Spahn Ranch Deluxe 1995 album reissue out now

Today, Cleopatra Records has reissued Spahn Ranch‘s pioneering album ‘The Coiled One.’

Originally released in 1995, this captivating album is enhanced with 8 bonus tracks that include album recording session outtakes that have previously never been released in any form.

‘The Coiled One’ was digitally remastered by industrial legend Jürgen Engler of Die Krupps and is now available for the first time on vinyl in a limited edition colored version that includes the original 10 songs, as well as a limited digipak ‘The Coiled One: Deluxe Edition‘ CD version (that contains the 8 bonus tracks).

‘The Coiled One’ will also be available on all digital and streaming platforms. Additionally, a seldom seen video created by a European fan for the song “Heretic’s Fork,” is now available once more.

‘The Coiled One,’ the Los Angeles-based Spahn Ranch’s second studio album, is often cited as a favorite among musicians and fans alike.

The album marked a tumultuous time in the band’s career, yet creative strife did make for quite a diverse album that stepped away from previous efforts.

Co-produced and engineered by Judson Leach, the album brings together sharp dance rhythms, both smooth and harsh electronics and programming provided by Matt Green and Rob Morton, with vocals by Athan Maroulis (currently of NØIR), ‘The Coiled One,’ was somewhat of a concept album built around the human mind slipping into madness against the filmic backdrop of poverty, piety, evil and machines.

The title itself, ‘The Coiled One,’ a Satanic sea serpent, one of many biblical references that include “Locusts” and “Babel,” medieval zealot torture devices such as “The Judas Cradle,” and “Heretic’s Fork,” leaps into the digital maelstrom in “Vortex,” the mechanized urban compulsion of “Compression Test,” and “Infrastructure,” and lamentations such as “Threnody.”

With that in mind ‘The Coiled One’ could have been an apocryphal ending to the band, instead it was a new beginning.

In less than 8 years, Spahn Ranch would go on to complete a total of 5 studio albums, 4 EPs and, in the process, perform more than 200 concerts in over a dozen countries before calling it a day in late 2000.

Spahn Ranch Photo By Abby Laspia

The band was formed in 1992 in Los Angeles by Matt Green and his New York–based collaborator, Rob Morton. They collectively used the funds they had saved up to jump-start the band. Rob Morton had been Matt Green’s musical partner for the 5 years prior. That same year in 1992, they signed to Cleopatra Records and released their self-titled, four-song EP, with vocals supplied by Scott “Chopper” Franklin (later to become bass player for The Cramps) Scott Franklin left another band to provide vocals for Spahn Ranch.

In 1993, they added vocalist Athan Maroulis and recorded their debut album, Collateral Damage. Their second album, The Coiled One, appeared two years later in the midst of Morton leaving the band due to creative and logistical differences. After his departure, the line-up was expanded to include Christian Death drummer David Glass, Screams for Tina guitarist Kent Bancroft, and Tubalcain drummer Harry Lewis. This offered a beginning of the fuller, more diverse, dark electro-industrial sound that Spahn Ranch would continue to pursue. By 1997, Spahn Ranch had pared themselves down to the three-piece unit of Green, Maroulis and Lewis.

Spahn Ranch continued to release albums throughout the late 1990s. Architecture, released in 1997, featured contributions from Killing Joke/Prong bassist Paul Raven and Rockats/Nancy Sinatra guitarist Danny B. Harvey. This album took an even more experimental approach to the Spahn Ranch sound, incorporating elements of drum and bass, dub and for the first time, live guitar parts. Beat Noir, in 1998, followed a similar path even further and included work with Bauhaus/Love & Rockets bassist David J. The compilation Anthology 1992–1994 was released in 2000 and contained the band’s first four releases in addition to previously unreleased material.

The band regularly toured throughout North America during their existence with the likes of Front Line Assembly, Front 242, Switchblade Symphony and Apoptygma Berzerk. Spahn Ranch also made a couple of European treks prior to their demise as a group in 2000.

Closure, their final album, was recorded in 2000 and released in 2001.

You can order The Coiled One from HERE