20. Hex Enduction Hour by The Fall

By: Adam Bunch

				Hex Enduction Hour by The Fall

It's about thirty seconds into Hex Enduction Hour's opening track, "The Classical", that Mark E. Smith's sneering vocals can first be clearly heard against the background of clanging guitars. "Where are the obligatory niggers?" he calls out. "Hey there, fuck face."

And that pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the record.

When it was released in 1982, the band's third full-length was hailed as their most accessible to date, but frankly that's not saying much. Taking many of their musical cues from The Velvet Underground, the group let loose with a cacophony of dark guitars and throbbing bass and drums that provide an ever-shifting backdrop for the long train of barely decipherable, political charged and, yes, occasionally offensive bile that Smith angrily spews out over the course of the album.

The Fall have been one of Manchester's most impressively prolific bands—their votes for this list were split between eight different records—but it's the one that most makes Johnny Rotten and Joe Strummer look like well-adjusted members of society that is remembered as the greatest of them all.

Video: "Who Makes The Nazis?" by The Fall