The use of the word gold in the album title is ironic, since a collection of outtakes and leftovers is generally considered to weigh in well under the gold scale. With a group such as the evolving Coil collaboration, however, there's the chance that a well-conceived collection of archive material could have quite a positive impact, whatever the relative status of individual tracks in terms of what projects they were first created for. Rejected material can become a highlight out of a combination of whatever unusual aspects already exist in a piece as well as the dramatic impact of a newly conceived program flow. Gold Is the Metal is a great example of this since the individual tracks continually present challenges to the listener combined with a sonic magnetism…

Coil's first official full-length album, Scatology, is one of the essential landmarks in the group's discography and, moreover, one of the '80s industrial scene's more vital and influential recordings. This is the first part of the essential Coil trilogy that also includes Horse Rotorvator and Love's Secret Domain. The 1984 album exhibits the group at its early industrial stage, in transition to the undefined genre of astral noise psychedelia that Coil would inhabit for the following decades without peer or precedent. The core duo of Peter Christopherson and John Balance are joined by Clint Ruin (aka Jim Thirlwell), whose role in the production cannot be underestimated, as well as Stephen E. Thrower, Alternative TV's Alex Ferguson, vocalist Gavin Friday of Virgin Prunes, and one Raoul Revere (who is in fact British camp pop legend and Soft Cell vocalist Marc Almond)…

The title Horse Rotorvator is explained in the liner notes as a device large enough to "plough up the waiting world," created from the bones of the horses of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The Bay City Rollers this isn't. On the group's second full album, Coil continue the refinement of brute noise and creepily serene arrangements into a truly modern psychedelia, from tribal drumming and death march guitars to disturbing samples and marching band samples and back. Balance shares the same haggard, mystic vocal delivery common to fellow explorers of the edge like David Tibet and Edward Ka-Spel, but he has his own blasted and burnt touch to it all. His lyrical subjects range from emotional extremism of many kinds to blunt, often homoerotic imagery (matched at points in the artwork and packaging) and meditations on death…

Originally released around the turn of the millennium, Musick to Play in the Dark featured a restarted Coil at bay, with original members John (later Jhonn) Balance (R.I.P.) and Peter Christopherson joined by synthesist/bassist Thighpaulsandra, and Drew McDowall (replaced by Rose McDowall on the second volume). These are long-form works, collections of mood pieces in several modes, and what’s interesting (and somewhat predictable) is that the patience displayed while shifting in between these modes creates a tension and space that feels… almost removed from music by a step, as if the performance decided to slowly back away from Coil at a respectful, totality-fearing distance (or maybe it was the psychic force of their music that pushed it all back)…

Threshold Archives began as a project by Peter Christopherson in 2006. At the time, Peter was involved in many projects that consumed much of his time including Soisong, a re-launched Throbbing Gristle, and The Threshold HouseBoys Choir, in addition to assembling the final Coil album, The New Backwards, and the massive Colour Sound Oblivion box. With the passage of time, intercontinental moves, and record label bankruptcies, many master recordings and artworks were lost, damaged, or degrading.

In September 2000 Coil returned to the Royal Festival Hall for their second gig there in the space of a year. They co-headlined with their old pal Jim Foetus, premiering material from their current release, "Constant Shallowness Leads to Evil". The set also featured older fan favourites like Horse Rotorvator's "Blood from the Air" and Love's Secret Domain's "Titan Arch", a song they played only one more time after this show, as well as an all new spectacular stage design and brand-new reflective stage costumes for the band. Truly a mind-altering experience available here in pristine sound quality for the first time.

"The New Backwards" was conceived by Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson in 2007, revisiting stray tracks which hadn't seemed to gel with the material he had chosen for the more somber "Ape of Naples" from 2005, COIL's initial posthumous release, a sort of requiem and a kiss-goodbye to his then recently deceased partner John Balance.

