Coil’s ‘Gold is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders)’ remastered for 30 October
Coil’s 1987 album “Gold is the Metal” returns remastered on vinyl, CD and digital via Mute and Threshold House on 30 October 2026, with new sleeve notes.
Coil’s 1987 album “Gold is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders)” returns remastered on limited-edition vinyl, CD and digitally on 30 October 2026, released by Mute in partnership with Coil’s own imprint Threshold House. The reissue is the first in a planned series of early Coil releases and carries the catalog number COIL3.
“Gold is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders)” is the third album in a trilogy that began with “Scatology” (1984) and “Horse Rotorvator” (1986). Stephen Thrower, who joined Coil during the album’s creation, describes it as drawing on material sidelined during “Horse Rotorvator’s” sequencing, shaped into what he calls “the culmination of a ‘magnum opus’ in the artistic sense, the closure of a trilogy […] rounding up even our most jagged, cryptic, frictional, intemperate materials into a final balanced form.” The album’s field recordings include a brass band recorded in Mexico, a fragment of a British boxing documentary, and a Thai boxing arena captured by Peter Christopherson; on “Metal in the Head,” a malfunctioning hired Fairlight sampler randomly distorted the recording, and the accident was kept on the finished track.
‘Gold is the Metal’ tracklist and reissue details
The remaster restores the album’s artwork, reconstructed by Thrower and his partner Ossian Brown (a member of Coil from 1999 to 2004) with additional archive material, including artefacts, photographs and personal notes by John Balance. The vinyl and CD editions carry new sleeve notes. Lead track “Cardinal Points” is streaming now as the reissue’s first single.
Tracklist: 1. The Last Rites of Spring (2026 Remaster) 2. Paradisiac (2026 Remaster) 3. Thump (2026 Remaster) 4. For Us They Will (2026 Remaster) 5. The Broken Wheel (2026 Remaster) 6. Boy in a Suitcase (2026 Remaster) 7. Golden Hole (2026 Remaster) 8. Cardinal Points (2026 Remaster) 9. Red Slur (2026 Remaster) 10. …Of Free Enterprise (2026 Remaster) 11. Aqua Regalia (2026 Remaster) 12. Metal in the Head (2026 Remaster) 13. Either His, or Yours (2026 Remaster) 14. Chickenskin (2026 Remaster) 15. Soundtrap (2026 Remaster) 16. The First Five Minutes after Violent Death (2026 Remaster)
Mute and Threshold House plan to follow “Gold is the Metal” with further early Coil reissues: the soundtrack for Derek Jarman’s “The Angelic Conversation,” the previously unreleased music Coil recorded for Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser,” and the compilation “Unnatural History.”
About Coil
Coil formed in London in 1982 as a solo project of John Balance (born Geoffrey Burton, 1962-2004), then a member of Psychic TV. The project became a duo when Balance’s partner Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson (1955-2010), formerly of Throbbing Gristle, joined him. Coil’s first release, the one-sided 12″ single “How to Destroy Angels,” came out in 1984. Stephen Thrower joined the group during the recording of “Horse Rotorvator” (1986) and remained through “Gold is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders)” (1987), the third and closing album of a trilogy that also included “Scatology” (1984).
Coil released music through the 1990s and 2000s that ranged from the industrial dance of “Windowpane” to the ambient “Time Machines” (1998) and the two-volume “Musick to Play in the Dark.” John Balance died in 2004 after a fall at the band’s home, and Coil effectively ended; Peter Christopherson continued to oversee reissues of the group’s catalog until his own death in 2010. Ossian Brown, a member of Coil from 1999 to 2004, has worked with Thrower on multiple archival reissues since, including releases on Cold Spring and Dais Records.
Side-Line has covered several recent Coil reissues, including the expanded edition of Coil’s “Hellraiser” sessions in 2026, the 10th-anniversary “Backwards” reissue via Cold Spring, and the 25th-anniversary edition of Icon of Coil’s “Serenity is the Devil.” “Gold is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders)” is the first release in the new Mute and Threshold House partnership, reactivating Coil’s own imprint under Thrower and Brown’s stewardship in association with the estates of Balance and Christopherson.
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