This is What You Want ... This Is What You Get

With the band’s line-up in tatters, the recording of PiL’s fourth studio album is an interesting mish-mosh of sessions with drummer Martin Atkins often pounding everyone into submission. There are several bona fide classics here, including the hit single, “This Is Not a Love Song” and the powerful opener, “Bad Life.” Elsewhere, things get plenty weird, as befits a Public Image album and by the time the album reaches the gorgeously shifting “The Order of Death,” with its constant taunt of the album’s title, it feels as if one has spent the better part of the evening in a discothèque that checks your I.Q. every few minutes. The arrangements are that tough, dense and challenging. The grand production adds a thickness to the super-funk of “Solitaire.” “Tie Me to the Length of That” sounds like a bizarre cross between dance music and the ranting of a moderately crazy person with constant mutterings underpinning the mix of guitars and keyboards. From here, the “band” would disband again.