Fields of the Nephilim - Revelations/Forever Remain/Visionary Heads DVD
(Beggars Banquet)

And thus Fields of the Nephilim, a UK band that existed in its "classic" form, for better or worse, from 1984 to 1991, that ended up on Beggars Banquet and was seen as yet another in that label's series of goth or goth-related bands, that dealt with critical dismissal in equal amounts to fan worship. For their fans, it was all about everything from meditations on deep mysticism to frenetic but dark music, to their many detractors a bunch of people from highly unfashionable Stevenage dressed up as cowboys, claiming to be modern Crowleys and essentially remaking early Sisters of Mercy over and over again. Perhaps their most legendary moment from this negative standpoint was a photo that showed the quintet standing in their spaghetti western, all black gear, covered with dust to suggest a windblown, walking the wasteland post-apocalypse look. Or at least, it looked like dust...except that in the corner of the photo one could see the bag of flour used to create the effect.

And yet. For all that the band, unlike nearly everyone of its immediate forebears, from Joy Division to, indeed, the Sisters, evinced not even the slightest bit of humor (intentionally at least), for all that one has to swallow everything whole in order to accept the whole package, the Fields had something. My own first encounter with them was finding the live album Earth Inferno used in late 1991—I took a chance and right there, in the era of shoegaze and alternative's incipient triumph, I ended up being obsessed. Without knowing the studio versions at all, I was enthralled—and still am—by the sheer dark power of the music, by the seemingly outrageous fusion of Ennio Morricone's orchestral western twang with a glowering form of goth/metal cranked up to ten, not to mention a clever dollop of Pink Floyd's pre-Dark Side of the Moon extended tribal-hippie jams. Nod Wright's drumming in particular was a sheer rampage, but Tony Pettitt's sometimes hyperactive bass crawl and the combination of texture and feedback blast from Wright's brother Paul and Peter Yates were hardly holding back either. And then there was Carl McCoy, lead singer. Self-proclaimed seer but armed with enough knowledge on the matter to challenge the likes of Julian Cope about it if he chose, he possessed one of the most unearthly deep voices of the time. If Andrew Eldritch's moan was David Bowie meets Jim Morrison slowed down, McCoy was Ian Curtis on the high end, a hair above grindcore vocalists like Lee Dorrian and Justin Broadrick on the low end, and a heavy-duty rasp all around. Even when his words couldn't be understood (and sometimes, usefully, when they were), the sheer power and control in his, often echoed, roar was both surprising and just what the music needed.

The Fields' popularity was something that resulted in three separate videotapes in its heyday—a collection of music videos, Revelations (also the name of its greatest hits retrospective) and two separate live shows, Forever Remain and Visionary Heads. In a well-worthy move, Beggars have placed all three on one DVD, and anybody who ever loved them in the past is urged to run, not walk, to get one. But everyone else? Well, I'd say take a chance, but caveat emptor applies here and then some.

Revelations is the one that will divide anyone the most quickly as possible, and there's quite a bit that is frankly indefensible. While all the songs represented are among their best, and show that there was a way around surprisingly catchy and hummable choruses even amidst the height of bombast, none of the videos will qualify as lost classics from the eighties. The low budget initial efforts "Preacher Man" and "Blue Water" both could be outtakes from Hammer horror films 80s style, but with juxtaposed imagery and outrageous posing from McCoy in particular that's hard to swallow. Still, at least he tries to act out the parts—the rest of the band are clearly uncomfortable with whatever they're meant to be doing and are at their best simply playing, even while pig people and ridiculously capering wood sprites dance about them. "Moonchild" fixed the problem and upped the stakes by concentrating on McCoy for the most part, leaving the rest of the band to strike moody and not always visible looks, while the blend of cinematic and art styles combines everything from classic German film to the hints of ancient spirituality the song itself invokes. "Psychonaut," the best of the bunch, takes everything a step further—McCoy plays a Native American spirit wanderer more convincingly than labelmate Ian Astbury ever did, while the collage of references and styles, in tandem with the roiling surge of the music, feels truly unearthly at times. "For Her Light" reworks some live footage, "Sumerland" reverts to a basic band-on-well-dressed-stage format that's not noteworthy, and the electronic press kit bonus finds McCoy, in ever-present hat, detailing his inspirations and beliefs in a way that's doubtless heartfelt but otherwise unremarkable.

