Coil
Astral Disaster

"Astral Disaster" by Coil is a ritualistic and hypnotic work that explores the theme of sea pollution caused by humanity's greed for profit. To date, it may be my favorite Coil album (I suspect for the music that evokes that of the Cosmic Couriers). Recorded in a fascinating setting—under the waters of the River Thames in the UK—the album succeeds in distilling a sense of desolation into music, as if the ocean waves and sacrificed marine life find a dark yet sublime voice here. The project, initially released in an extremely limited edition of 99 copies for the Acme/Prescription label, was born almost as a dark amulet, a warning for a chosen few, sealed in a deliberately sparse packaging, almost suggesting its nature as a relic.

Musically, "Astral Disaster" pays homage to German Cosmic Music and echoes the sounds of "Zeit" by Tangerine Dream, projecting the listener into an otherworldly and submerged dimension. Tracks like "The Mothership & The Fatherland" unfold in soundscapes of twenty-two minutes of pure ambient music, where the sound waves of synthesizers and the cryptic, manipulated voice of John Balance envelop the listener, leading them into an unsettling and meditative trance. There’s a subtle lament that permeates the entire work, a musical cyclicity that recalls the perpetual motion of waves, but here transfigured into a hymn of pain and resignation.

The track "The Sea Priestess," inspired by the symbolic figure of Aleister Crowley, is the emotional peak of the album. In fourteen minutes without percussion or guitars, the piece builds an atmosphere of increasing heaviness. Metallic strikes accompany the keyboards in a disturbing crescendo, like an echo of industrial chains crossing and ravaging the sea beds. Balance’s words emerge from the shadows, distorted and slow, invoking a sort of apocalyptic mysticism in which the listener feels like a witness to a forbidden rite. The Coil succeed, without the use of clear words, in evoking the majesty of a wounded ocean, the weight of pollution that settles layer after layer, and the human indifference to this disaster.

"Astral Disaster" has the same evocative and sinister energy of an ancient magical ritual.