Nail is a Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel album

Album

An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...

 released by Self Immolation

Self Immolation

Self Immolation is a record label and publishing company run by J. G. Thirlwell. Originally an actual label for Thirlwell's self-released early Foetus EPs and albums, Self Immolation became more akin to a vanity label for Thirlwell's releases on Some Bizzare Records and Wax Trax! Records...

/Some Bizzare

Some Bizzare Records

Some Bizzare Records is a British independent record label owned by Stevo Pearce. The label was founded in 1981, with the release of Some Bizzare Album, a compilation of unsigned bands including Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, The The, Neu Electrikk and Blancmange.-1981-1989:One of the first bands that...

 in 1985. It was initially released in the US by Homestead Records

Homestead Records

Homestead Records was a Long Island, NY based sublabel of music distributor Dutch East India Trading. It was founded in 1984 by Sam Berger, who was the American Independent buyer for Dutch East India Trading. Berger was finding that many bands who had perhaps released their own first 45 were...

 in 1985 and later by Thirsty Ear

Thirsty Ear

Thirsty Ear Recordings is an American independent record label. It was founded in the late 70s as a marketing company and expanded to issue its own records in 1990....

 in 1995. In 2007, the album was re-released by Some Bizzare records in a digipack format with remastered audio and re-worked artwork.

Nail is Self Immolation #WOMB FIP 4.

Description

Nail was Thirlwell's fourth album and second under the pseudonym of Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel. The album's content incorporates a variety of musical genres and the lyrics are often esoteric. For example, the tempo and instrumentation in "Descent Into The Inferno" is infrequent: the song's first half is sparse and percussive; in the latter stages the song gathers momentum and features synthesisers. "The Overture From Pigdom Come", an ironic composition resembling a classical piece of music is juxtaposed with perhaps the most brutal track on the album, "Private War", a track that features one minute of various grinding noises.

There are various obscure references within the songs, some more lucid than others. "The Throne Of Agony" goes off on a tangent and features the soundtrack to the TV series Mission: Impossible

Mission: Impossible

Mission: Impossible is an American television series which was created and initially produced by Bruce Geller. It chronicled the missions of a team of secret American government agents known as the Impossible Missions Force . The leader of the team was Jim Phelps, played by Peter Graves, except in...

. The lyrics, "Alas, poor Yorick, I knew me well" from the same song are a paraphrase of a line from Shakespeare's Hamlet (Hamlet: "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio..."). The line, "Turn on, tune in, drop out

Turn on, tune in, drop out

"Turn on, tune in, drop out" is a counterculture phrase popularized by Timothy Leary in 1967. Leary spoke at the Human Be-In, a gathering of 30,000 hippies in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and uttered the famous phrase, "Turn on, tune in, drop out". In a 1988 interview with Neil Strauss, Leary...

", in "DI-1-9026" is a reference to a Timothy Leary

Timothy Leary

Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison...

 phrase. Jack and the Beanstalk

Jack and the Beanstalk

Jack and the Beanstalk is a folktale said by English historian Francis Palgrave to be an oral legend that arrived in England with the Vikings. The tale is closely associated with the tale of Jack the Giant-killer. It is known under a number of versions...

 is also referenced, with a variation of the chant "Fee, fie, foe, fum!" appearing in the final track.

Track listing

All songs by J. G. Thirlwell

J. G. Thirlwell

James George Thirlwell , aka Clint Ruin, aka Frank Want, aka Foetus, is an Australian vocalist, composer and record producer...

 (as Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel).

1. "Theme from Pigdom Come" – 1:52
2. "The Throne of Agony" – 5:18
3. "!" – 0:04
4. "Pigswill!" – 6:13
5. "Descent into the Inferno" – 6:17
6. "Enter the Exterminator" – 4:43
7. "DI-1-9026" – 4:40
8. "The Overture from Pigdom Come" – 3:01
9. "Private War" – 1:06
10. "Anything (Viva!)" – 6:50

Some CD pressings place "The Throne of Agony" and "!" together on one track.

Personnel and Production

• J. G. Thirlwell
  J. G. Thirlwell
  James George Thirlwell , aka Clint Ruin, aka Frank Want, aka Foetus, is an Australian vocalist, composer and record producer...
  
  (as Clint Ruin / Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel) - Performance, production, arrangements
• Warne Livesy - Production, engineering

External links

• Nail at foetus.org