Public Image Ltd
First Issue

Too overwhelming a character even for that concentrate of explosiveness and rebellion that were the Sex Pistols, John Lydon (formerly Rotten) leaves the group while the punk wave is still alive and kicking: he is the first to sense the rapidity of the phenomenon he helped create himself, and decides to persevere in musical experimentation, being anything but an academic musician. Public Image Ltd is a natural evolution of the Sex Pistols, retaining the singer’s critical taste and the rawness of sounds while exploring a less glamorous and appealing sound, decidedly more disturbed and studied. To release PiL's first album, Lydon collaborates with former Clash member Keith Levene, drummer Jim Walker, and his former criminal accomplice Jah Wobble.

The opener "Theme" sends one message: welcome to the post-punk. An antithesis of a song, with the guitar frying and sizzling in contrast with the steady and marble-like rhythm, the first track draws heavily from pure noise and extreme psychedelia, exaggerating the purely punk concept of non-beauty. The sounds are dark, and Lydon's voice wanders, screaming, for all nine minutes, describing a sick and schizophrenic compendium of what will be goth-dark choices. Punk still pulses on the world music scene, but the anarchic immediacy of the Pistols couldn't be further away at this moment.

The couple of tracks "Religion" addresses Christianity in a very direct and critical manner (Lydon is the son of Irish Catholic immigrants): if the first part is recited like a blasphemous and mechanical psalm, the second spreads the same text over a chloroform punk rock riff, slowed down but penetrating. The song’s assembly line-like repetitiveness introduces a new concept of psychedelia, arguably the ancestor of a portion of industrial music. Of course, there are inserts of a gut-wrenching piano, just to continue in the scientific destruction of music, while the march of "Religion" drags on into the whirlpool from which come the invectives of dear Johnny.

"Annalisa" travels on more traditional tracks, namely a good bass line and an aggressive and intriguing guitar. Lydon grafts his muezzin-like howling chants onto an obsessive track that has much of punk for sure, but unrolled and extended for the occasion. The voice from the bottom of the well should not deceive: "Public Image" is pure Sex Pistols punk. The atmospheres are slightly darker, more post-atomic if you will, and Levene even allows himself a solo, but on "Never Mind The Bollocks," the song would fit perfectly. Certainly, one of the more immediate and “pleasing” tracks on the record. "Low Life," on the other hand, feels so garage-like that you can almost perceive the sweat produced by playing in too tight a space: the track showing clear punk origins features Wobble's bass at the forefront, which, in combination with the sharp and repetitive guitar, renders what is now a familiar and futuristic (for the time) gothic-metropolitan atmosphere.

"Attack" strips the already sparse punk rock song down to its skeleton, making it spectral: only voids, halos, and angry ghosts hovering around the usual pounding riff remain. The technique of music desertification, stripping it of all trimmings, will be widely adopted by the entire post-punk line, although with different interpretations (as The Cure could attest).
It has dub-acid flavors instead with "Fodderstompf," exploring the terrain over a year before the Clash’s "London Calling," seen as a milestone for genre blending. It’s Jah Wobble's voice guiding the proceedings in this piece, psychically unstable and wavering in delirious spirals of alien sounds. The schizoid disco groove of an asylum closes the first Public Image Ltd vinyl work, once again bewildering the listener.

The first release by PiL clearly resumes the trail of the Sex Pistols, developing and overturning it.
Each single element contains anger and repetition, making the whole decidedly alienating and stunning. Listening to First Issue is hard and trying: the record can be irritating, cacophonous, and brutal, but carefully delving beneath the deliberately repellent surface created by Lydon reveals small sonic gems of stark darkness and programmatic madness, essential for what will be the sonic development of the '80s pop-rock scene.