One of those is JG Thirlwell who has a 40 year career where he has mostly recorded under the name Foetus. Occasionally that moniker is part of an elaborate sentence that features the word- Scraping Foetus Under the Wheel, You’ve Got Foetus On Your Breath, Foetus Interruptus, and so on.
I first heard Foetus on public radio but also because of a friend who was familiar with his work. It was the 90s and all of his work - both the obscure and his more well known albums- were being re-released by Thirsty Ear.
Though his first couple of albums are rudimentary, they are helping invent the industrial genre. In 1984 and 1985, he released Hole and Nail, two classic albums that are industrial and yet something more.
I am going to skip to 1995. Foetus is working as a remixer for Nine Inch Nails and Columbia Records has decided to release his album. This is the weird days of Alt Rock where major labels signed artists that otherwise would never have been signed - Daniel Johnston, Ween, Boredoms, King Missile, Butthole Surfers, Unsane.
That year’s album Gash gets mixed reviews these days but I think it’s a masterpiece. Given a big budget, Thirlwell goes from industrial to big band to Arabic melodies in a mishmash of genre stylings. The production is clean, the wordplay is clever, the music intense.
These would mark the second half of his career, as would the decision to simply be called Foetus and to be credited by his birth name as opposed to the early records which were credited to monikers like Clint Ruin and Frank Want.
Foetus had been prolific and Thirlwell remained that way by releasing other projects like Manorexia, Xordox, and Steroid Maximus, as well releasing soundtrack work under the JG Thirlwell name.
Six years passed before we got Flow, which did what Gash did and possibly even better. I would sign off on it being his masterwork. Where his early work was easily categorized as manic blasts or maybe what the Damned called “mindless directionless energy”, Flow was the sound of someone in internal torment working out psychological struggles in his head. If Edward Munch’s “The Scream” had music, perhaps it would sound like this.
In retrospect, 2005s Love had high expectations to live up to. But Love, a more restrained affair largely works with its ambition and quality songwork. Thirlwell had done it once again.
Albums followed in 2010 and 2013 (the companion pieces Hide and Soak) and remix albums were sprinkled throughout but Foetus went mostly dormant.
Thirlwell was busy making music that sounded like the coolest spy shows that hadn’t been made, so when shows like Archer and the Venture Bros came out, it had to be a no brainer to hire him for the soundtrack. Having made the blueprint that Nine Inch Nails and Ministry took to filling arenas, I am happy to see him get a nice big (hopefully) payday.
His other projects put out fantastic work like the spacey Xordox, and he remained a big name remixer for artists like Faith No More, Current 93 and John Carpenter.
But it sounded like Thirlwell was done with the Foetus world which meant one final album- the appropriately named Halt, the final of many four world titled LPs in his career, released the week of Christmas 2025.
In many ways, Halt feels like a third part to Gash and Flow. The titles sound like a list of complaints- The World is Broken, Die Alone, Dead to Me, Scurvy.
The production is clear. Thirlwell who often worked alone is joined here with some collaborators like Brian Chase of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Leah Asher of the Rhythm Method, and Simon Hanes of Tredici Bacci. Not surprisingly the production is crystal clear, this is a guy who’s been behind the desk for Swans, Sonic Youth and Boss Hog.
The songs themselves stand out separately but I am always going to have a tough time judging this against a discography that I consider on of the greatest. I wish the songs had more variety between them. The “remote control clicker” effect of jumping genres from track to track as he did on Gash or Love probably would have made more an impact. Also, the crystal clear production somewhat feels like a blessing and a curse. I think it might have sounded better if it was a bit dirtier. But individually in five and six minute bursts of noise, I find myself finding the Thirlwell I fell in love with.
Still, if Foetus is going to end, it likely would sound like the individual brain fighting itself in anguish which is the sound of this album and appropriately for someone with so many different projects (and differently named projects) ending in a track called “Many Versions of Me”.
That my expectations are so high for an end to a career also means I am baffled that the album is only available on Bandcamp (and released in the dead zone of December and with only one video on YouTube to promote it) though maybe that just means Thirlwell wanted to share with his closest fans. As he has with most of his later work, Thirlwell plans to pair it with another forthcoming release, which means we should see at least that piece (entitled LEAK) according to the artist in 2027.
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