"I don't give a fuck about John Lydon ... still, I think he knows what he's doing, and PIL is the proof ... because Metal Box is one of the strongest records I've heard in years." - LESTER BANGS, 1980
"Summons up everything from the unpleasant portentousness of middle-period Jim Morrison to what sounds like the deranged Kaddish of a punk rabbi. This is not, in short, exactly a party record ...the joke, of course, will be on me if fifteen years from now everything on the radio sounds like this. But it wouldn't surprise me too much." - STEREO REVIEW , 1980
The second album by John Lydon's post-Sex Pistols outing Public Image Ltd. was originally released in the UK in 1979 in a limited edition film canister-style metal box containing three 12" 45s. Some copies managed to float across the Atlantic into the hands of a fortunate few, making it a post-punk collectors' holy grail.
Unavailable for almost thirty years, the Metal Box is back as an exact replica of the original, remastered for better sound than the 1979 vinyl!
In Lydon's own words: "Metal Box was hard work. First, Virgin weren't very sure about the metal package, you know, cost, blah blah blah. So we offered to pay for some of it by reducing our advance from them. Obviously the idea of putting a record in a metal box was a bit unusual. The idea came from film canisters. We all thought video and film was the future. Besides, I've always collected vinyl and this was a really good way of stopping it getting damaged."
