self medication? no, I'll take self surgery, please.

Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel - Anxiety Attack, from the LP 'Sink" (1989)

You grow weary. You start to see things through jaded rolling eyes. You mentally arm yourself. You spend more time preparing for other people's mistakes than you do dealing with your own. You abandon your expectations of others. You watch them destroy themselves, wishing you could lend them a hand. Instead you turn away. Turn off. Isolate. Shut out. Light fuse. Get away.

Australian Jim Thirlwell, a.k.a. Clint Ruin, a.k.a. Foetus (and many unsettling variations on that moniker) has consistently generated some of the most challenging and interesting recordings for nearly three decades. From the retro ad illustration / propaganda-like design of the records' cover art, to the four letter titles on most of them (yeah, I'm waiting for that title too...), Thirlwell leaves no aspect of his work not well thought out. He has a musical master plan of sorts. A craftsman in the recording studio as well, his music is a mad scientist's concoction of industrial, big band, surf, and classical elements to name a few. That, and his skill of translating frustration, lust, rage, contempt, self loathing and countless other emotional states into an empathetic - unpleasant as that may be at times, lyrically and musically - music form, has influenced other musicians in different genres, From the blatant industro-angst of Nine Inch Nails to the in-studio trickery of hip-hop artist D'Angelo. No one, however, succeeded artistically in the grand style that was presented here.
I remember hearing NAIL for the first time in a smoky basement, on a good sound system. I was blown away by the layers of stuff that was going on in those songs. It took me a good month to really take in and digest, and I've felt since that the album should be listened to in one sitting to genuinely grasp it's grandiosity and appreciate it as a work of recorded art. And while it probably wasn't intended, Nail kind of became the records for our circles of friends that were played often and loud; anthemic the way Back In Black was for the some. Under random conditions the album can an endurance test, but it's best just to ride it out to the liberating end.