Coil were an English cross-genre, experimental music group formed in 1982 by John Balance—later credited as "Jhonn Balance"—and his lover Peter Christopherson, aka 'Sleazy'. The duo worked together on a series of releases before Balance chose the name Coil, which he claimed to be inspired by the omnipresence of the coil's shape in nature. Today Coil are one of the most influential and best known industrial music groups.

The group's first official release as Coil was a 1984 EP titled How to Destroy Angels. Following the EP's success Coil produced a series of three albums, Scatology, Horse Rotorvator and Love's Secret Domain, which met with little commercial success, but were praised as innovative due to their blend of industrial music and acid house.

In 1988 the group began working on a series of soundtracks and released experimental music under several pseudonyms. Coil redefined their sound during this period, and by 1998 were incorporating drone sounds into their recordings. In 1999 the group gave their first performance in sixteen years, and began a series of mini-tours which would last until 2004.

Following the death of John Balance on November 13, 2004, Peter Christopherson announced via their official record label website Threshold House that Coil as an entity had ceased to exist.

Beginning (1982–1984)

Balance and Christopherson at the beginning

Coil was formed in 1982 following Balance and Christopherson's departure from Psychic TV. Balance and Christopherson began working with John Gosling on the project Zos Kia, which resulted in four live performances and the 1984 album Transparent. Following Gosling's departure Balance and Christopherson teamed up with Boyd Rice, and under the alias Sickness of Snakes released the split album Nightmare Culture with the experimental group Current 93.

While working on their first official release, 1984's How to Destroy Angels, the group settled on the name Coil. According to the sleeve notes, the single track LP is "ritual music for the accumulation of male sexual energy" and was produced under a variety of technological, spiritual, and meteorological conditions which the band felt to be magickally significant.

Since its initial release, Transparent has been reissued in CD format, while How to Destroy Angels has been remixed and released on a full length CD. Tracks from Nightmare Culture have featured on the group's Unnatural History compilation series.

Scatology, Horse Rotorvator, and Love's Secret Domain (1984–1988)

LSD promotional photo. Left to right: John Balance, Stephen Thrower, Otto Avery and Peter Christopherson

Following the underground hit How to Destroy Angels, Coil left LAYLAH Records for Some Bizzare and produced Scatology, released in 1984 as their first full length studio album. The album was largely based on the sound of industrial music as well as the Post-punk movement. While songs such as "Restless Day", "Panic" and "Tainted Love" are representative of a mainstream style, other tracks preview what would become Coil's unique electronic style. The single Panic/Tainted Love became the first AIDS benefit music release, as the profits from sales of the single were donated to the Terrence Higgins Trust. The "Tainted Love" music video, directed by Peter Christopherson, is on permanent display at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Horse Rotorvator followed in 1986 as the next full length release. Although songs such as "The Anal Staircase" and "Circles of Mania" sound like evolved versions of Scatology material, the album is characterized by slower tempos, and represented a new direction for the group. The album has a darker theme than previous releases; according to Balance, "Horse Rotorvator was this vision I'd had of this mechanical/flesh thing that ploughed up the earth and I really did have a vision of it—a real horrible, burning, dripping, jaw-like vision in the night...The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse killed their horses and use their jawbones to make this huge earth-moving machine." The artwork features a photograph of the location of a notorious IRA bombing, in which a bomb was detonated on a military orchestra pavilion. Horse Rotorvator was in part influenced by the AIDS related deaths of some of their friends. Furthermore, the song "Ostia (The Death of Pasolini)", is about the mysterious death of Pier Paolo Pasolini as well as what Balance described as "the number one suicide spot in the world", the white cliffs of Dover. After the release of Horse Rotorvator Coil left Some Bizzare, due to the record company's debt of GB£10,000 to the group. Gold Is the Metal with the Broadest Shoulders followed as a full length release, marking the beginning of the label Threshold House; however, the album is merely a collection of outtakes from earlier sessions.