The Gospel According to the Meninblack
| The Gospel According to the Meninblack | ||||
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| The Stranglers studio album | ||||
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Publication |
1981 |
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admission |
1980 |
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| Label (s) | Liberty Records | |||
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Format (s) |
LP, CD |
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Title (number) |
10 |
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running time |
44:07 |
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| occupation |
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The Stranglers |
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Studio (s) |
AIR Studios (London) |
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The Gospel According to the Meninblack (German for example: The Gospel According to the Meninblack , alternative spelling (The Gospel According To) The Meninblack ) is the fifth studio album by the British band The Stranglers . The concept album was released on February 7, 1981 on Liberty Records and reached number 8 on the UK Albums Chart.
Track list
All titles have The Stranglers as their author names .
- Waltzin Black (3:37)
- Just Like Nothing On Earth (3:54)
- Second Coming (4:23)
- Waiting For The Meninblack (3:44)
- Turn The Centuries, Turn (4:34)
- Two Sunspots (2:32)
- Four Horsemen (3:40)
- Thrown Away (3:30)
- Manna Machine (3:17)
- Hallow To Our Men (7:26)
Bonus tracks of the CD version:
- Top Secret (3:27)
- Maninwhite (4:27)
History of origin
The production process for The Gospel According to the Meninblack began in January 1980 and was completed in August of that year. 1980 was a difficult year for the Stranglers: In March and April, singer and guitarist Hugh Cornwell spent five weeks in London's Pentonville Prison after he was given 1.5 grams of cocaine , 90 milligrams of heroin , small amounts of marijuana and two packages of mushrooms containing psilocybin had been arrested and was accompanied by allegedly underage fans. In the same year, the band's equipment was stolen during a US tour, they separated from long-time manager Ian Grant (who then became manager of Big Country and The Cult ), and after fans left campus because of a concert at the University of Nice the university, the entire band was jailed for five days.
As part of the composing process, the band members took heroin to "aid the creative process". For the recordings, the band renounced a producer for the first time and produced the album (and the pre-released single Who Wants the World ? , which was not released on the album in May 1980 ). Alan Winstanley, who had produced the previous album The Raven and as a producer from Generation X and Madness acted as a sound engineer.
Almost three weeks before the album was released, the title Thrown Away was released as the first single; it reached number 42 on the UK charts. The second single, Just Like Nothing On Earth , was the first Stranglers single to miss the Top 75. The album itself stayed in the charts for five weeks, reaching position 8 in the first week. In the spring of 1981, the Stranglers did one The tour according to the Meninblack named US tour to promote the album. A total of around 50,000 units were sold from the first pressing of the album. The Gospel According to the Meninblack was re-released several times, including in 1988 by EMI as a CD , which contained two bonus tracks.
In terms of content, the pieces on the album deal with human contact with extraterrestrials and Men in Black and interweave these topics with passages from the Holy Scriptures of Christianity , the Bible . The Stranglers had this theme before in Meninblack on the previous album The Raven and on the single Who Wants the World? picked up. The lyrics suggest, among other things, that the deity of Christianity is an extraterrestrial intelligence and that the miracles described in the Bible were based on demonstrations of extraterrestrial technology.
The recordings for the follow-up album La Folie began in August 1981. Thematically, the Stranglers concluded their menin black phase with it.
The Meninblack intro piece Waltzinblack was used as the title track of the British TV show Floyd on Food by TV chef Keith Floyd . The piece is used by the Stranglers as an intro for their live performances.
reception
The British music magazine Smash Hits judged the album, “tongue-in-cheek arrangements” underpinned “eccentric, expressionless singing” and drew comparisons to the US band Devo . The US magazine Trouser Press noted extensive instrumental passages, extensive use of synthesizers and complex special effects, but also "little of the other thrust" of the band. Reviewer Ira Robbins described the album as an "attack on organized religion", but also as a "departure into nowhere". The British Melody Maker ruled that the album had "no sense of warmth or meaning", it was completely humorless and the vocals were "indifferent on the verge of apathy ". The sounds described the music on the album as "practically worthless".
Allmusic referred to the album in retrospect as a “stilted concept album” on which the band would “plow through esoteric texts unfocused and unconvinced”.
Hugh Cornwell , singer and guitarist of the Stranglers at the time of publication, referred to The Gospel According to the Meninblack in retrospect as his favorite Stranglers album in 2004. Jean-Jacques Burnel pointed out in an interview in 1998 that the album “turned out exactly what we wanted” and that 17 years later it still “sounds very modern”.
Web links
- The Gospel According to the meninblack at Allmusic (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ David Buckley: No Mercy. The Authorized and Uncensored Biography . Hodder & Stoughton, London 1997, ISBN 0-340-68062-8 , pp. 155 .
- ↑ BBC Breakfast, January 2015 (from 0:04:23) on YouTube
- ↑ You have been informed: 10 things you should know about The Gospel According To the Meninblack . In: The Burning Up Times . No. 2, June 2006, p. 4. (PDF, 17.2 MB)
- ↑ a b OfficialCharts.com: Stranglers. Retrieved September 11, 2018 .
- ↑ TheStranglers.co.uk: Memorabilia - The meninblack, La Folie & The Collection. Retrieved September 11, 2018 .
- ↑ a b David Buckley: No Mercy. The Authorized and Uncensored Biography . Hodder & Stoughton, London 1997, ISBN 0-340-68062-8 , pp. 174 .
- ↑ a b David Buckley: No Mercy. The Authorized and Uncensored Biography . Hodder & Stoughton, London 1997, ISBN 0-340-68062-8 , pp. 178 .
- ^ TheGuardian.com: Keith Floyd's farewell: bananas, bow ties and the Stranglers. Retrieved September 11, 2018 .
- ↑ TrouserPress.com: Stranglers. Retrieved September 11, 2018 .
- ^ Allmusic.com: The Stranglers: The Gospel According to the Meninblack. Retrieved September 11, 2018 .
- ↑ HughCornwell.com: The meninblack. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on September 24, 2015 ; accessed on September 11, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
