Album Review- Xordox- Terraform

JG Thirlwell had a revolutionary career as an early participant in the industrial genre. Recording under various pseudonyms- his albums as Scraping Foetus Under the Wheel particularly 1984s Hole and 1985s Nail are well respected. 

While he was quite prolific for a time, his art is all over the place and outside the two aforementioned albums, you will see different opinions though everyone will agree there’s good work in the catalog. I personally think 1995s Gash is a top record - a surprising “of the time” signing to the major label Columbia Records. (Online talk tends to prefer the more aggressive “Thaw” from 1988.)

Foetus recorded less often in the 21th Century but he’s still put out quality product. It became much harder after Gash to find his records and I resorted to Amazon but I can say I have faithfully purchased everything. 

2001s Flow is an amazing end-to-end record if pushed to plug one here. But Foetus seems to be on the back burner now. 2013s Soak was the last album we got from the Foetus moniker. 

While juggling Foetus projects and various collaborations, he’s had three split off bands that have kept him busy. 

There’s Steroid Maximus - three albums from 1991 through 2002. A take on spy movies and crime noir with over the top action and big band sounds on steroids. Although no one knew it then, it created the perfect route for what has kept Thirlwell busy in recent years (and surely his largest paychecks) by soundtracking the cartoons The Venture Bros (collected in two volumes as JG Thirlwell in 2009 and 2016) and Archer (released in 2024). 

There is Manorexia- a much harder to classify Freeform project that Wiki calls Modern Classical. There are four albums which were exclusively offered through his website from 2001 through 2011

Finally, there’s Xordox. As much as I love Steroid Maximus, I think Xordox is even a funner listen- all synths providing a science fiction sound. For those who haven’t checked on Thirlwell in awhile, it will likely be a nice discovery. Terraform is the third album, following albums in 2017 and 2021. 

While it would be easy to throw it in with video games soundtracks, songs like “Anthrobot” seem to have a bit of a punch that you might not expect. “Moonrise” is a climactic motion picture without the motion picture. “Planet Xordox” harkens back to Gary Numan, Afrika Bambaataa and Fad Gadget - those early 80s visions of the Future, except with modern synth technology.