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Rating: Public Image Limited: 2nd Round.
The aspiration to conceive something truly disorienting seems to have obsessively captured the three P.I.L., now without the drummer Jim Walker, replaced by various session musicians including Martin Atkins (later a permanent member for several years). Wobble's bass takes center stage throughout the album: it colors the tracks with his own sense of groove, markedly hypnotic and nervous, much like Levene's guitar (even drier), which would be an understatement to call minimal. Lydon, for his part, remains there observing the noise, limiting himself to "singing" occasionally and paranoically stirring the dark plots of the 12 tracks, all of excellent artistic quality. "Metal Box" (or "Second Edition") thus presents a staggering and indigestible effect, but it's due to the fact that the band has taken a significant step forward, contaminating their creative vein with unsettling atmospheres and further accentuating the avant-garde component, even more so than was allowed in the previous "First Issue" (L.P. Virgin Records, 1978).
Among the brilliant innovations that accompany us during the 60 minutes, we recall the introduction of keyboards, played by Levene and present in memorable tracks like "Careering" and "Bad Baby", which can be variously described as troublesome nocturnal chants with industrial and psychotic tones. "Memories" and "Swan Lake (Death Disco)", on the other hand, were practically the 'singles' of the situation, with the pleasant bass lines seasoning the minimalism, between the Disco style of the drums and the perverse voice of the ex-Sex Pistols frontman, here at the peak of his anti-conventional vocal delivery. Other tracks on the album move on similar coordinates, with some instrumental side episodes (the Electro Punk of "Socialist", for example) and a new final surprise (as "Fodderstompf" was on "First Issue") that unfolds over the epic 4 minutes of "Radio 4", a brilliant conclusion to a work lacking in flash, with orchestral keyboards and refined melodies giving us, once again, an excellent farewell.
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