Sometimes it’s hard to write objectively about certain bands or albums. Coil were such an important part of my life for so long, they’re beyond criticism. Whatever might be good or bad about their music, it just is. And that’s fine unless you’re trying to write a review about their 1986 sophomore album, Horse Rotor Vator.

I was a little apprehensive to take this album on. Having discovered Coil in 1991 with their magnum opus of sex, drugs and pagan magic, Love’s Secret Domain, I’ve always tended to listen to that album onwards as opposed to delving heavily into their back-catalogue—though I hunted it all down like religious relics. 

I actually own Horse Rotor Vator on both CD and vinyl, but I’ve probably only listened to the album a half-dozen times over many years. So it was that my memories were a little hazy and I felt there was a real potential the album might be a terrible cheese-fest. It turns out it toes the line of cheese without planting a foot firmly in the ricotta.

That’s a purely subjective call, of course. Certain listeners might find the album embarrassingly cringy. Though a lot of timeless orchestral samples are employed, the keyboards and drum machines your hear are, of course, rooted in the synth-pop/EBM/electro-industrial of the early-to-mid 80s.

Also, the allusions to classic mythology and the heavy, medieval musical motifs (reminiscent of early Dead Can Dance) could be the very definition of cheese to some. I have to admit the heavy-handedness of select tracks from their early work has always kept me at bay a little. Yet, like Dead Can Dance, they generally manage to pull it off with enough theatrical panache to make it magical, but with enough restraint to keep it from becoming clownish buffoonery.