Ape of Naples

Listening to The Ape of Naples is a bittersweet experience. As the last album recorded during John Balance's lifetime, it serves as a final statement and summation of the band's multi-faceted career. Naples is much more of a "classic"-sounding Coil album (in the vein of Love's Secret Domain and Musick to Play in the Dark, Vol. 1) than more recent outings (such as ANS, Constant Shallowness Leads to Evil, or Astral Disaster). Ape is made up of recording sessions that date back to the mid-'90s, recordings done for Trent Reznor's nothing label, and more recent works that were still getting worked out in a live environment ("Triple Sun," "Tattooed Man"). Balance and Peter Christopherson are joined by the likes of Danny Hyde, Thighpaulsandra, Ossian Brown, Cliff Stapleton, and Mike Yorke, depending on the track. Which would lead one to the assumption that the album would sound disjointed, with a rotating cast of characters involved. The magic of Coil is that the album flows as smoothly as it