COIL to Release AQUA REGALIA Ahead of GOLD IS THE METAL Reissue
The reissue is the first in a planned series featuring unseen imagery and restored packaging.
Mute, in conjunction with Threshold House, has shared a track from 1987's Gold is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders), the first in a series of releases in a new partnership between the labels that will see four early, often overlooked, works by Coil 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 a young Stephen Thrower. On the recordings in the series, Coil are John Balance (1962-2004), Peter Christopherson (1955-2010) and Stephen Thrower.
The series launches with 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 revered, the period immediately after is sometimes skipped over, but these years were enormously potent moments in their history, ones where sex and sexuality, as core engines of their work, were cast under increasing shadow by homophobia and the fear of AIDS, both of which were deliberately fanned and propagated by the mainstream media.
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 explains that this is much more than 'a round-up of wraiths and strays', describing 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'.
It honed what Thrower calls 'electro-erotics of sound', with a collage structure inspired by The Faust Tapes. Notable are its field recordings – a drunken brass band captured in Mexico, a snippet of a TV documentary about young British boxers, and a Thai boxing arena recorded by Christopherson. There is also accident and serendipity at play: 'Metal in the Head' contains the sound of their hired Fairlight sampler malfunctioning, when it began to randomly rearrange and distort the music. Words become less important for this record: it is instead about the creation of an enveloping continuity, atmospheres where barbarism lurks, unspoken but detected, alongside the euphoria of intoxication and the Rites of Spring.
For this reissue its artwork has been painstakingly 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.
Gold is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders) will be released on limited edition vinyl, CD and digitally on 30 October 2026. Pre-order the album here.
Tracklist
The Last Rites of Spring (2026 Remaster)
Paradisiac (2026 Remaster)
Thump (2026 Remaster)
For Us They Will (2026 Remaster)
The Broken Wheel (2026 Remaster)
Boy in a Suitcase (2026 Remaster)
Golden Hole (2026 Remaster)
Cardinal Points (2026 Remaster)
Red Slur (2026 Remaster)
...Of Free Enterprise (2026 Remaster)
Aqua Regalia (2026 Remaster)
Metal in the Head (2026 Remaster)
Either His, or Yours (2026 Remaster)
Chickenskin (2026 Remaster)
Soundtrap (2026 Remaster)
The First Five Minutes after Violent Death (2026 Remaster)
Photo Credit: Laurence Watson
Photo Credit: Laurence Watson
