Second Edition

The 12-tracks stretch into infinity, sparse lyrics & repetitions occur- Albatross the meeting point of Samuel Beckett & Lee Perry. Some songs have been re-recorded, Memories & Swan Lake (aka Death Disco) different to the single versions. Death Disco one of Lydon's most personal lyrics, & up there with his best songs: Flowers of Romance, Theme, Order of Death, God Save the Queen...

Careering is probably my favourite song here, as with Submission there is a canny lyrical double meaning & it brightens up the bleak centre of the album (from Poptones to Bad Baby). The last few tracks are amongst the best- No Birds talking of "a layered mass of subtle props"; while Chant is a violent industrial beat. The final track, Radio 4, was rumoured to have been a joke- but along with Death Disco, it remains one of the albums more emotional moments. No words left/nothing left to say...And like that Lydon's talent waned, there would be the odd classic but mostly pantomime nonsense. This & the 1st PIL albums remain the only ones you need...

As with The Clash's equally experimental Sandinista (1980), this album would influence current counter-culture faves Radio 4 & PIL's influence can be detected in bands like Primal Scream, Massive Attack & Underworld. Metal Box remains a highlight of the 1970s & was rumoured to have been the one thing that late journalist Lester Bangs saved from the apartment he thought was on fire...

In the same year, PIL released this, their second album, and, although it received acclaim at the time, it has never been held up like Joe Strummer's meandering exercise in archaeology. 'London Calling' documents musical history, but 'Metal Box' takes the history and completely reworks it. You're no longer listening to a rock n' roll album or a late seventies take on it. You're listening to the creation of something new, something beyond simple rock and or roll.
Whereas Strummer took history and regurgitated it in an albeit fairly entertaining way, John Lydon regurgitated it along with his own guts.

Iggy Pop once said that the punk that exploded in 1976 took what he did down the pub. Maybe John Lydon knew this. For as soon as the bass hums into 'Albatross' you know you're experiencing something more than a raucous version of Status Quo. 'Metal Box', more than any other album, threads together every musical style of the seventies and with it the routes of the seventies. Dub, Krautrock, Punk, Ambient, Electronica, Industrial, it's all there squeezed into sixty minutes. Jah Wobble's bass throbs heavier than anything Augustus Pablo could've dreamed of, Keith Levene's guitar work takes in Can and Neu without losing any of the harshness of punk and John Lydon finally throws off the leash that Malcolm Mclaren wrapped round him over three years earlier. He spits, he snarls, he screams. The album resounds with menace.

The Clash were forever burdened by their distaste of seventies stadium rock bands and never really able to move from reaction to proaction, the creation of something new whilst not reverting to the old mistakes. There's nothing like this album anywhere, one wrought from such disparate influences and yet completely whole.