Metal Box

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Metal Box

Studio album by Public Image Ltd.
Released	November 23, 1979
Recorded	1979
Genre	Post-punk
Length	60:29
Label	Virgin Records
Producer(s)	Public Image Ltd.
All Music Guide link Tiger Sushi link
Public Image Ltd. chronology
First Issue (1978)	Metal Box (1979)	Paris au Printemps (1980)

Metal Box also refers to a green cube in the Super Mario Bros. series that has appeared in two video games.

Metal Box is an album by Public Image Ltd. released in 1979 by Virgin Records. The title refers to the album's original packaging, which consists of a metal 16mm film canister embossed with the band's logo and containing three 12" 45 rpm records (although the final tracks/side are 33rpm.) The music was reissued in 1980 as a double album titled Second Edition.

The music is famous for its abstract, avant-garde nature, including a huge bass sound derived from dub music, for a unique, literally "metallic" guitar sound (guitarist Keith Levene played aluminum-constructed guitars), and for its sonic high-fidelity due to the 12", 45rpm format. In 2003, the album was ranked number 469 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

1 Packaging
2 Personnel
3 Track listing
- 3.1 Metal Box
- 3.2 Second Edition
4 External links

[edit] Packaging

The Metal Box packaging was innovative and surprisingly inexpensive, costing little more to the label than printed sleeves for equivalent 12" releases. But after an initial release of 60,000 units, the album was re-released in 1980 as Second Edition, a double-LP in a gatefold sleeve.

Metal Box opened

Metal Box CD release 'film can'

The original metal canister idea caught on a few years later during the compact disc era. By the late 1980s a number of CDs were packaged in metal canisters, including Prince's special edition of the Batman soundtrack. In 1990, the concept came full circle, when the compact disc release of Metal Box employed a smaller version of the original metal canister, holding a single disc and small paper insert inside.

The Second Edition sleeve art consists of distorted photographs of the band members, achieving a funhouse mirror effect. (The front cover is a photo of Keith Levene.) The song lyrics are provided on the rear cover; these were originally printed in a magazine advertisement and not included with Metal Box. The band initially wanted the album released with a lyric sheet but no track titles; the United Kingdom version of Second Edition appears as the band intended, with lyrics on the back cover, but no titles, and "PiL" logo labels on all four sides of the vinyl. The American edition of Second Edition has track titles both on the back cover and the labels.

[edit] Personnel

A paper insert lists PIL's members as "John Lydon - Keith Levene - Wobble - Jeanette Lee - Dave Crowe," though the latter two individuals were the band's videographer and accountant, respectively. (Neither individual was exactly efficient: There is no video for any of the Metal Box tracks.) The credits also do not mention that Lydon was the vocalist, Levene played electric guitar and synthesizer, and Wobble was the bassist.

PIL didn't have a permanent drummer at the time of recording, so the drummers are uncredited. Later interviews with the people involved have established the drummers to be: David Humphrey (tracks 1 and 3), Richard Dudanski (2,6,7,10,11), Keith Levene (4,12 and probably 8), Jah Wobble (5), Martin Atkins (9).

[edit] Track listing

[edit] Metal Box

The track listing for the original release is as follows:

"Albatross"
"Memories"
"Swan Lake"
"Poptones"
"Careering"
"No Birds"
"Graveyard"
"The Suit"
"Bad Baby"
"Socialist"
"Chant"
"Radio 4"

"Swan Lake" is an alternate version of the earlier PiL single "Death Disco".

[edit] Second Edition

The track order is slightly different from that of Metal Box. Also, this configuration inserts pauses between some tracks where Metal Box did not.