Review:

on 2011-10-08 CharlesMartel Said:

The Fall have been around a long time. And a quick look at the membership of the band will show you that there have been many line up changes. The only constant has been Mark E. Smith who has become something of a legend in his own lifetime. The Fall are one of those bands which seemed to have defined alternative music in the eighties. For many, the Fall were the epitome of post-punk, having formed initially during the heyday of punk and then continued through to the great days of the early eighties. Admirers will have it that they are one of the forerunners and the leading exponents of the post-punk genre. And as the eighties is really my decade, well you would expect me to be familiar with their work. And indeed, familiar I am.

Yet for all the plaudits the band have gained, they just leave me cold. Now this is almost heresy for someone of my generation. After all, the Fall were one of the late great John Peel's favourite bands. And yet, no matter how many times I listen to them, I am just left distinctly unimpressed. "Hex Induction Hour" is probably their best work, but to my mind it is a mess, a jumbled cacophony of sound without much form or focus. It is almost as if the Fall are the standard by which anti-music is judged - anti-music being the phase which a lot of bands went through at the time.

Now the punks were not known for their musical prowess. Sure, as they developed, and developed out of punk in the process, they became more competent. But this was something which never really happened to the Fall. For a start, Mark E. Smith cannot sing. Not only that, he makes a virtue out of not being able to sing. He also makes a virtue of being an obnoxious bastard and his 28 album career (or is it more now) provides you with a photographic record of the effects of long term excess consumption of C2H5OH. Smith's distinctive style of atonal monologue is the defining characteristic of the Fall, and in that sense "Hip Priest" must therefore be the defining Fall track.

But there is only so much of Smith's deliberately sneering vocals and overly sarcastic lyrics a human being can take before giving up. The Fall have made 28 albums so far. "Hex Induction Hour" is the best of them. And yet if the Fall never made another album again, or my iPod shuffle never threw up a Fall track for me to listen to I would not feel I had missed out on anything.
Rating: 3/10

on 2008-11-25 Christopher Nosnibor Said:

The Fall are definitely a divisive band, and those that do like the consider them well worth being obsessive about. This is certainly one of the definitive Fall albums: the tracks are diverse and shoot off in all different directions. The extras on this reissue make it doubly worthwhile.
Rating: 9/10