My formidable great-aunt believed that age was some kind of impertinent insult. It’s probably the best way to look at it. Take Jim “Foetus” Thirlwell, for instance.
JG Thirlwell, 1987: foetus.org
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Despite hanging out with Marc Almond, Nick Cave, and Jim’s then-girlfriend Lydia Lunch, young Thirlwell didn’t fit into any particular scene. Calling himself “Clint Ruin”, he spent the mid-1980s being broadly lumped into the post-punk no-wave group of experimental musicians with whom he occasionally collaborated – though mostly Thirlwell would bash his own tracks out on a synth, tape them and sing over the top – making for an odd kind of karaoke for early live performances.
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JG Thirlwell & Nick Cave, 1983: foetus.org
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In 1985, he released the album Nail. I first heard Nail in 1995, when a colleague of mine told me to “hear it and weep”. I heard it and … Well, hear it for yourself. No, seriously, do that. Click ‘play’ now!
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(Descent Into The Inferno, Nail: live on The Tube, 1985)
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There’s a fine point between catchy and chaos where all the best songs lie – think: Nine Inch Nails’ Head Like A Hole, Bowie’s Scary Monsters, or even Radiohead’s Climbing The Walls. Nail walked that tightrope all the way to the other side. Foetus was an odd kind of rebellion – the sort of equal-opportunities misanthropy that hates absolutely everyone in equal measure: all crooned in a beautiful, snarling sub-Elvis baritone and topped off with a caustic swing-jazz electronica.
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JG Thirlwell & Trent Reznor, c. 1995: foetus.org
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Through remix work and collaborations, Thirlwell developed a reputation as a “pioneer of industrial music” – though only one other act, Raymond Watts’ group Pig, combined those sounds in roughly the same way.
In 1995, Foetus released Gash, which was yet again an album released at the wrong time. Had Nail come out in 1989, Foetus would have been as big as Ministry. Had Gash come out in 1999, the band mightn’t have been much bigger, but the music would have made a lot more sense. As densely-layered and genre-mashing as NIN’s later The Fragile, 15 years on it still sounds fresh as a daisy. Hammer Falls, for example, starts off with a slow bhangra beat and then lurches into the heaviest rock this side of Soulfly – and that’s before you get to the trumpet solo!
Reinspired 