Fields of the Nephilim’s ‘The Nephilim’ turns 38 on 5 September
Fields of the Nephilim released “The Nephilim” on 5 September 1988 via Situation Two. The gothic rock album turns 38 and entered the UK chart at 12.
Fields of the Nephilim, the English gothic rock band from Stevenage, Hertfordshire, released “The Nephilim” on 5 September 1988 through Situation Two, an imprint of Beggars Banquet. The album turns 38 this year. It was the band’s second studio album, it followed “Dawnrazor” from 1987, and it entered the UK album chart at number 12.
The record was made in a former courthouse. Sessions took place at The Justice Room in the Somerset countryside, a building where prisoners sentenced to death had been hanged on site. Bassist Tony Pettitt described the setting in a 2013 PopMatters retrospective on the album’s 25th year: “The place had a really cool vibe”. Mixing moved to Genetic Studios and the master was cut at Tape One. Sources differ on the production credit: the Situation Two sleeve lists Bill Buchanan as producer with the band credited in association, while Wikipedia gives the band itself. Brad Davis recorded the sessions, Timm Baldwin mixed, and Ian Gillespie handled pre-mastering. The line-up was Carl McCoy on vocals, Pettitt on bass, Peter Yates and Paul Wright on guitars, and Alexander “Nod” Wright on drums.
‘The Nephilim’ formats, tracklist and credits
Situation Two issued the album in the UK as a gatefold LP with printed lyrics to “The Watchman” and “Last Exit for the Lost”, and on CD and cassette. Rebel Rec. handled the German pressing through SPV, and Beggars Banquet released it in the United States with RCA. The vinyl runs eight tracks: “Endemoniada”, “The Watchman”, “Phobia”, “Moonchild”, “Chord of Souls”, “Celebrate”, “Love Under Will” and “Last Exit for the Lost”. The CD adds a ninth, “Shiva”, which had been the B-side of the “Moonchild” single. Chris Bigg designed the sleeve, Simon Larbalestier shot the outer photography, Julian Calverley the inner gatefold, and Lynn S supplied the lyric calligraphy.
“Moonchild” reached number 28 in the UK singles chart, well above the number 75 the band had managed a year earlier with “Blue Water”. Several titles point outward: “Moonchild” shares its name with a novel by Aleister Crowley, “Love Under Will” takes a phrase from his Book of the Law, and the lyrics to “The Watchman” and “Last Exit for the Lost” reference H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu. The opening track, “Endemoniada”, carries a sample of Ron Perlman growling “Penitenziagite!” as the hunchback Salvatore in the 1986 film “The Name of the Rose”. Beggars Archive returned to the album on 20 October 2023 with a double-LP reissue pressed on golden brown vinyl and expanded with three bonus tracks.
About Fields of the Nephilim
Carl McCoy, Tony Pettitt, Paul Wright, Alexander “Nod” Wright and saxophonist Gary Wisker formed Fields of the Nephilim in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, in 1984. The name refers both to the biblical race of angel-human hybrids and to the magnetic fields around the Earth. Peter Yates joined on guitar in 1985, the year the band put out its debut 12″ EP “Burning the Fields” on its own Tower Release label. Jungle Records picked the record up and put the band back in the studio for the “Returning to Gehenna” EP.
Situation Two signed them in 1986 and issued the singles “Power” and “Preacher Man”. The first album, “Dawnrazor”, topped the UK indie chart in 1987, and “Blue Water” became their first entry on the UK singles chart. “The Nephilim” followed in 1988. “Psychonaut” arrived in May 1989 and peaked at number 35, its ten-minute running time pointing toward the more layered approach of “Elizium” in 1990. For that album the band moved up to the Beggars Banquet imprint and worked with Andy Jackson, an engineer for Pink Floyd and David Gilmour, in place of Bill Buchanan. Its lead single “For Her Light” clipped the UK top 40 in its first week, and a remixed “Sumerland (Dreamed)” reached number 37 that November.
The band played its last shows of that era in 1991, a two-day Festival of Fire at the Town & Country Club in London, documented on the live album “Earth Inferno” and the video “Visionary Heads”. McCoy left the same year. The remaining members recruited singer Andy Delaney and continued as Rubicon, releasing “What Starts, Ends” in 1992 and “Room 101” in 1995. McCoy started Nefilim, whose album “Zoon” was held back by label disagreements until 1996.
McCoy and Pettitt announced a return at a press conference during the Zillo Festival in Germany on 15 August 1998. The single “One More Nightmare (Trees Come Down)” came out on Jungle Records in May 2000, reworking two songs from “Burning the Fields”, and the band played Woodstage, Eurorock, Roskilde and M’era Luna that summer. Jungle issued “Fallen” in 2002 with licensees including Metropolis Records and SPV; the band disowned it, and only one of its songs has been played live. McCoy’s fourth full-length under the Fields of the Nephilim name, “Mourning Sun”, appeared in 2005 with a cover of Zager and Evans’ “In the Year 2525” as a bonus track on the first 5,000 copies.
A new line-up played the London Astoria in May 2007, the first Fields of the Nephilim show in seven years, and headlined M’era Luna in 2008 in front of a crowd of more than 23,000. Recordings from two Shepherd’s Bush Empire nights became “Ceromonies (Ad Mortem Ad Vitam)”, released on McCoy’s Sacred Symphony label on 16 April 2012. Beggars Archive collected the first three studio albums, “Earth Inferno” and a singles-and-remixes disc in a five-album box in November 2013. McCoy said in July 2014 that the band was back in the studio; “Earthbound” and “Prophecy” were played live that December, and “Prophecy” was issued as a single on 17 March 2016, produced, engineered and mixed by McCoy and mastered by Maor Appelbaum. Guitarist Tom Edwards, who played with the band between 2008 and 2016, died of heart failure in January 2017 while touring the United States with Adam Ant, reported at the time in Fields of the Nephilim / Adam Ant guitarist Tom Edwards dies aged 41.
Beggars Archive has kept the back catalogue moving since then, with the expanded “The Nephilim” in October 2023, a 30th anniversary red vinyl “Elizium” on 5 April 2024, and a remastered “Dawnrazor” on 12 December 2025. The current line-up is McCoy on vocals, Pettitt on bass and Gavin King and Adam Leach on guitars. Thirty-eight years on, “The Nephilim” still sits at the centre of that catalogue, between the indie-chart-topping “Dawnrazor” and the wider reach of “Elizium”.
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