Metal Box: История Записи

the Public Image Ltd record

The Manor in Shipton on Cherwell
Townhouse, Advision, Gooseberry Sound and Rollerball in London
| genre =
Post punk
dub The album takes its name from the round metal canister which contained the initial pressings of the record. It was later reissued in standard vinyl packaging as Second Edition in February 1980 by Virgin Records in the United Kingdom, and by Warner Bros. Records and Island Records in the United States. The album was a departure from PiL's 1978 debut First Issue, with the band moving into a more avant garde sound characterised by John Lydon's cryptic lyrics, propulsive dub inspired rhythms led by bassist Jah Wobble, and an abrasive, "metallic" guitar sound developed by guitarist Keith Levene. Metal Box is widely regarded as a landmark of post punk.

The first studio album recorded following the departure of founding member, drummer Jim Walker. Metal Box was recorded in several sessions with several drummers, none of whom were credited on the original release. "Albatross" and "Swan Lake"/"Death Disco" were recorded with new drummer David Humphrey at The Manor Studio in Shipton on Cherwell. "Poptones" was recorded with Levene on drums. During this time, additional tracks were recorded at The Town House Studios in London, namely "Beat the Drum for Me" (which later turned up on Wobble's first solo album), and a new version of "Fodderstompf" (which became the B side of PiL's "Death Disco" 12" single). Humphrey left the band around mid May 1979. "Memories", "No Birds", "Socialist" and "Chant" were recorded with new drummer Richard Dudanski at Town House Studios in London. The instrumental "Graveyard" was recorded with Dudanski on drums. Dudanski left the band around mid September 1979. "The Suit" was recorded as a solo track by Jah Wobble at Gooseberry Sound Studios in London. Vocals and some overdubs were added at The Manor. "Careering" was recorded at Town House Studios with Wobble on drums. "Bad Baby" was recorded with new drummer Martin Atkins at Town House Studios. Except for a brief period during 1980, Atkins remained with the band until 1985. "Radio 4" was recorded as a solo piece by Keith Levene at Advision Studios and an unknown second studio. According to Levene, this was the last recorded track. Levene utilized aluminium Veleno guitars throughout the recording sessions to achieve a distinctively sharp and metallic guitar sound.

According to John Lydon, opener "Albatross'" was recorded live at The Manor Studio in Oxfordshire, with the singer free forming his lyrics. Guitarist Keith Levene, bassist Jah Wobble, and drummer David Humphrey made the song up as they went along, and recorded the song in one take. PiL also recorded at Townhouse Studios in West London with session drummer Richard Dudanski and produced the songs "Memories", "No Birds", "Socialist", and "Chant"; Levene recalls that "Memories" features him playing "this normal Spanish guitar thing that goes dun da da dun da da dun it's one of the first things I learned to play on guitar, very simple. I was very fond of that [ ] I just had the guitar going through an Electric Mistress." PiL recorded the song at an empty hall in Brixton to test a three bass sound system and worked with drummer Jim Walker but didn't record with him. According to Lydon, "Poptones" was based on a story "straight out of the Daily Mirror" about a girl who was kidnapped and "bundled, blindfolded, into the back of a car by a couple of bad men and driven off into a forest, where they eventually dumped her. The men had a cassette machine with an unusual tune on the cassette, which they kept playing over and over. The girl remembered the song, and that, along with her recollection of the car and the men's voices, is how the police identified them. The police eventually stopped the car and found the cassette was still in the machine, with the same distinctive song on the tape." In his 2009 autobiography Memoirs of a Geezer, Jah Wobble says that Poptones refers to "a journey we took in Joe the roadie's Japanese car [ ] and Joe had one of his dodgy cassettes playing.". He highlighted the song as "the jewel in the PiL crown. [ ] That [bass] line is as symmetrical as a snowflake. [ ] We had a drummer with us who was pretty good [ ] but the bloke just couldn't get the right feel for 'Poptones'. [ ] In the end Levene put the drums down on that track, his drums are a bit loose, but that is actually a good thing." Wobble cited "Careering" as his "second favourite track from Metal Box, and probably my favourite John Lydon vocal performance." Lyrically, the song is "basically about a gunman [in Northern Ireland] who is careering as a professional businessman in London." The song was recorded at the Townhouse during a quick nighttime session helmed by Wobble; he told journalist Simon Reynolds in an interview: "If you listen to the drum rhythm it is very similar to the sort of rhythm a drum and fife band would create. [ ] By now Keith had got hold of a Prophet synth, he used that on 'Careering'." Levene said, "It was never one of my favourite pieces because of what it was really about. [ ] There was this guy that was an old mate of John's who lived in this apartment. At some point John decided he hated his guts. He just wrote this really nasty, finger pointing, over exaggerated, ripping parody of what the guy was – 'Society boy.' [ ] This guy, [fashion designer] Kenny MacDonald, made his suit and all of ours and it made him look good to have the guys from PiL wearing his stuff. We'd wear it wrong and it looked even better, we didn't want the black leather jacket look like these punk bands. So John just decided to hate this guy, that's what happens and there's nothing you can do. He wouldn't be his lapdog and John thought he was a star and wanted that." Drummer Richard Dudanski cited it as one of his favourites. Album closer "Radio 4" was named after the BBC radio station. "I called it 'Radio 4' because in England, you got Radio 1, 2, 3 ," said Levene. "Radio 1 played pop tunes. Before that, the BBC was so boring! It took until about 1985 before we had FM radio."

