#bucketlistbands: Foetus - 'NAIL'

When Wayne Cheong nominated me to answer the #bucketlistbands #10AlbumsChallenge, the world was a very different place.

Another hungover morning in the bottom of the Black Lagoon / Purgatory disguised as a room with a view / I used to be in heaven looking down / Now I know the inferno from the inside / And you can't see out them windows / And smoke gets in your eyes / And eyes just wanna cry cry cry cry cry cry cry...

Though the current apocalypse is defined more by bakery than butchery, the monotony-as-hell depicted in Foetus's NAIL perfectly captures the zeitgeist.

When JG Thirlwell started recording, back in 1978, he would manually cut up tape to create samples. Released in 1985, NAIL was the first to feature the seminal Fairlight II synth, which allowed Thirlwell to layer delicate strings and other flourishes over the proto-industrial-jazz-rock songs, topped off with his trademark 'demented Elvis' voice. Don't be fooled, though - this isn't a pop album with some classical bits, but a chamber composition through the medium of pop.

As lyrically ugly as it is musically pretty, NAIL lays out all of Thirlwell's fears and neuroses, sifted through puns ("make a withdrawal from my blood bank") and pop culture panic ("10050 Cielo Drive / No-one gets outta here alive"). Later, Thirlwell's protégé Trent Reznor moved into the infamous address, declared the house haunted and had it demolished. Thirlwell showed Reznor it was possible for a tech-literate multi-instrumentalist to record a whole album by yourself, though Thirlwell is also a renowned producer and visual artist.

Think of it as a horror movie. A really good one, like Aliens or The Shining. It's unsettling, but enjoyably so. It shouldn't surprise you at all that Thirlwell is mostly known as a soundtrack composer these days. Thirlwell doesn't just play music, he plays with music, with gleeful disregard for genre or accepted norms. Copy from one person, it's plagiarism; three is research. Thirlwell is a whole damn library.

Without NAIL, there would be no Nine Inch Nails. It is difficult to overstate its influence, which makes it all the more tragic that so few people have heard it.