member of Coil from 1999-2004), expanding upon its original concept with additional archive material, including artefacts, photographs, artworks, and personal notes made by John Balance.
Gold is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders) will be followed by Coil’s soundtrack for Derek Jarman’s The Angelic Conversation, the unreleased music for Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, and the compilation Unnatural History.
Threshold House was Coil’s own imprint, set to release Gold is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders) and now reactivated by Stephen Thrower and Ossian Brown as a vehicle to release the early Coil albums in partnership with Mute, and in association with the estates of John Balance and Peter Christopherson.
