Coil
Live Four

There is no boundary between sound and hallucination, between reality and nightmare. Live Four is not just a live album: it is a door that opens onto an unknown universe, made of pulsations, dark frequencies, and sound rituals that transcend time and space. This is not a concert, it is a black mass, an arcane rite in which the laws of physics deform and the listener is sucked into a vortex of hypnotic visions.

The beginning of this journey starts with "I Am Angie Bowie (Sine Waves)," where silence is broken by slow and deep waves vibrating through space. There is no voice here, no narration or guide. You are left alone with the sound, which expands and envelops you, as if you were floating in an electronic amniotic fluid. It is a primordial sensation, almost underwater, where time seems to stretch, and every wave becomes a deep breath. This track is the portal, a threshold between ordinary perception and the unknown.

"Last Rites of Spring" drags you without warning into a funeral ceremony for a world you do not know. The rhythm is slow, almost solemn, like the echo of bells in a distant temple. The electronic frequencies bend like threads of light, and the sense of bewilderment increases. Here, the Coil invoke a ritual that you feel deeply, but that eludes any definition. There is no return. You are marching towards a horizon of shadows, and every note reminds you that spring, in this world, is a broken cycle.

"Are You Shivering?" is a track to be listened to in the dark of your room. Not coincidentally, it is taken from the double masterpiece album "Musick To Play In The Dark." The vibrations penetrate the bones, cold as the void of space. This track is a descent into the cosmic cold, a journey into the belly of the universe, where loneliness and uneasiness blur. The sound waves propagate like swarms of subatomic particles, touching nerves you did not know you had. Your body responds with an involuntary shiver, and every beat seems to synchronize with the breath of the unknown.

"Amethyst Deceivers" unfolds like a snake sliding into the darkness. It is a track that exudes both deception and beauty, and over time, it has become one of their classics. The Coil drag you into a downward spiral, where every sound is liquid, hypnotic, intertwining with your thoughts, clouding them. There is a sense of subtle deception, a promise that will never be fulfilled. You are immersed in an ocean of amber sounds, but every wave leads you further from the light.

"A Warning From The Sun" is exactly what it promises: a warning. But the sun is not a source of warmth and life, it is a dying star, ready to consume everything. The sounds are sharp, slow, like an apocalyptic prophecy you cannot ignore. There is a latent tension, a sensation that something catastrophic is about to happen, but that you are powerless before it.

And then, comes "The Universe Is A Haunted House". Here, the title leaves no room for imagination: you are inside a haunted place, but not by human spirits. The sound is alive, prowling the walls of the universe like an invisible presence. Every note, every silence, is a manifestation of what you cannot see, but clearly feel. The Coil paint a soundscape where reality itself is a fragile illusion, ready to shatter at any moment. Here you are lost, surrounded by shadows that will never let you go.

"Ostia" cradles you in a deep and devastating melancholy. This track is one of their masterpieces, a funeral anthem for Pier Paolo Pasolini, both beautiful and heartbreaking. The sound waves expand like infinite sand, and Balance's voice is distant, whispering, like a breath carried away by the wind. It is a moment of contemplation, a requiem for what was and can never be recovered.

"I Don’t Want to Be the One" is a realization, a declaration of resistance against an inescapable fate. There is constant tension in this track, a conflict between what was and what must come. The voice becomes coarser, almost desperate, as the sound intensifies, as if trying to escape an invisible trap.

"Bang Bang," the Sonny Bono cover, appears almost like a lucid dream, a moment of distortion of reality. Balance plays with the text, distorts it, shapes it until it becomes a fragment of another world, a parallel dimension where the very concept of a pop song is deconstructed and reconstructed.

When the last sound of An Unearthly Red dissolves, you remain suspended in a strange void, as if the world around you has changed in an imperceptible but irreversible way. Live Four is one of Coil's best live albums, a masterpiece of their esoteric and hypnotic art. Together with And the Ambulance Died in His Arms, it captures the essence of their live magic: the power to transform a musical performance into a transcendental experience, a ritual that touches the boundaries of consciousness and imagination.