September 29, 2026

Coil – Stolen & Contaminated Songs (CD Album – Cold Spring)

Coil – "Stolen & Contaminated Songs" album cover
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Genre/Influences: Experimental, industrial.

Background/Info: John Balance and Peter Christopherson entered into history with their Coil project as one of the uncontested leaders of the experimental/industrial music genre. Their debut album “Scatology” remains a truly reference. “Stolen & Contaminated Songs” was originally released in 1992 on Threshold House. The opus revealed unreleased songs and ideas that were composed during the period of “Love’s Secret Domain”-album (1991). This album has been now released for the very first time in the CD format.

Content: Coil has never repeated them and that’s what this work clearly reveals. The songs are a sonic mishmash covering a wide range of influences, which are much more than only experimental. You get neo-classic passages, a tribal inspired part, a jazzy experiment, industrial chanson, cinematographic music and electronics sounding as techno ‘avant la lettre’.

+ + + : Coil has been always a visionary project exorcising the weirdest and diversified influences. That’s what this album stands for and the least I can say is that they felt comfortable dealing with all of these styles. The electro-driven “Nasa-Arab” is a perfect illustration of their avant-garde approach, but also the jazzy-driven “Omlagus Garfungiloops” and the industrial-chanson emerging at “Love’s Secret Domain (Original Mix)”.

– – – : Some cuts are pretty short and unachieved, and I’m especially missing the darkness from the early Coil years.

Conclusion: It always is pure fun getting back to the discography of this legendary and influential band.

Best songs: “Nasa-Arab”, “Love’s Secret Domain (Original Mix)”, “Further”, “Who’ll Tell?”, “Omlagus Garfungiloops”.

Rate: (8).

Artist: www.facebook.com/Coil-189787564422

Label: www.coldspring.co.uk / www.facebook.com/coldspringhq Read the news on ‘Stolen & Contaminated Songs’.

About Coil

Coil formed in London in 1983 when John Balance launched it as a solo side project to Psychic TV. The band grew into a full-scale outfit in 1984, when Balance partnered with Peter Christopherson, a former member of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, and the pair ran their own label, Threshold House. “Scatology” followed in 1985 and “Love’s Secret Domain” in 1991. Balance died in 2004 and Christopherson in 2010, after which the project’s activity ended. Cold Spring, the UK label behind this first CD edition of “Stolen & Contaminated Songs,” has since reissued other parts of the catalogue, including a 10th-anniversary edition of “Backwards.”

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