Public Image Ltd., Metal Box / Second Edition [Virgin]
Several years back I caught the Sex Pistols reunion tour. Though it felt ungrateful at the time, I spent the night wishing PiL's original line-up had reunited instead - which had everything to do with Metal Box (later re-released as Second Edition). This second album by John Lydon’s post-Pistols group shows Lydon shaking off much of his cynical sneer, and replacing it with nauseated disgust for the recording industry, and for his own part in it. Lines like “Your words are useless/ Full of excuses/ False confidences/ Someone has used you well” seem at least in part directed at Lydon himself. Numerous lines suggest overwhelming, self-implicating disillusionment. Consider “Only a gimmick/ Pointed fingers/ Never more serious sight,” or “The likes of you and me are/ An embarrassment.” It's difficult not to interpret the exhausted revulsion building through the ten-minute “Albatross” as pointed at “Johnny Rotten.” Perhaps more than anything, Metal Box is a frustrated expression of the impotence of expression, particularly in the counterculture-mining music industry. Fitting then that Lydon hardly qualifies as the album's frontman, hiding behind Jah Wobble's throbbing barricade of dub bass. And since we’re talking about the rhythm section, let’s not forget Richard Dudanski's incredible disco-ready drumming. Least conspicuous, guitarist Keith Levene (ex-Clash, ex-Flowers of Romance) brought a prog-infused sensibility that prioritized conjuring new sounds over writing songs. Using studio effects completely unheard of in punk, Levene gave better voice to Lydon's anxieties than words ever could. Counting on Lydon to become a Bowie for the 80s, Virgin not only didn’t toss this willfully anti-rock, obscurity-bound album into the furnace, they let PiL issue it as a 45-rpm triple-album, sold in custom tin film canisters. One of the most inspired documents in post-punk history, this album sounds like nothing recorded before or since by anyone. Indeed, Lydon's disenchantment proved well founded: the band disintegrated bitterly, and no one involved ever produced work of this quality again.
This review appeared in the November-December 2005 issue of Punk Planet.