Visage Album: “Anvil”

Close your eyes for just a moment. You're wearing rather martial black leather trousers, coat and hat; your jackboots are shined to a spit-polish. You're sitting in a dark, high-ceilinged parlor with a group of classical friends and statues...the men and women are beautiful in powder and rouge. Somewhere, a lone piano echoes a plaintive song - and dissolves into the pounding throb of machine music. It's 1982, and few bands crystallized the New Romantic trend as well as Visage did. Vocalist/model (or was it model/vocalist?) Steve Strange added his effete talents to the band (which at times included Dave Formula and Ultravox's Midge Ure and Billy Currie). Look past Strange's dated and extreme couture and you'll find strong electronic musicianship that deserves a second, third, and fourth listen. Just listen...with the lights out.

Huh. Am I glad I worked in a music store in 1997 and bought this CD. And it was so easy to get then, we stocked it at the time. In 1983 I recall only liking Side A. Years later it's still far better than Side B, but the rest of the cuts have grown respectable with distance, possibly due to nostalgia for the synthesized music of that era. This CD edition towers super-hard over the original LP simply for including "We Move (Dance Mix)" (Right On...) and "Frequency 7 (Dance Mix)", the latter being a particularly amazing analog-synth instrumental freak-fest. I always imagine Midge Ure ditching decorum for these five minutes to help invent the future of electronic music.

I love "Frequency 7". And "The Damned Don't Cry".

I would say that this is the ultimately best Visage album. I am so happy to see it has been reissued. The first time I looked on this site for this album it was 400.00! I was really getting close to buying it(that's how bad I wanted it). Well I am sure glad I waited, because now it's price has dropped dramatically! I am so excited! I love the new romantic music(even though Steve Strange doesn't think his music was that genre). It has that sound I adore, the synths, the riff of the guitars(this is the best of the best electronic music even to this day). I wish I were to have grown up when this band and many other synthpop bands were playing at clubs then(I was only a baby), I would have loved to see them perform live; but I am glad I can still be able to purchase their music, I just wish that you guys were selling more of their records. Anyway, I can't complain I am glad this cd is cheaper now because I love "The Horseman" one of my favorites on this disc along "What Have They Done" ,"Move Up" and "Wild Life", very well worth it for these songs alone. The other songs you can find on other Visage cds. So thankyou for my Visage! Love 'em!!! I have one more thing to say... if you're a fan get this it's a rare item!

Jenash

This album begins with the anthemic "The Damned Don't Cry" (which by the way was the title of a Joan Crawford film noir flick, just one gay reference that this album conjures up). This is definitely late night gay prowling music if I ever heard it. "The Anvil" indeed was a hardcore gay club in New York. I especially like "Again We Love" and the closing "Whispers", a really lovely instrumental with, you guessed it, whispers in the mix. Visage - The Anvil is an unabashedly glamorous trip through the underground gay subculture as well as being an atmospheric early '80s snapshot of synthpop at its peak. In other words, this is perfect club music.

I know this is supposed to be a serious review, but I have nothin' else to say, than that the songs are PERFECT, GREAT, WONDERFUL, but my point is - it is nothin' short of impossible to get this album, so someone, anyone, who reads this GET THAT ALBUM BACK IN THE SHOPS, it's silly, but I have to get it out, I love those songs, but I don't have the album, *cries*