Foetus

Foetus, aka James Thirlwell, is one of the greatest artists in the history of rock. In his major works, he represented for industrial music what, years earlier, Frank Zappa had represented for the psychedelic era: the prophet of "total music". Starting out in 1978 from his native Australia and landing in a London whose socio-political and artistic upheavals would prove decisive for the years to come in every sense, Foetus was able to temper his personality - spastically torn between self-destructive tension and the drive to carve out a space of his own - thanks to the musical experiences, and otherwise, he gathered along the way.

Birthday Party, Coil, Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire were just some of the artists he crossed paths with. While working in a record shop on Oxford Street, he also came into contact with Steven Stapleton, the mastermind behind Nurse With Wound. This was undoubtedly the moment when Foetus finally settled on his idea of industrial music once and for all. By moulding together the punk-primitivist schizophrenia of the Birthday Party, the fiercely expressionist industrial aesthetic of pioneers Throbbing Gristle, and a certain fondness for cinematic soundtracks, with the satirical, surrealist heresy of the Nurse With Wound sound, Foetus arrived at an incredible symphonic-nihilist-danceable variant of industrial music, staking his claim from the very start with the 7" single "OKFM/Spite Your Face" (1981) as one of the greatest musicians of his era.

Through albums like "Deaf" (1981) and "Ache" (1982), he went on to develop that insight in an increasingly professional and original way, while simultaneously working on his recording techniques. Thus "Hole" (1984) turned out to be his first masterpiece, boasting exceptional tracks like "I'll Meet You In Poland, Baby", "Cold Day In Hell" and "Hot Horse". But while "Hole" still showed, all things considered, a few slight compositional hesitations, "Nail" (1985) revealed his artistic stature whole and flawless.

Starting from the premise that "the two most destructive human emotions are fear and guilt", Foetus orchestrates a genuine concept album about liberation, one that also manages to appropriate — in a "filthy" and literally "wicked" way — some cornerstones of 20th-century avant-garde music (Stockhausen and Varèse for the collage technique; Pierre Schaeffer for the manipulation of "concrete" elements), all without ever forgetting one of his great passions: Richard Wagner. So much so that it's from the latter that the grandiloquence of "Theme From Pigdome Come" seems to stem, a sublime overture that immediately establishes a climate of psychic terror. "The Throne Of Agony" is deformed, mutant punk-a-billy, percussive and solemnly ascending towards a mirage of grand-guignol vaudeville, with a progression that's almost synth-pop to the nth degree, morphing as imperceptibly as it does rapidly into a hyperkinetic twist, before erupting in the final scream ("Aaaaa-gooooo-nyyyyy!") and crashing into the explosion of "!". "Pigswill" is one of the most reckless and "difficult" tracks of his career. Slobbering, bestial ramblings, an assortment of metallic, "swinging" noises and geysers of treated guitar all help create a scenario strewn with all sorts of musical ruins, superbly assembled in an interlocking puzzle that only finds redemption in the final minute, when, teetering on the edge of collapse, both Foetus and his monstrous sonic creature launch into a frenzied art-punk gallop, complete with a mini Wagnerian apotheosis (at 5'32") and a "radical" agit-prop charge in the finale ("Destroy... Destroy...").

The slow, quasi-circular evolution of "Descent Into The Inferno" further sharpens the percussive drive. The track unfolds as a frenetic, painstaking process of accumulation, unleashing a dynamite charge that's as solemn as it is degraded and "degrading", both emotionally and sonically. "Enter The Exterminator", for its part, plays the gothic-thriller card: "strangled" vocal delivery, the usual scattered noises painting a twilit, even "sinister" landscape, muffled bell tolls, the creak of a hangman's noose, symphonic counterpoints. In Foetus's hands, the funk-jazz of "DI-1-9026" takes on his usual adrenaline-fuelled effervescence: a creature scarred by polyrhythms emerging from every direction, vertiginous staccatos, hyperkinetic swing, "compressed" synth-pop progressions, tribal-like turmoil, "free" trumpets and orchestral treadmills. "The Overture From Pigdome Come" brings us back to Wagner's monolithic, tragic symphonism. The extraordinary crescendo hands the record over to the expressionist noise of "Private War", which sits halfway between the Einsturzende Neubauten of "Kollaps" and the Pere Ubu of "Sentimental Journey" (from "The Modern Dance"). Without pause, it slides into the psychic apocalypse of "Anything (Viva!)", the album's absolute masterpiece. The first part completes the hysterical landscape of the previous track, launching the atomic run-up to the second (with heavy metal riffs and "freight-train" drumming), in which Foetus vents all his rage in a dark scenario of titanic exaltation. The final part — the definitive industrial-orchestral statement — makes clear that the goal of the liberation discussed earlier is nothing other than being able to do "any goddamn thing I want".

Faced with such prodigious creativity, the final impression is that Foetus created one of the most powerful musical languages in the whole of rock music. His works are no longer mere compositions. They are genuine orgies, sadistically orchestrated to demolish certainties.

Note: in the Eighties albums, the artist used three different monikers, all revolving around the word Foetus. "Hole" and "Nail" are the only albums released under the name Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel.

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29/10/2006