Compact Disc

Public Image Limited | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 25, 1990)
• Original Release Date: 1978
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Elektra / Ada
• ASIN: B000005IRS
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #66,238 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rotten Masterpiece, February 18, 2003

By 

M. Aranda "noisemonger" (planet earth, dimension 4) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Compact Disc (Audio CD)

To use a blanket statement, Johnny Rotten was anarchy incarnate. But this overlooked classic proved that John Lydon always knew exactly what he was doing; this album was his revenge on those who never believed or lost faith after PiL's previous two albums.
It's also PiL's first bold step towards a more accessible sound.

"Album" (aka Cassette, Compact Disc) has a distinct pace to it; "FFF" starts the album off with a bang (literally) and is an amazing, acrobatic rocker about so-called friends falling by the wayside during tough times. The song flows directly into "Rise," PiL's biggest hit song.

"Rise" starts off slowly, building up in tension as it goes along. Sex Pistol fans will be shocked; Lydon had never sung before so melodically, so tunefully. But as the song, purportedly about South African aparthied, pounds along Lydon's careful delivery tenses and eventually returns to his snarl from classics like "Anarchy in the UK" or "Memories."

The next cut, "Fishing," has one of those angular, snarling riffs that Post-Punk made famous, but with a Heavy Metal edge. "Fishing" is the heaviest song on this album and Lydon's sneering vocals are in full force, but even at his meanest he keeps things melodic and amazingly catchy.

"Round" follows the pattern of fast-slow-fast-slow that this album follows; it opens with deep bass and slow, rhythmic steel drums. This song remains subdued and only picks up in tempo towards the end as Lydon begins a circular chant about nuclear holocaust.

"Bags" is dismissed by some as the album's weakest track, but it's always been a favorite of mine. Big drums, deep bass, goth-pop keyboard lines, and one of Lydon's best performances. Ever. The man's melodic sensibility is immeasurable. For an antichrist.

"Home" was a pretty big single in Britain, almost as big as "Rise." It's easy to see why. The tight rhythym section plays it steady as Lydon proceeds to scare the living poop out of you. And the heavy metal guitar solo has to be heard to be believed. Great keyboards, maybe a little overcooked with the back-up singers.

Actually, "Home" breaks up the fast-slow-fast pacing that makes this album so brilliant; this has always been, in my opinion, the one flaw here. The pacing of this album makes it much more tense, and enjoyable. This may be knit-picking, but I think this detracts from the album as a whole.

Well, on to Album's closer, "Ease." I'm not really too keen on the quasi-Australian intro of the song; it sounds fine but I think it's a bit too long before the drums crash through, followed by the rest of the band. We're only talking about (maybe) 90 seconds of music, but I think it could have been done in about 30. Once the song get going a meditative mood sets in. The keyboards' high notes make for wonderful drama, and Lydon returns to his tuneful, melodic voice from "Rise." Overall, a fine way to end a classic, albiet blemished, album.

Some people refer to this as "Johnny's metal album," but it's not. No heavy metal album, particularly from the dismal 1980s, ever packed the stark dynamics captured here. PiL has always been about attitude, intelligence, and originality.
This album packs all the above in droves.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dystopian stadium rock that doesn't suck, October 23, 2004

By 

The Drainpipe (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Compact Disc (Audio CD)

A stunning return to form. As assembled by producer Bill Laswell, there's not really a PiL to speak of - it's basically Lydon and a group of session musicians - but who's complaining when these guests include Steve Vai, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Ginger Baker? With its emphasis on big guitars and big drums, "Album" was written off by the unenlightened as PiL going stadium rock, but Lydon's confrontational lyrics and caterwaul vocals, and the abundance of Eastern melodies, help steer this away from the realm of conventional 80s metal. "Anger is an energy" is the mantra of "Rise": one of PiL's finest moments ever, the song manages to be both a tribute to Lydon's Irish heritage and also a scathing indictment of Apartheid torture practices. Lydon's impassioned vocal presence has never sounded so graceful. Elsewhere, the album is rife with surprising and very effective musical flourishes: never is this more evident than on the closing "Ease," a beautiful, monumental mood/rock piece with synth, sitar and didgeridoo (and a killer Vai guitar solo). In a marked contrast to the sporadic quality of the two previous PiL studio albums, there's no filler here: EVERY track is a highlight. "FFF" is a rollicking opener in which Lydon lashes out at a former friend/colleague ("Farewell my fairweather friend/On you no one can depend"). Lydon continues the apocalyptic themes of "World Destruction" (his 1985 single collaboration with Afrika Baambattaa and Laswell) on "Round" ("Mushrooms on the horizon") and the mistanthropic, catchy numbers "Fishing" ("Talking to you is a waste of time/Go crawl back into your dustbin"), "Bags," and "Home" ("Better days will never be"). Easily PiL's most essential 80s moment (apologies to all those "Flowers Of Romance" fans), "Album" is second only to "Metal Box" as the best PiL album ever. It's an extraordinary, non-condescending and underrated highlight of a largely boring musical landscape (a.k.a. the 1980s). NOTE: in keeping with the generic packaging of this release, the LP was titled "Album," the CD "Compact Disc" and the cassette "Cassette."

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lydon's brutal lyrical honesty married to musical craft.., March 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Compact Disc (Audio CD)

Suprised this old album has not been reviewed before, as it is the most accessible piece of work ever put out by Lydon. If it lacks the raw anger of the Pistols era or the drug-induced dysfunction of earlier PiL offerings, it surely makes up for it in the sheer quality of the musicianship and the clarity and force of Lydon's vocal delivery. In some senses this is a top quality melodic rock-pop album; the searing guitar solo at the end of "Ease" is simply outstanding, as are the keyboard textures around the single "Rise". Lydon's voice is at it's most ruthless; the shouting and atonal straining of the Pistols era replaced by a focused, bitter, sneering but composed narrative. Lydon has always been about truth - he has a coruscating intolerance of hypocrisy and a surprisingly puritan moralistic streak. His cynical humour here is at it's sharpest "...logic is lost in your ....cranial abbatoir" he mocks in "FFF"

This is the defining album where Johnny Rotten ends the process of growing up to become John Lydon. Musical maturity allied to the unique vocal core of Lydon himself. It can never surpass "Never Mind The Bollocks" as an album, and there is probably no single song that rises head and shoulders above the rest in the way that say "This is Not a Love Song" does. But it remains my favourite core Lydon offering.