Background
The record has two songs on it, each taking up each one side of vinyl in its entirety. The contents of the B-side varied over repressings: the first edition contained noise-filled grooves, the second edition held playable, multi-layered music, and the third edition contained a flat, grooveless face. [2]
Originally, track "How to Destroy Angels" was intended to be the B-side of the track "Silence and Secrecy", but due to Christopherson and Balance leaving Psychic TV, owners of Temple Records, the idea was shelved. [2] "Silence and Secrecy" has only been released in partial form by way of a two-minute excerpt on the Zos Kia and early Coil retrospective Transparent . [3]
Both songs appeared, with additional remixes, on the album How to Destroy Angels (Remixes and Re-Recordings) .
How to Destroy Angels is also the name of Trent Reznor's (of Nine Inch Nails fame) side project together with his wife Mariqueen Maandig and Atticus Ross. Reznor has acknowledged that the earlier Coil release was the source of the band's name and that he had run the idea by Peter Christopherson before using it. [4]
Michael Trent Reznor is an American musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and composer. He came to prominence as the founder, lead vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and primary songwriter of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. The band's line-up has constantly changed, with Reznor being its only official member from its creation in 1988 until 2016, when he added English musician and frequent collaborator Atticus Ross as its second permanent member.
Nothing Records was an American record label specializing in industrial rock and electronic music, founded by John Malm Jr. and Trent Reznor in 1992. It is considered an example of a vanity label, where an artist is able to run a label with some small degree of independence within a larger parent company, in this case the larger company being Interscope Records.
Coil were an English experimental music group formed in 1982 in London and dissolved in 2005. Initially envisioned as a solo project by musician John Balance, Coil evolved into a full-time project with the addition of his partner and Psychic TV bandmate Peter Christopherson. Coil's work explored themes related to the occult, sexuality, alchemy, and drugs while influencing genres such as gothic rock, neofolk and dark ambient. AllMusic called the group "one of the most beloved, mythologized groups to emerge from the British post-industrial scene."
Peter Martin Christopherson was an English musician, video director, commercial artist, designer and photographer, who was at one time a member of British design agency Hipgnosis.
Fixed is the second extended play (EP) by American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. It was released on December 7, 1992, by Nothing, TVT, and Interscope Records. It serves as a companion release to Broken (1992), and includes remixes by Coil, Danny Hyde, JG Thirlwell, and Butch Vig, as well as then-live band member Chris Vrenna.
Atticus Matthew Cowper Ross is an English musician, record producer, composer, and audio engineer. Along with Trent Reznor, he won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Social Network in 2010. In 2013, the pair won a Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media for their soundtrack to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. In 2021, alongside Jon Batiste, they won the Golden Globe and Academy Award for the soundtrack for Pixar's Soul.
Geoffrey Nigel Laurence Rushton, better known under the pseudonyms John Balance or the later variation Jhonn Balance, was an English musician, occultist, artist and poet.
Time Machines is a 1998 studio album by English experimental group Coil, originally released under the one-off project alias Time Machines. The album was created under the premise of psychedelic drone pieces named after corresponding hallucinogenic drugs, "tested and retested" during the album's studio sessions for apparent narcotic potency. Main member John Balance also described the album as an attempt to create "temporal slips".
Scatology is the debut studio album by English experimental music group Coil. It was recorded at various studios in London during 1984 and produced by the band along with JG Thirlwell; the album features a prominent appearance of Stephen Thrower, who subsequently became an official member of Coil starting with the group's following album, Horse Rotorvator. Despite its title, the album focuses on alchemy, mainly an idea of turning base matter into gold. The record contains a wide array of cultural references, including to people such as Marquis de Sade, Alfred Jarry, Salvador Dalí, Charles Manson, and others.
"Panic" and "Tainted Love" are songs recorded by British experimental music band Coil. These were released in 1985 through Some Bizzare in the UK and Wax Trax! Records in the US respectively, as the band's first single, and the sole one from their 1984 debut studio album, Scatology. Originally released on twelve-inch vinyl discs, the single was regarded as the first AIDS benefit release, and has been reissued several times on compact discs.
The Snow is a track by the British group Coil, available on the album Love's Secret Domain and also released as a 12" vinyl, cassette and CD EP.
Unnatural History is a compilation album produced by Coil, including tracks that originally appeared on various compilations and limited edition releases along with some previously unreleased material. The compilation contains material from 1983–1986, but was only released in 1990. It would become the first in a series of compilation albums with the releases of Unnatural History II and Unnatural History III.
How to Destroy Angels is a remix album by Coil. All of the songs are remixes from the 12" single of the same name, and features cover artwork by filmmaker Derek Jarman. The remixes were produced by John Balance, Peter Christopherson, and Steven Stapleton of Nurse with Wound. The song "Absolute Elsewhere" is blank and silent, as it was originally released. It is portrayed in this release as a single second of silence.
The Ape of Naples is the final studio album by English experimental group Coil. It was released on 2 December 2005 in the UK and Thailand by Threshold House, and has subsequently been reissued by multiple labels. Produced by Peter Christopherson following the death of bandmate John Balance in 2004, it contains reworked and remixed material from 1993 to 2004. The album was dedicated to Balance's memory.
The Angelic Conversation is a CD soundtrack released by Coil for the Derek Jarman film bearing the same name. This album was recorded by John Balance, Peter Christopherson, and Stephen Thrower. Judi Dench provides the vocals, which are recitations of Shakespeare's sonnets.
Transparent is a collaborative release by the bands Zos Kia and Coil.
The New Backwards is an album by Coil released on 18 April 2008. The album is reworked from the Backwards demo, which was originally created for Nothing Records.
How to Destroy Angels is an American post-industrial band formed in 2009 by Nine Inch Nails members Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross alongside Reznor's wife Mariqueen Maandig and longtime Nine Inch Nails collaborator Rob Sheridan. The group is named after a 1984 Coil EP of the same name. Alessandro Cortini joined the lineup for the duration of the 2013 tour.
How to Destroy Angels may refer to:
Recoiled is an EP by Coil and Nine Inch Nails described as "a compilation of Coil's unreleased work for Nine Inch Nails" and "outtakes from the remix sessions from Fixed, Closer to God and Further Down the Spiral". It was released on February 24, 2014, via British record label Cold Spring. It was released posthumously after the deaths of the two original Coil members, Peter Christopherson and John Balance. Danny Hyde, a former employee and engineer of Coil, later licensed the remixes to Cold Spring. The release is composed of variations of previously released remixes, which appeared on the albums Fixed, Further Down the Spiral and the "Closer to God" single.
