condition (record/cover): NM / NM

Insert included.

More than any other album, Hole displayed Jim Thirlwell's industrial vision at it's best, a vision of uncontrollable urges, a vision of letting yourself loose and dissolving in Dionysian ecstatic frenzy, and then making a perverse music-hall out of it, a bizarre theatrical show for like-minded zealots, already evident from the devilish derailing industrial boogie-stomp rockabilly "Clothes Hoist", and the barbaric and psychotic funk-soul "Lust For Death". Maybe not getting the attention it deserves, "I'll Meet You In Poland Baby" displayed another side of his personality, that of the sound-sculptor, in what is effectively a samples collage forming a menacing hymn of destructive fervour, a sadistic oratorio falling apart in darkness. As the album went on, Thirlwell seemed intent on diving further to the murk, as in the shiv industrial clanging vomit hip-hop "Hot Horse", while the growling Beefheart-ian blues-soul "Sick Man" escalated in a perpendicular roller-coaster ride. The feel was repeated successfully in "White Knuckles", a veritable industrial machine that went into overdrive and churned razors, while it steamrolled it's way into cathartic bombardment. The slightly more humorous "Satan Place", an amphetamine driven satire of 60's pop harmonies, distracted from the apocalypse somewhat, before the hyperactive funk-swing fusion "Water Torture" took it to an even more extreme level, giving the impression of deranged Looney Tunes hellbent on destruction to the point of sadomasochistic dissolution, a Muppet Show from hell. Yet the album's imprint was "Cold Day In Hell", a more austere manifesto of sound, a pure raw, paralytic, anthem of magnified tension.