Fields Of The Nephilim - I cowboy dell’Apocalisse

Among the historic names of gothic-rock, Fields of the Nephilim surely deserve the title of most underrated. The success of the Sisters of Mercy has often relegated them to the role of mere imitators, even though no band in the dark-music genre managed to give it as "intellectual" a connotation as Carl McCoy's group did. Formed in 1984, Fields of the Nephilim take their name from the biblical legends of the Nephilim, offspring born from the union of fallen angels (or, according to some, extraterrestrials) and mortal women, said to be responsible for the birth of Sumerian and Babylonian civilization and thus the spreaders of knowledge hidden from humankind. The original line-up features Carl McCoy (vocals), Gary Wisker (sax), Tony Pettitt (bass) and brothers Paul Wright (guitar) and Alexander "Nod" Wright (drums). Their official debut came in 1985 with the EP "Burning The Fields", released in just 500 copies on their own label, Tower Release. After the EP came out, Wisker left the band and was replaced by Peter Yates as second guitarist, inevitably changing the sound profile of Fields of the Nephilim. Despite its limited distribution, the record still managed to catch the attention of Beggars Banquet, with whom the band released another EP, "Returning To Gehenna" (1986), followed by their debut album.

The band's leader, Carl McCoy, is an expert in occultism and angelology, as well as a huge fan of Spaghetti Westerns. The imagery of cowboys, associated with the films of Sergio Leone, therefore already surfaces on the cover of their debut album, Dawnrazor (1987). A catacomb-like vision that immediately placed the band within the gothic-rock scene, helped also by the atmosphere of their live shows and by the video for "Preacher Man", which, like the other singles released ("Blue Water", "Moonchild" and "Psychonaut"), managed to break into the UK charts, reaching the Top 40.

Often dismissed as mere imitators of the Sisters of Mercy, Fields Of The Nephilim actually showcased their own distinctive traits to perfection right from their debut, setting them apart from simple mannerism. Their dark, atmospheric music deploys guitars at the forefront, though with very few solos, along with obsessive, tight rhythms and lyrics heavily steeped in the thought of Aleister Crowley, born of a pronounced interest in esotericism and pagan cults.

Not content with merely using cowboy imagery, the album opens with a track lifted directly from the soundtrack of "Once Upon A Time In The West", composed by Ennio Morricone. It's "Intro (The Harmonica Man)", staged with abrasive guitar and a slow, anxiety-inducing crescendo.

The Nephilim bring out their big guns with “Slow Kill”, though the band's real classic remains the post-apocalyptic midtempo of “Preacher Man”. Carl McCoy's voice, the crooner of horrors, rides through the record's darkness, his guttural screams conjuring up terrifying pagan rites (“Volcane (Mr. Jealousy Has Returned)”, “Dust”, “Power”) and necromantic ballads à-la Siouxsie and The Banshees (“Vet For The Insane”). More than a Sergio Leone film, some of these songs seem to evoke ancient, unspeakable esoteric rites – just look at the promo video for “Blue Water”, which places them, at least in imagery, light years away from bands like Sisters of Mercy, Cult and Bauhaus.

The album closes with the crushing spell of “Dawnrazor” and the hypnotic riffs of “The Sequel”.

In 1988, Fields Of The Nephilim released their second album, The Nephilim, which debuted at number 12 on the UK chart. The Nephilim adds Jesus And Mary Chain to the band's influences and favors more intricate, visionary and elegant songs. “Endemoniada” (Spanish for “possessed”) takes its name from a Mexican horror movie, opens with a long guitar-driven instrumental intro, and finds McCoy's voice – never so demonic – only after more than 4 of its 7 minutes have passed. Within it, we can also hear actor Ron Perlman screaming “penitenziagite” (“do penance”), a sample of a line delivered by the Benedictine friar Salvatore in the film “The Name of the Rose”.

More violent but no less elaborate is the single “Moonchild”, an unexpected Top40 hit that takes its name from a novel by Aleister Crowley. The lyrics across the whole record are shards of terrifying visions and ceremonial magic; “The Watchmen”, for instance, directly evokes in its finale the terrifying creature of Lovecraftian lore, Cthulhu. The dirge-like, vaguely Morrison-esque “Celebrate”, all spectral guitars and the baritone of a poete maudit, pairs instead with the majestic and theatrical “Love Under Will”, almost a manifesto of Crowleyan philosophy (the so-called “Thelema”), if one thinks of its first law, which states: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the law, love under will”.

Nagging rhythms and guttural narration permeate the claustrophobic “Chord Of Souls” and “Shiva”, while Cthulhu returns in the nearly ten minutes of “Last Exit For The Last”, amid deathly laments, a hypnotic bassline and poignant guitar textures, with a final acceleration and surge that, restless as it is, lets a sliver of light shine through at the end of a nocturnal, shadowy journey. The album's most curious moment, however, is a heavy-rock charge that betrays the influence of Motorhead's “Ace Of Spades”: it's “Phobia”, whose unstoppable rhythm-section swell translates into a dazzling electric storm.