Track 1 originally released on Nasa-Arab 12" (Eskaton, 1994). Track 2 is an extended version of the original released on Stolen And Contaminated Songs CD (Threshold House, 1992) and subsequently extended for Nasa-Arab 12" (Eskaton, 1994). Track 3 originally released on Macro Dub Infection Volume One comp. 2xCD (Virgin, 1995). Track 4 originally released on Chaos In Expansion comp. CD (Sub Rosa, 1993). Tracks 5-11 are demos, outtakes, and other era-appropriate ephemera.

Half an hour of previously unreleased, heavenly doped muzak from Coil, featuring John Balance vocals including some which have never been heard before.

Recording of Coil's live performance at Megalithomania!, an event which took place on October 12th, 2002 at The Conway Hall in London. Rather than the cathartic onslaught of slowly morphing noise found in the acclaimed Live Two, Megalithomania is quiet and slow. Only about halfway through the album's singular track do vocals appear, and they are distant, primal screams. The sparse vocals that are on this track feel like the band is summoning an ancient rite between ancient farmers and a pagan god, John's timeshifted, relaxed vocals answering to the previous distant screams. The quiet, rippling synths, the samples of running water, the album cover and the use of reverb also all contribute to the music's ancient, cavernous qualities. This disc is an abstract and fascinating peek into coil's neo-pagan aesthetics.

Selvaggina, Go Back into the Woods is a limited-edition live album, recorded on June 11, 2004 in Jesi, Italy. This appears to be the full set of the concert, and contains a new version of every track from previous studio effort Black Antlers. As such, the question of which has more value to the listener is to be considered. Selvaggina is well-recorded and excellently performed, and some of the kinks of the Antlers versions of the tracks have been ironed out. For example, opener "The Gimp (Sometimes)" is here a more vibrant and shorter version than its counterpart, but retains its aura of goofy menace. "Sex with Sun Ra" retains the vibe of the Antlers version, but with more urgent vocalizations from John Balance, and animated work from Tom Edwards on the marimba…

A sly and nasty riposte to domestication, Constant Shallowness Leads to Evil is a bloody-minded record, at times sounding like a cattle-prod surge delivered directly to the spine. A stocktaking of the previous four decades of outsider blare - from La Monte Young, to Metal Machine Music, to even the earliest Butthole Surfers - Coil soils their pawn-shop electronics in blood and sweat, a muscular return to industrial roots. The nominal normal track, "I Am the Green Child," stumbles along like Krautrock coupled with the Exorcist soundtrack. Singer John Balance intones a pretentious and portentous text, voice almost drown in a thick gauze of processing. After this wheezing discourse crawls to a halt, several tracks follow like the lament of a dying washing machine…

Available only on dates of Coil's Even an Evil Fatigue tour in 2004, Black Antlers is a stopgap release that consists of early studio and live versions of songs that were being worked on for the next official studio album. Due to John Balance's accidental death, most of the tracks on Black Antlers would become final yet unpolished versions. Sounding particularly unfinished is the opener, "The Gimp (Sometimes)," a ballad that never quite comes together over its 11 minutes, failing to mesh the dark, ambient instrumentation with Balance's beautiful and haunting vocals. The second track, however, "Sex with Sun Ra (Part One: Saturnalia)" is a classic late-period Coil track. Balance intones a fictional tale of a conversation between himself and the free jazz legend over a pulsating backing track punctuated by bell tones and sparse industrial percussion…

The conclusion to the 1998 season series (actually released in January 1999) certainly lives up to the title billing, in that things do sound awfully cold and gloomy this time around. Opening track "A White Rainbow" does it brilliantly, though Balance's upfront, softly echoed vocal backed by viola from William Breeze and buried background chants result in an unstable, fascinating blend. Enough randomly crazed distortion comes in at the end to send everything just enough over the top…

The third installment of the season EPs from 1998 found William Breeze returning to add more viola as well as mandolin, while Rose McDowell, Louise Weasel, and Sorrow's Robert Lee are among the various guests. Coil worked initially with treated vocals and synth, then built up the arrangements of the five tracks from there. The feeling at many points is very much in line with the Coil/World Serpent tree of modern mysticism. Certainly Balance and McDowell's chants and pronouncements on the exquisite "Rosa Decidua," backed with descending chords on organ and further murky waves of noise, feels like a centuries-old ritual returned to life…