Public Image Ltd – Metal Box

I got into The Sex Pistols pretty early on. PIL just came as a result of being into the sex pistols, but definitely not until about the mid 2000s when I first heard this record. The first PIL record I heard was Flowers Of Romance, which I bought from Rob’s Records in Nottingham. Now I think that record is amazing but at the time I found it quite difficult to get into. But Metal Box just hooked me instantly.

One thing I found inspiring about this record was how it was put together. Going back to that collage thing again, this record feels like a lot of things that have been cut and pasted together. You’ve got these jump cuts between tracks that sometimes feel completely different to what’s gone before, but it keeps you going with the trajectory of the record. It’s another one where it feels like there’s just so much going on. You listen to it over and over again and you’re hearing new things.

PIL, especially this album, get name checked by so many different kinds of people. And there’s an atmosphere to this as well that wasn’t present in many other post punk bands at the time; an explorative sensibility that I think is pretty unique. Can, dub and Peter Hammill are the things that Lydon and the band have cited as being the main inspirations for it. There’s probably not many bands coming out of the punk scene at the time that were listening to stuff like that. It’s one of those records that you could put on 20 years from now and it would still sound relevant.