More accomplished than Dawnrazor, The Nephilim shapes a refined and elegant sound, a baroque version of decadence. Almost a funhouse of riddles, made of distorting mirrors and scares around every corner, which in the band's minds had been conceived as a soundtrack for the unknown (as if the cover image hadn't already made that clear).

The single “Psychonaut” (1989) marks the shift toward more ambitious music, which would take centre stage on the follow-up to The Nephilim. It's a track of over 9 minutes, dominated by long synth chords and a pulsing bass, all adorned with evocative guitar flourishes.

The third album, Elizium (1990), thus brings to completion a journey of progressive sophistication, transforming the grotesque band of the early days into a sumptuous and convincing gothic proposition. It's no coincidence that the production is handled by Andy Jackson, an engineer who had previously worked with Pink Floyd, bringing with him a spacious, refined and meticulously crafted sound. The keyboards, already a substantial presence in some past tracks, become increasingly essential in broadening the arrangements and wrapping them in dirge-like atmospheres. More than in the past, the record takes shape as a single long trip with mystical overtones.

If “For Her Light” is another post-punk-of-horror romp, “At The Gates Of Silent Memory” reaches a new peak: it emerges from an unhealthy fog and advances to the sound of epic tolling bells, like one of those bleak compositions by late-period Pink Floyd, combining expansiveness and desolation.

“Submission” and “Sumerland (What Dreams May Come)” form an even more ambitious pair of tracks, totalling almost 20 minutes. “Submission” builds tension before launching into a charge made overwhelming by distorted guitars. By the time they fade back into the shadows, the listener's attention is already locked in. The pause that follows, a moment of quiet, is laden with suspense, so that the abstract, cacophonous guitar solo, together with the majestic, heavy-psych close, pulls you into an intense finale. “Sumerland (What Dreams May Come)”, the longest track of their entire career at 11 minutes, lives on a blend of post-punk and disco-music, between clattering guitars and a driving rhythm.

Swaying in the bleakest desolation, the album closes with “And There Will Your Heart Be Also”, which neatly sums up the spirit of a sprawling, atmospheric work, elegant and gothic, ambitious and decadent. Weighed down by some overlong passages, Elizium is nonetheless destined to be both their peak and their swan song. It remains, in fact, the last studio album released under the Fields Of Nephilim name with the original line-up still intact.

In 1991 Carl McCoy effectively dissolved the group, repurposing the name as Nephilim. The remaining members recorded as Rubicon and The Last Rites. It's Rubicon, made up of the band's remaining members, who are the first to return to the scene, opting for Andy Delaney behind the microphone. The new line-up has little luck and only manages two albums. The first, What Starts, Ends (1992), fuses the gothic spirit of old, still a major presence, with violent bursts of distorted guitars and even noise-rock, on full display from the opening “Before My Eyes”, adding a touch of grunge in keeping with the times. The gothic, metallic ballad “Killing Time” seems the ideal snapshot of a compromise record, one that marks a break from Fields Of Nephilim without completely shedding its skin. Some moments, like “Rivers”, despite showing plenty of energy, seem to orbit rather unoriginal ideas, while others, like the title track, come in jarring contrast to the rest of the record, to the point of making it incoherent.

Little of what had already been heard from Rubicon hints at the turn taken on Room 101 (1995), the second and final record released under this name by the former Fields Of Nephilim members. An album that opens with “Ageless”, an ideal apocryphal Pearl Jam single, and presents a line-up in the full grip of post-grunge fever. A very strong impression, one also confirmed by “Rest A While”, “Doubt All” and much of the record, which obscures its heavy debt to the Seattle scene with hefty doses of metal on “Insatiable”. Amid this derivative offering, “This Drenching Night” stands out, a tribal, psychedelic moment that breaks up an otherwise predictable track-list with a breath of creativity.

In 1996 McCoy, singer of the now-defunct Fields Of Nephilim, returned to the scene with a project whose name, more than its music, recalled the original band: Nefilim. In this new venture, and on the only album released under this name, Zoon, some influences bloom that could already be felt in the gothic landscapes of The Nephilim and Elizium. McCoy's own vocals, ever more cavernous and prone to horror-movie excess, hinted at some kinship with extreme metal vocals. On Zoon, death-metal and the mechanical nature of industrial-metal decisively dominate over the gothic-rock leanings of the past. The most evident influences this time are Killing Joke, Godflesh and Ministry. The sound is overwhelming, packed with pounding beats and devastating screams, far removed from the elegance of old. “Xodus”, with guitars that seem inspired by Slayer, is the most overpowering of the more immediate tracks, but Nefilim also venture down the path of harrowing, thriller-like industrial-metal with “Melt (The Catching Of The Butterfly)”.

