It's perhaps unavoidable, but every single phrase here comes steeped in prophecy; every melody line leads the listener inwards towards reflection. The first line of opener "Fire of the Mind": "Does death come alone or with eager reinforcements?" Its chapel-organ-like tones bring an immediate air of finality, hanging heavy over this final Coil studio album. Ian Johnstone's gorgeously funereal white card packaging, striking photographs, and his stark cover artwork (which is either an angry ape or a figure post-castration, depending on which way you look at it) gives a quiet, contemplative, eerie, peace to the contents, which veer from maniacal lunacy to spiritual deliberation. It's unclear what the late Jhonn Balance's completed vision would have been for the posthumous The Ape of Naples, and this album is a gathering of unreleased work from his last days and earlier material culled from uncompleted sessions. It was an odd combination of Balance's deterioration, Promethean genius, and human warmth that made him one of the most unique frontmen ever; this LP stands as a testament to those qualities. There's something slightly peculiar about the album in that at times Balance doesn't seem fully visible even when he's in full voice. On several occasions, his vocals sound somewhat shrouded. Is there lassitude in Balance's voice, or is there a purposeful remoteness on the performances of "Triple Sun" and "Amber Rain"? Or is it just the hindsight of what happened investing his vocals with foresight? Some of the material here will be familiar to Coil fans from live releases and gigs, and "The Last Amethyst Deceiver" (as near an official Coil classic as its possible to get), "Triple Sun" (the version here is criminally short but elegantly detailed) and "Teenage Lightning 2005" are already well known in Coil circles. But their place on this album and excellent production cannot be undervalued, as each helps to show Balance at his visionary best. The many Coil affiliates (Ossian Brown, Tom Edwards, Cliff Stapleton, Mike York, Danny Hyde, and Thighpaulsandra) that have helped Sleazy to realize these performances into gorgeously disturbed beds of music should receive praise, too; The Ape of Naples sounds truly out of time and delicately beautiful in places. The poise of electronic sounds and beats with warm live instrumentation (such as marimbas) gives the music a human heart, making the atmosphere of loss all the more conspicuous. "Tattooed Man", either a song of love for his current partner or a piece of ugly self loathing, features a hurdy-gurdy, lending the track both a Gallic and sea-faring feel. How did these so-called Industrialists end up somewhere as charmingly sweet as here? In contrast, they punch out a version of "Heaven's Blade" that is as untethered, drugged, coherently dark, and deliciously vehement as anything they've done previously, even during their Ecstasy-overdosing era. A track from their aborted Backwards sessions at Trent Reznor's Nothing Studios, this is a jilting, buzzing, jittery furrow which wolves whisper, swirl, and snarl around in hopes of fresh blood. Balance is slyly conspiratorial and loosely clings to the thin line between angelic transformation and madness; coupled with a magnificently understated backing track, this is likely to be seen as one of their pinnacles. "I Don't Get It" is creepily damaged, sounding like the unwinding of some sick child's melted toy as organic twisted sounds bubble under the surface. Balance's torn up, sped up, and fucked up vocals are cast into the mix without a thought for their malign influence on the sweet string and horn arrangements. Like some sleep-deprived remake of Randall and Hopkirk: Deceased, this foggy detective-thriller theme shows glimpses into a mangled psyche through the spitting, screaming, snarling Balance. The song attempts to pulse and strain under its own tight structures, but somehow remains in one piece to its creaking, rubber-gagged end. His vocals also strain at the walls of sanity on "It's In My Blood," where his yodeling screams and elongated, tortured vowels manage to speak up for the whole asylum ward with the high pitched whine of the title. An oil drum beat, war horns, and Thighpaulsandra's descending string derangements lead to an off-mic quip from Balance ("Is that enough, Sleaze?"), as if his howls were as normal to him as fish and chips. Ending with one of the most unlikely songs for anyone to cover, never mind Coil, who'd of predicted the theme to UK cheesy camp sitcom Are you Being Served? being used for anything other than a UK Hip-Hop sample? "Going Up" takes the original's theme and loops it under a slow waltz, turning it into a very gentle, tongue-in-cheek, open-armed welcome to Death. Balance's words are dropped low into the mix and Francois Testory's choirboy vocals are a prayer to the bric-a-brac of everyday life and the escape skywards. This album catches Jhonn Balance's many guises in amber and traps them for a generation of explorers to swallow, follow, and then take down their own path. As one of their most unmagikal-themed releases, there might have been commercial avenues for this album that will never be followed up. The summing up of twenty-three years of Coil will be left for the future's sure-to-come "best of" collection; The Ape of Naples stands as one of their finest albums ever, making it all the more gutting that this is their last. - Scott McKeating, Stylus

