Buried Treasure: Horse Rotorvator

[Today: The four horsemen plow up the world...]

Think back to when you were a little kid, and you first deduced that death was inevitable. For your parents, siblings, friends, pets, extended family – EVERYONE WAS GOING TO DIE! If you’re like me, this dark eureka moment occurred late at night, around 4 or 5 years old. After consulting with my parents for a few tear-stained questions, they retreated to their bedroom and suddenly death seemed immediate and ever-present. It was a phantasm, waiting to reach out from under the dresser, grab somebody I loved, and take them away forever. My bedroom was suddenly painted with death and it was closing in on me from every angle.

COIL’s 1987 album Horse Rotorvator is a chilling slice of death and decay that will make you feel like a scared little kid, huddled under the covers and staring into the dark for an approaching grim reaper. The album cover features a shadowy, semi-sinister shot of a bandshell that was the site of a notorious IRA bombing of a military orchestra (‘Penetralia’ recreates that band’s dying notes). The album title refers in part to another IRA bombing, this of a parade of horses and soldiers that left spectators covered in gore. The bombs that ripped across the United Kingdom in the 80s might be the subtext of this record, but death is death is death, and this influential industrial album is all about the final curtain. Asked about the meaning of the title, COIL’s Peter Christopherson laughed and cryptically replied, “It is apocalyptic. It has already been, and what we have left is the remains. It’s over – finished.”

“On the eve of the apocalypse… the four horsemen betray their steeds – slitting open the animals throats,” reads the text on the album cover. “The four then fashion an immense earthmoving device from the collective jawbones – the Horse Rotovator – with which to plow up the waiting world.” This album is very much the soundtrack for such a scene – black, bubbling synthesizers, swooning strings, weepy horns and myriad voices (chanting children, operatic singers, fire-and-brimstone preachers) play out like a long waltz to hell, and song titles such as ‘Blood From The Air’ and ‘The First Five Minutes After Death’ provide signposts along the carnage-strewn path. It’s little wonder that COIL created music (later withdrawn) for Clive Barker’s movie Hellraiser – they’d been there before…

Listen: Slur

Listen: The Golden Section

Listen: Penetralia

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Tags: Clive Barker, COIL, Hellraiser, Horse Rotorvator, IRA, Peter Christopherson