This article: Hex Enduction Hour was the first Fall album to make the UK Albums Chart, where it spent three weeks, peaking at no. 71. By mid-1983 it had sold 20,000 copies, reflecting a surge in the band's popularity, and five years into their career brought them to the attention of record labels. Critics were highly enthusiastic; according to Simon Ford, they could "have hardly been more supportive". Reviewing the album in the NME, Richard Cook described the band as tighter and more disciplined than in earlier recordings, "their master piece to date", while still maintaining their impact. He praised the band's use of recording-studio techniques and atmospherics without resorting to glamorisation. Melody Maker's Colin Irwin said it was "incredibly exciting and utterly compelling". A dissenter was Neil McCormick of Irish fortnightly Hot Press, who dismissed the album as secondhand melodramatic punk and wondered if the album was "meant to be minimalist or primitive then it fatally ignores the true primitivism of the strong melody and accessible lyrics found in folk music."Later, Record Collector described the album as a "taut, twitchy and ominous masterclass in DIY post-punk", and singled out Smith's lyrics for praise. The Quietus, in 2009, wrote of the album as "arguably ... The Fall's mightiest hour", while Stylus Magazine wrote that "Hex demonstrates the culmination of 'early' Fall: a monolithic beast of ragged grooves piloted through the embittering miasma of English society by the verbose acidity/Joycean all-inclusiveness of Mark E. Smith." Pitchfork listed Hex Enduction Hour as the 33rd best album of the 1980s. Comedian Stewart Lee has called it his favourite album and "probably the best album of all time."According to Smith, the album's lyrics had a negative impact on the band's later career. In 1984, Motown Records expressed interest in signing the band to a new UK division, with a provisional offer of a 46,000 up-front advance. A label executive asked to hear something from the Fall's back catalogue, but Hex was... contains an answer for the question: What record label showed interest in Fall?, what is it ?
Motown Records