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All Music Guide Review:
Review by Ned Raggett
The Fall already had a slew of brilliant records under their belt by the time Hex Enduction Hour emerged, but when it did, the result was a bona fide classic on all fronts. Honing the vicious edge of his lyrics to a new level of ability, Smith led his by-now seasoned band -- at this time sporting the double-drumming lineup of Paul Hanley and Karl Burns -- to create a literal hour's worth of entertaining bile. The Marc Riley/Craig Scanlon team had even more of a clattering, industrial edge than before, now inventing its own style of riff and melody that any number of later groups would borrow, with varying degrees of success. "Iceland" itself tips its hat toward where part of the album was recorded, and it's little surprise that the Sugarcubes and any number of contemporaneous bands from that country ended up with a deep Fall fetish. Of the many song highlights, perhaps the most notorious was the opening "The Classical," an art rock groove like no other, racketing around with heavy-duty beats and stabbing bass from Steve Hanley. Apparently, the band was on the verge of signing with Motown, at least until they heard Smith delivering the poisonous line, "Where are the obligatory niggers?/Hey there, f*ckface!" Politically correct or not, it set the tone for the misanthropic assault of the entire album, including the hilarious dressing down of "misunderstood" rock critics, "Hip Priest" ("He...is...not...ap-PRE-ciated!") and the targeting-everyone attack "Who Makes the Nazis?" Musically, all kinds of approaches are assayed and the results are a triumph throughout, from "Hip Priest" and its tense exchange between slow, dark mood and sudden guitar bursts to the motorik drone touch of "Fortress/Deer Park." As a concluding anti-anthem, "And This Day" ranks up with "The N.W.R.A.," ten minutes of ramalama genius.
Mark Prindle Review:
Hex Enduction Hour - Kamera 1982.
8 out of 10
STUDIO ALBUM #4 - Lots of folks consider this to be their best album. In fact, I'm told it was supposed to be their last album. Lucky for me, it wasn't. This is the band at their most epic. Lots of long songs (including "Winter," a one-chord wonder that is spread across both sides of the record) show The Fall pushing their loose, minimalist style even further. The guitar plays whatever - notes, chords, it doesn't matter. There are TWO drummers playing together in a spirit of peace and harmony, and the songs, although perhaps the least accessible they'd ever done, are very interesting. Lots of space and time, and very little rockabilly and carnival punk.
So what's on it? Well,"Hip Priest" is the classic (boy, it's a weird one), "Who Makes The Nazis?" has a harmonics-only bass line (unheard of since Yes's "The Fish!"), and "Mere Pseud Mag Ed" is another noisy guitar attack (which I'm 99% sure contains the lines "Heard the Ramones in '81/There was a Spanish guitar".....hmmm. I understand his disgust with Pleasant Dreams, but I don't think there's a Spanish guitar on there... hmmm. But then again, who can tell what the hell Mark is actually talking about?). A real interesting record. Or "really," to be grammatically correct. "Real," in and of itself, isn't much of an adverb, but I kind of enjoy it. "Kind of" is a dumb phrase, too, but enjoyable. Even "The Classical," which has the chords of a generic hard rock song, is performed in such a strange, fresh, and tribal manner, you don't even notice how basic the melody is. My only problem with the record is that, unlike those on Grotesque, this particular batch of songs, I think, could have used a little bit more practice. In fact, I've heard live renditions of these songs that sound much more professional than the versions on this album. Plus "Winter" doesn't hold up to repeated listens too well, and "And This Day" is a VU-style trainwreck. Still, a true Fall classic, they say.
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