The Fall

This is the home of the vain!

This is the home of the vain!

“Hex,” from the Greek root for the number six: sixth album. “Enduction,” a mangling of “induction,” meaning initiation. It evokes witchcraft – “Live At The Witch Trial” was the title of the Fall's debut album, but here the witch doesn't burn at the stake, she runs wild and casts her evil eye. “Hour,” one hour: the length of the initiation rite, built on a rancid, purifying sludge. The finest consecration to the priesthood of the Fall.

By some paradox, the Fall only truly became a band once all the original members, save for the sneering dictator and shrieker Mark E. Smith, had left. In the spring of '79, guitarist Martin Bramah departed, making way for left-handed Craig Scanlon. Steve Hanley arrived on bass, and for nineteen years he would be as responsible for the band's spells as Smith himself. Marc Riley slotted in on another guitar and keyboards. The Hanley-Riley-Scanlon trio formed the core that, over three and a half years, produced some gems of innovation: four studio albums and three live ones, an EP and several singles.

The crucial element of “Hex” is the presence of two drummers. The story goes like this: Karl Burns leaves right after recording the debut at the end of 1978. Mike Leigh replaces him but quits less than a year later. Enter Steve Hanley's sixteen-year-old brother, Paul. At the end of 1981, Burns returns and sets up his kit alongside Paul's, a configuration that would last three years.

Before that, though, The Fall went on a brief tour of Iceland. The alien landscape of the Nordic country had a huge influence on the English band. Two tracks (without Burns) were recorded there. “Hip Priest”, eight minutes of chordless build-up, puts on a display somewhere between the erotic and the macabre, with orgiastic undertones; it's also well known for its use in Jonathan Demme's film “The Silence of the Lambs”.

Another track, “Iceland”, seemingly improvised on the spot, sounds like nothing else. An improvisation built on a simple two-note piano motif from Scanlon, minimal plucked banjo from Riley, subtle interjections from the Hanley brothers on bass and drums, and Smith adding the occasional guitar. The track is sublime, pensive, and builds steadily. The island, green with fields and black with volcanoes and lava fields, inspired a sense of reverence in Smith, who recites lines like “Cast the runes against your own soul […] And be humbled in Iceland”.

Some parts of “Hex Enduction Hour” weren't recorded in a studio, but live on a stage in a theatre converted into a concert venue, The Regal, half an hour north of London. The drummers' kits were set up facing each other, while the other three musicians played among themselves and Smith recorded his vocals from a room upstairs. This setup generated the incendiary power of some of the tracks.

In “Jawbone And The Air Rifle” Smith tells the absurd story of an unlucky rabbit hunter, who stalks his prey brandishing an air rifle among the graves of a cemetery. The riff is relentless, and while the verses are delivered in something close to Sprechgesang, the chorus brings a total change of pace, with a melody that sounds like a sinister music box. In the medley “Fortress/Deer Park” the guitar chases itself and then tears and splinters into razor-sharp angles. In the background, the oscillating drone of Riley's organ, in which you seem to hear the electric viola of John Cale.

The ten minutes of “And This Day” are probably the bloodiest war assault the Fall ever recorded. Backed by a Halloween-worthy organ riff, the drummers seem to march-dance around their kits like tin soldiers seized by some primitive tribalism. The bass is convulsive and contorted, abandoning any attempt at weaving a catchy melody. There are no pleasant words to describe it, and yet it's exhilarating – there's one. Smith struggles to make himself heard above the rest: “The surroundings are screaming on the roads/ So you even mistrust your own feelings”. In the book about the making of “Hex”, “Have A Bleedin Guess”, Paul Hanley writes: “We were literally making it up as we went along… we kept hammering away at that single riff like our lives depended on it”. Scanlon considered the track “a tool for hitting the audience with”.

“Winter” is built on a single note held steady by Hanley's bass, while Riley's keyboards wander freely, impressionistic. Scanlon stumbles over sharp melodic fragments. Smith delivers lines about a crazy child who seems to have been reincarnated in the guise of an alcoholic: “He seemed the young one/ But now he looked like the victim of a pogrom”.

The finest experiment is “Who Makes The Nazis?”, a track born from a riff Smith played on a plastic guitar, later transformed into Hanley's nervous bassline. The kick drum hammers away, the guitars are like awls, and the track keeps building and building, but so subtly you barely notice. Meanwhile, Smith keeps asking where ignorance, contempt and inhuman violence are born from – the Nazis, that “long-horned race”. Among the answers, some are decipherable, others metaphysical.

But if you had to pick one song that best represents The Fall, “The Classical”, the album's opener, would be among the top candidates. The crossfire pounding of the two drum kits, then the guitar shattering the air almost into splinters; a fanfare that starts falling apart the moment it begins. It plays with its own decay, frays at the edges, dragging everything into uncertainty even as it pushes relentlessly forward. Smith is less a singer than a voice: he spits out a string of free associations (“There is no culture is my brag/ Your taste for bullshit reveals a lust for a home of office”) with a punk sneer. The frontman moves through language like a storytelling comedian, mixing registers or leaping nimbly and swiftly from one to another, letting it produce whatever aberrations it's capable of – “Perverted By Language”. The lyrics are grim cut-ups that never quite add up but always make sense, and always get to the point.

One of the first lines is sadly notorious and controversial for using the n-word: “Where are the obligatory n*****s?”. The slur is dropped from later live versions, even though it's clearly used satirically. Throughout the track Smith impersonates an unbearable, boorish producer or director who treats the people he works with like dirt. The offending line imagines him looking around for the African Americans who must necessarily be included in the film, out of deference to what we'd today call political correctness. A few seconds later Smith turns “hey there fuckface!” into a joyful celebration, seeming to revel in the ugliness of the world.

All this ugliness could make The Fall unlistenable. We're already on edge, so why make things worse? But ugliness, whether we like it or not, often reveals far more to us than beauty does. The Fall's music is harrowing because it sets itself a titanic task: it tries to push ugliness to breaking point, and then push through it, go all the way round and come out the other side. No comfort offered. It demands you feel real terror. But the turn does come. “The Classical” culminates with Smith declaring: “I've never felt better in my life”. The riff turns unusually melodic, almost absurdly so compared to everything around it. The feeling it gives is one of the absurdity of triumph, a victory won over something that had every chance of destroying us.

Mark E. Smith, despite the sarcasm and cynicism etched into his face, never seems resigned. The name The Fall – a reference to Camus's novel – evokes Original Sin, a verdict of damnation, or the decline of civilisation. And yet the fall in question is not an inevitable fate, but a warning. Just when they seem about to collapse or rot away, The Fall are actually about to pull us back from the brink. In rare moments, their music turns completely on itself and releases a strange kind of optimism. Faith in the glimmer that every individual can recognise. Hey there, fuckface!

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

17/04/2026