Some moments at least return to the dirge-like atmosphere of old, to the point of qualifying as examples of gothic-metal. The most important track in this regard is “Shine”, wrapped in a decadent haze that recalls the songbook of bands like Tiamat. Also partly classifiable as gothic-metal is the suite that gives the album its title, divided into three parts across 15 minutes total: opened by a gothic-rock swept away by McCoy's most theatrical of entrances, the composition stretches out into dark-ambient miasmas from which an anguished, mechanical march emerges, progressively reinforced by metallic doses in the most predictable of climaxes; the third part lingers in a dark baritone, rediscovering its industrial-metal nature only in the finale.

More than the rhythm section — monotonous yet powerful — or the guitars, which are enslaved more to decibels than creativity, the real protagonist is McCoy's voice, free to unleash itself in the most monstrous timbres: on "Pazuzu (Black Rain)" he sounds like a man possessed, on the verge of vomiting up some disgusting evil substance. Despite the over-the-top vocal style, however, Zoon is a work that lags a couple of years behind the rest of the industrial-metal and gothic-metal scene, which by the mid-'90s had already undergone several notable evolutions.

Surprisingly, after more than a decade, the fourth official Fields Of The Nephilim album, Fallen (2002), is released. In reality, the album comes out against McCoy's will, or rather without his knowledge at all, since he considered the songs written up to that point to be mere sketches. He would never acknowledge the record as his own, to the point of claiming on the official website that the label had actually stolen unreleased material.

A fake reunion, then, likely the product of a shrewd marketing move. The result bears the marks of that uncertainty: Fallen is a tediously monotonous record that gathers up the ideas born from the Pettitt-McCoy rapprochement (particularly his dark-metal turn during the Zoon period), but adds nothing of interest to the band's career.

The sound quality is fairly good, but almost every track is frozen stiff by the intrusion of a drum machine, which weakens and strips down the evocative rhythmic structures of McCoy's old band. The songs often feel fragmentary and rushed, and reading the liner notes confirms just how partial the truth behind the much-hyped reunion really was: only two fifths of the original line-up had actually gotten back together.

A jam of industrial noise opens "Dead To The World", with McCoy's voice — once the band's shaman — annihilated and buried beneath a mass of unintelligible voices and an aggressive guitar; he sounds almost like a master of ceremonies who has lost his powers, and even when he tries to reclaim them, everything feels forced, as if the singer is perpetually about to clear his throat. No sturm und drang here, then, no storm, no fervor: just a lot of haste and indecision. Some songs come closer to hitting their mark ("From The Fire", "Fallen"), but they still amount to little more than simple aphorisms, rather than astonishing and enchanting the listener with the dark tales of the band's early days.

Around the same time, brothers Alexander "Nod" Wright and Paul Wright also make a comeback, joining Bob Ahern and James Quinn to form Last Rites. The group releases just two albums, Guided By Light (2001) and Too Many Forms (2005).

Having lost track of his fellow cowboys, Carl McCoy fires off his own solo bullet with Mourning Sun (2005). At this stage in his career, he even prefers to credit his guest musicians under fictitious names, which is certainly one of the more intriguing facets of his enigmatic personality. Never looking back, in the new millennium McCoy takes apart and reassembles the elements of gothic-rock, at a point where many bands of the genre had instead settled into self-referential mannerism. Musically speaking, Mourning Sun sounds like a natural evolution from the metal of the previous albums, steeped in hidden combinations, symbolism and mysticism. The result is, unsurprisingly, a far more cohesive work, one that found the time it needed to mature, unlike the fragmentary Fallen.

Amid Gregorian chants and spectral voices, the album kicks off with "Shroud", before revealing a frontman who has rediscovered his voice on "Straight To The Light" and "New Gold Dawn". Birdsong and an approaching storm mark the beginning of "Requiem XIII (Le Veilleur Silencieux)". A rain dance that takes on almost the cathartic weight of Jim Morrison's rituals, though without any Oedipal complexes to exorcise: in the end, only silence remains, after hearing McCoy howl in the middle of a lightning storm.

Next comes the industrial turn of "Xiberia", all filtered voices and sampled sounds, though the two best tracks are most likely found near the tail end of the record. Momentum picks straight back up with "She", a melancholy ballad that flows directly into the apotheosis of the title track, with lush soundscapes and a choir provided by McCoy's two daughters, Scarlett and Eden. Closing things out are the hammering rhythms and acid-etched riffs of "In The Year 2525", an ending that doesn't fully convince due to its contrived nature, but which nonetheless does nothing to spoil the grand return of an incorruptible cowboy of the Apocalypse.

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