"Regal Zone", featuring saxophone by McKay, also covers the subject of war and is about the conflict in Iran. "Placebo Effect" addresses the use of placebos in medicine, while "Icon" displays echoes of iconoclasm, with the destruction of paintings featuring religious images, or statues and symbols of old authoritarian regimes. "Premature Burial", "ostensibly inspired" by Edgar Allan Poe's short story of the same name, is the track from which the album title had been taken. It is, in Siouxsie's words, "an expression of claustrophobia, of being hemmed in both by society's and people's limitations". For the writer Mark Paytress, the line "We're all sisters and brothers" looked like a mockery of the Summer of Love. The song's conclusion features what sounds like "a formal choir backing for a retreating Red Army in its magnificent defeat".