The title of the album refers to its original packaging, which consisted of a metal case in the style of a 16mm film canister embossed with the band's logo and containing three 12" 45rpm records. It was designed by Dennis Morris and was innovative and inexpensive, costing little more to the label than the cost of standard printed sleeves for equivalent 12" releases (although Virgin did ask for a refund of a third of the band's advance due to the cost). Before the metal tin was finalised, there was discussion of the album being released in a sandpaper package that would effectively ruin the sleeve art of any records shelved next to it. That idea would later be realised by the Durutti Column for their 1980 Factory Records debut, The Return of the Durutti Column. The album's lack of accessibility extended to the discs themselves. Packed tightly inside the canister and separated by paper sheets, they were difficult to remove, and were prone to being nicked and scratched in the process. Since each side only contained about ten minutes of music, the listener was required to frequently change sides to hear the complete album. Deleted from the catalogue on 23 November 1979 after an initial release of 60,000 units, the album was re issued on 22 February 1980 as Second Edition, a double LP packaged in a more conventional gatefold. The sleeve art of Second Edition consists of distorted photographs of the band members, achieving a funhouse mirror effect. (The front cover is a photo of Keith Levene.) The lyrics are printed on the rear cover. These were originally printed in a magazine advertisement and not included with Metal Box. The band initially wanted the album released with a lyric sheet but no track titles. The United Kingdom version of Second Edition appears as the band intended, with lyrics on the back cover, but no titles, and "PiL" logo labels on all four sides of the vinyl. The US edition of Second Edition has track titles both on the back cover and the labels. The original metal canister idea was used a few years later during the compact disc era. By the late 1980s, a number of CDs were packaged in metal canisters. In 1990 the concept came full circle, with the compact disc release of Metal Box employing a smaller version of the original metal canister, containing a single disc and a small paper insert. Tape with the PiL logo was created with the intent of sealing each metal box. However, labor costs were deemed too expensive and the tape went unused. Martin Atkins has some of this tape and has put some pieces of it up on auctions to benefit The Museum Of Post Punk and Industrial Music.

Metal Box is now considered a post punk classic, and is highly acclaimed. Andy Kellman of AllMusic said that "PIL managed to avoid boundaries for the first four years of their existence, and Metal Box is undoubtedly the apex", noting that the album "hardly [sounds] like anything of the past, present, or future". He also compared it to the works of Captain Beefheart and Can. Village Voice critic Robert Christgau described the album's sound as "a full bodied superaware white dub with disorienting European echoes." Robert Palmer placed the album at third place in his best of 1980 list for the New York Times, proclaiming the album to be the "definitive album of postpunk rock and the year's most compelling slice of metal machine music." In 2003, the album was included in Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list at No. 469, the magazine calling it "eerie, futuristic art punk with dub bass and slashing guitar". Rolling Stone also included it in their 100 Best Albums of the Eighties, ranking it at No. 76. In 2002, Pitchfork ranked Metal Box at No. 19 on its "Top 100 Albums of the 1980s". It was also, along with their debut album, included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, with the reviewer Stevie Chick saying "the abrasive textures and powerful sounds they discovered would influence all manner of experimental music for decades to come", while describing it as "cold dank, unforgiving, subterranean." The songs "Albatross", "Poptones", "Careering", "Chant" and "Radio 4" were selected as "key tracks". In 2020, Rolling Stone included it in their "80 Greatest albums of 1980" list, praising the band for pushing "beyond post punk into a fractured space between demented abstraction and cranky freedom". Bassist Jah Wobble recorded and released a new version of the album in 2021, titled Metal Box Rebuilt in Dub.

All words, music and production credited to Public Image Ltd.

The original release of Metal Box comprised six sides of 12 inch vinyl, played at 45rpm.

Second Edition fits the album onto four 33rpm sides and features a slightly different song order ("Socialist/Chant/Radio 4" is split into its component parts, with "Socialist" and "No Birds" swapping places).

The original limited edition of Metal Box entered the UK albums chart, where it stayed for 8 weeks and reached No. 18 on 8 December 1979. The re release edition of Second Edition briefly entered the UK albums chart, where it stayed for 2 weeks and reached No. 46 on 8 March 1980.