Rolling Stone, September 4th, 1997
© 1997 Rolling Stone
John
Lydon:
Virgin ***
by MATT DIEHL
Finally, John Lydon's back on dangerous ground. The erstwhile Sex Pistols/Public Image Limited provocateur's first-ever solo album features his most dissonant noises since PiL's 1981 Flowers of Romance. Songs like "Grave Ride" skitter over tribal electronics spiked with Eastern drones; the John Wayne Gacy-influenced "Psychopath," however, proves that Lydon's trademark misanthropy is still intact. Psycho's Path also finds Lydon, like everybody else, going techno for the '90s. For him it makes sense, though, as he's always been a dance-music buff (an early PiL song wasn't called "Death Disco" for nothing). It's a gas to hear him out-Prodigy the Prodigy, snarling over grooves from electronica heavyweights such as Leftfield, the Chemical Brothers and Moby.
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