Forever Remain, taped at a London date in 1988 supporting their semi-self-titled second album The Nephilim, won't clear up the mystery for those unimpressed and frankly won't make the supporters very happy either. There's now doubt the packed and enthusiastic crowd is into it, but it's also pretty clear it brings its own energy to the performance—aside from the occasional move around by McCoy, the group locks itself into the music and plays, nothing more. It's a great performance, to be sure, but as a visual effort it's a disaster, something the filmmakers try to cover up by as many jumpcuts, interspersals of slowed-down/grainy footage and other late eighties clichés as possible. Still, it does confirm one thing, namely that the strikingly handsome McCoy not only wears his trademark outfit and long hair well (certainly a lot more readily than most of his bandmates, hiding some particularly tragic haircuts under their cowboy hats) but carries over his vocal growl to the stage from studio without a hitch. A couple of early and obscure efforts turn up—"Trees Come Down" and "Laura" - that'll please the hardcore fans who haven't seen this yet, but otherwise this one's best listened to rather than watched.

Visionary Heads, however, is the one that finally puts everything together. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's also the same show that resulted in the Earth Inferno album, and while the same basic problem with a concert film of the Nephilim remains - only McCoy has any sort of immediate stage presence - it's actually a lot more watchable as such. The band was arguably bigger than ever - the venue this time is the sizeable Brixton Academy, hardly an arena but certain no tiny club - and was also artistically finding a truly unique synthesis. Following the evocative "Psychonaut" single - ten minutes in its full form - the band's just released Elizium, consisting of four long, often multipart songs, found the group aiming for and easily hitting the goal of varied, intriguingly structured and truly epic compositions, at once recognizably the Nephilim and yet something more than had happened before. With the help of a guest keyboardist, the band translated those efforts to the stage beautifully, while also revisiting the past with some excellent performances of favorites like "Chord of Souls" and "Blue Water." That combined with a strong light show and more dry ice than might be thought humanly possible - along with a partial relaxation of their apocalypse cowboy imagery (only McCoy and Nod Wright wear hats and McCoy's the only one who goes full hog with the outfit) - makes Visionary Heads an often striking demonstration of rock theatrics. Perhaps the band's strongest ever moment comes with a performance of "Last Exit for the Lost," a fine enough effort from The Nephilim made even longer and more punishing here. McCoy's combined snarl and moan really does feel like the invoking of the spirits the lyrics partially refers to, while he works his still strongly attractive looks to the full. More than once the filmmakers focused on his staring, bright eyes to good effect, and it's easier than ever to see how the clear devotion of the crowd helped come about. The band themselves joked that the title of the original tape should have been Nod's Workout Video, and there's little doubt that the drummer practically explodes off the screen at his most frenetic. It's not a perfect concert documentation - a variety of secondary footage of the bandmembers gets continually reused at points to add more visually but simply ends up being tedious. But anyone wondering what the fuss was about would best start here.

It didn't last, though - some months after Earth Inferno's release, McCoy quit the band in a memorable strop, proclaiming "I am the Nephilim!" in a press release, forming a new group (actually called the Nefilim) that didn't put out an album for another four years or so down the line. Meanwhile, the rest of the group recruited a new vocalist, renamed themselves Rubicon and put out a couple of albums that had the music down but without McCoy's obsessive power fell a touch flat. What profile the band had originally vanished and as the nineties went on they became only the focus of an online cult - one of many for many bands - while things went on. Even a strangely abortive reunion a couple of years back changed nothing - if anything, the Wright brothers have had the most activity recently with a band called Last Rites. This DVD won't suddenly make the group famous again, and if anything its lasting influence was an indirect one in some of the more romantically extreme forms of black metal of recent years. But again - the group had something, and some part of me is very glad this is out, a little chance to grab at something now long gone.

ned raggett 2003 mar 21