Listening to The Ape of Naples is a bittersweet experience. As the last album recorded during John Balance's lifetime, it serves as a final statement and summation of the band's multi-faceted career. Naples is much more of a "classic"-sounding Coil album (in the vein of Love's Secret Domain and Musick to Play in the Dark, Vol. 1) than more recent outings (such as ANS, Constant Shallowness Leads to Evil, or Astral Disaster). Ape is made up of recording sessions that date back to the mid-'90s, recordings done for Trent Reznor's nothing label, and more recent works that were still getting worked out in a live environment ("Triple Sun," "Tattooed Man"). Balance and Peter Christopherson are joined by the likes of Danny Hyde, Thighpaulsandra, Ossian Brown, Cliff Stapleton, and Mike Yorke, depending on the track. Which would lead one to the assumption that the album would sound disjointed, with a rotating cast of characters involved. The magic of Coil is that the album flows as smoothly as it does, not as if it were pieced together over the years and with different collaborators. The focus of the album seems to be (perhaps consciously, perhaps not) on Balance's beautiful and expressive voice. All tracks feature his vocals, notably the industro-goth of "Heaven's Blade," the twisted circus atmospheres of "Tattooed Man," and quite possibly the saddest song Coil ever recorded, a cover of BBC favorite Are You Being Served's theme song, "Going Up." This last is a highlight in the Coil catalog, with Balance duetting with Francois Testroy, telling the listener that "it just is." The painful acceptance of this line encapsulates the experience of the album -- Balance is gone, we must move on and continue. The Ape of Naples is one of Coil's best albums and one of the best albums of 2005. - James Mason, All Music Guide

I can't think of any experience in the world more emotionally painful than a parent losing a child. No matter the circumstances (accident, disease, etc,... ), one experience is common to all survivors: the need to seek some kind of closure, which nothing can bring. A gaping emotional void remains. Fans and friends looking for closure with the final studio album from Coil are not going to find it here. Only recently have I realized how appropriate the name John Balance really was. Geff/John undeniably brought an equal (and extreme) amount of joy and pain all those he touched. He was extreme, and although his death was blamed on his alcoholism, if it wasn't that it would have been the drugs, and if it wasn't that it would have been something else: he was an extreme person who with manifested extremes of personality. The Ape of Naples is a very painful album: it was conceived in pain, it was recorded in pain, it was completed in pain. Many of its songs date back over a decade to when the working title was Backwards. Peter Christopherson—along with the supporting cast of Thighpaulsandra, Ossian Brown, Cliff Stapleton, Mike Yorke, and others—has pulled together songs from different sessions, recorded at different times and different parts of the world to piece this together. The packaging is lavish but delicate. A glued insert folds out into a poster, containing lyrics and images by Ian Johnstone, but the card stock in which it is conatined is not something to be left in places where it can be damaged easily. One of the intentions seems to have been not to make something like an Unnatural History (Coil's compilation series of previously issued singles and other non-LP tracks), so everything here is previously unreleased, more or less. The songs chosen, or the versions presented have never been issued. Fans will appreciate finally having the music recorded in that infamous New Orleans session and earmarked for that Trent Reznor-curated imprint of Interscope Records long ago. Six of the 11 songs come from there. "Fire of the Mind," which was also a working title of this album at one point, opens the record with the rich choral and organ based beauty reminiscent of the Musick to Play in the Dark series. It's accented with the hurdy gurdy playing of Cliff Stapleton, who was a relatively new addition to Coil. (The other new additions to the ensemble are the marimba and vibraphone playing of Tom Edwards and the pipe and duduk playing from Mike York, both of which feature prominently on other tracks.) The first line is striking for coming from a recently departed man's mouth: "Does Death come alone or with eager reinforcements?" Along with other lines like "I don't expect I'll understand how life just trickled through my hand" on the equally touching "Amber Rain" hint that Balance could have known the end was near for him, however, I think he has always toyed with death and the concept of the end. (See: Horse Rotorvator, whose working title was Funeral Music for Princess Diana, lines like "Most accidents occur at home" in "Sex with Sun Ra," and "the world is in pain, we all must be shown, we must realise that everyone changes and everything dies" on "Blood from the Air"). Balance's most political statement, "A Cold Cell" first appeared on a compilation from The Wire magazine. "I Don't Get It" was a Song of the Week given away on the Brainwashed Coil website, however it was originally named "Spastiche." Both of these songs have been reworked into completely new versions. While the sound on "I Don't Get It" has been expanded with vocals and more sound effects, "A Cold Cell" is more stripped and abbreviated. "It's In My Blood" was also the title of a song dating back to the infamous Backwards demos, but that song surfaced as "AYOR" on those compilations which first appeared in Russia before being issued through Threshold House. On this album it is an entirely new song, yet Balance's painful wailing remains. Similarly, "Heaven's Blade" here is a completely different song than the song of the same title which appeared on the unfinished demos. Some might not appreciate how much material has been recycled, despite the fact that everything contained are indeed radically new versions. Songs like "The Last Amethyst Deceiver" and "Teenage Lightning 2005" stick out in particular as they have been issued so much. "Tattooed Man," "Triple Sun," and "Going Up" are the newest songs, revealed only through live performances over the last few years. The versions here might have been assembled through both archives of live shows and in-studio recordings of the group. The first two being much shorter than the noisier, elongated versions the band did live, while the last is based on the theme for the BBC's Are You Being Served? and features the wonderful soprano falsetto of Francois Testory. The brevity of the majority of these songs actually do an effective job of conveying the notion of unfinished business, leaving everybody without that sense of closure they seek, but, as Balance says in the very last line, "it just is." - Jonathan Dean, Brainwashed