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OEM & ODM producer for Phone protective film cutting machine, vinyl cutter, label cutter!
In the shadowy archives of post-punk, industrial music, and avant-garde tape trading, few phrases elicit as much confusion—and fervent devotion—as the keyword “taboo iiiiiiiv 19791985 better.” At first glance, it looks like a glitch: a Roman numeral stuttering into infinity, a date range that spans the tectonic shift from punk’s implosion to the dawn of goth and industrial, and a final, confrontational word: better.
But to those who were there—dubbed cassette warriors, cut-up artists, and noise provocateurs—the query makes perfect sense. It asks a forbidden question: Which of the shadowy “Taboo” compilations, released between 1979 and 1985, is superior? And why does the oddly formatted ‘iiiiiiiv’ (a chaotic blend of I, V, and repeating numerals) hold the key to understanding a movement that despised clarity?
This article is a deep dive into the murky waters of pre-internet underground music. We will dissect the mythos, the tracklists, the sound quality, and the cultural context to answer the question that haunts collectors: What makes the Taboo IIIIIIIV (1979-1985) better?
In 2026, original Taboo cassettes are unobtanium. A sealed copy of Taboo I sold on Discogs for $4,200 in 2022. But Taboo IIIIIIIV? Only three confirmed copies exist in known collections. Why?
Because it is the better version. Not just musically, but historically.
To say it is “better” is to acknowledge that the Taboo series was not a linear progression. It exploded, collapsed, and reformed in one volume.
While Taboo I (1979) was raw and Taboo II (1980) was suicidally bleak, Taboo IIIIIIIV captured the moment when industrial music learned to swing. It is the only volume to juxtapose:
No other volume in the series achieved this density of legend.
To understand the peculiar keyword, one must first understand the world of 1979. Punk had been declawed by commercialism. Mainstream radio offered disco and yacht rock. But in the bedrooms, warehouses, and art schools of London, Berlin, New York, and Sydney, something festered.
The original Taboo series—often misspelled with extra ‘i’s and ‘v’s due to bootleg misprints—was not a record label. It was a virus. Initiated by a clandestine collective known only as “The Committee for Acoustic Terrorism,” the first volume, Taboo I: Rites of Eleusis (1979), was a C90 cassette wrapped in photocopied linocut art.
The sound? Unforgiving. Side A featured Throbbing Gristle’s live recording of “Discipline” (Berlin, 1979) next to a Merzbow-esque precursor by a then-unknown Masami Akita, tracked with a 14-minute field recording of a slaughterhouse in Hamburg. Side B was pure dissonance: a Cabaret Voltaire demo, a spoken word piece by Lydia Lunch about urban decay, and a hidden loop of reversed church bells.
Collectors immediately used the term “taboo iiiiiiiv” as a shorthand for the series’ deliberate opacity. By the second volume (1980-81), the typographical chaos began. Volume II was printed as “TABOO //” on some copies and “Taboo II///” on others. But the third release—the fabled iiiiiiiv—is where the “better” debate ignites.
