In 1981, The Fall was on the verge of a breakthrough.
Taking a year off from the album cycle, Mark E. Smith and his revolving band of misfits traveled to Iceland, determined to come up with something far beyond their previous attempts at a record. In Reykjavik, the band recorded in a studio with lava walls, contributing to the otherworldly vibe of what would become the group’s first iconic record, “Hex Enduction Hour.”
Throughout the early years of The Fall, Smith had deeply explored the krautrock bands of 1970s West Germany, the Velvet Underground’s “White Light/White Heat” and the musical madness of Captain Beefheart.
The most immediate influence he seems to take is in the chaos and the hostility of the record. From the opening lines of “The Classical,” in which Smith declares that “there are 12 people in the world; the rest are paste,” the demonic swagger based in the equally witchy title and atmosphere is obvious.
Although Hex was recorded years before the first usage of the term “alternative rock,” the influence on records such as Sonic Youth’s “Daydream Nation” and Pavement’s “Slanted and Enchanted” cannot be overstated, with the latter even covering this powerful opener.
The Fall exists in that phantom zone between the viscerally earnest sentiments of early punk and the jaded rejection of the gothic post-punk embodied in bands like The Cure and Bauhaus.
This is why an eight-minute funeral dirge such as “Hip Priest” works so well, whether that be as a menacing outlier in an otherwise peppy sound or in the climatic night-vision duel from Jonathan Demme’s “The Silence of the Lambs.”
Can, as a major influence, strikes most in the lengths and the repetitive stylings of songs such as “Fortress/Deer Park” and the unfortunately split-up “Winter (Hostel-Maxi).”
Years later, Smith sang “I Am Damo Suzuki,” referring to the Can vocalist whose deranged ramblings inform much of Smith’s own stream-of-consciousness songwriting style dominated by his famous kitchen sink realism.
Smith embodies the best and the worst tendencies of his genre, with the latter coming out in the vulgarity of his song’s characters. There is indeed an edgy side to the rants, either in the cartoonish portrayal of British skinhead bigotry in “The Classical” or the direct fascist confrontation in “Who Makes the Nazis?”
Still, the vulgarity is a misleading filter one needs to overcome, if only for the secret beauty brought out by the band’s exploits in Iceland. Most noteworthy of these is the fittingly titled penultimate track “Iceland,” full of nature sounds and tranquil melodies.
The Fall is not a band to pull punches in any way, and “Hex Enduction Hour” displays that better than almost any other record. Its abrasiveness and rough exterior are just a facade though, concealing the clever musicianship underneath.
“Hex Enduction Hour” is admirable if nothing else for its sheer confidence, as if The Fall knew what a landmark of post-punk they were crafting. To quote Smith at the tail-end of my personal favorite “The Classical,” “I’ve never felt better in my life.”
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