At the beginning of 1988 I looked on Fields of the nephilim as just another goth band. Dawnrazor was a good album but lacked that certain something that made First & last & always, Love, God's own medicine and Floodland classics.
Then came Blue water, Moonchild and, my first FOTN live expierience, on The Mark of the watchman tour. I was really hopeful that the new album would live up to the singles and the band's live performance.
I bought The Nephilim the week it came out. I didn't read music papers so I had no preconceptions as to what it would be like. From the winding build up of Endemoniada I was hooked. The album flowed from one track into the next with nothing out of place. The sheer intensity was unrelenting even when the pace of the first side was replaced with the slower opener of side two, you still expected Celebrate to come crashing out instead it flowed into Love under will before bursting out then easing back down for Last exit... then cranking it all up into the breathtaking climax.
The more I listened the more I found.The album's depths still surprise me today. It very soon became my favourite album, everything I'd listened to previously had been merely a prelude....This was the real thing.
I never thought anyone could ever top The Nephilim but Fields of the Nephilim did. A year later with Psychonaut then two years later they gave us Elisium. To be able to even follow up The Nephilim would have been remarkable, but to be able to better it was unbelievable. Probably why, in my opinion, the Fields of the Nephilim line up of McCoy, Yates, Wright, Wright and Pettit remain the greatest band to have ever graced this world.
