When Bauhaus frontman Peter Murphy spat out "brittle spittle sparks" and "pangs of dark delight", his rapture was undisguised.
Words, and how they might summon spirits when lined up in the right order, were his fascination.
In 1980, the Northampton band's debut album was considered a scarily brilliant release that distilled the high theatre of glam, the visceral energy of punk and the busy rhythms of funk into one coal-black concoction.
Today, In The Flat Field stands as a cornerstone of Goth rock.
Murphy and his bandmates Daniel Ash (guitar), David J. Haskins (bass) and Kevin Haskins (drums) were the shadowy doppelgangers of the Spiders From Mars, with Murphy channelling Ziggy's magnetic presence. (A version of Ziggy Stardust would later be Bauhaus' highest-charting single).
But if David Bowie provided the template for Murphy's sonorous vocals, Marc Bolan was the most obvious influence on his enigmatic lyrics.
T Rex's Telegram Sam was an early Bauhaus cover, probably because it gave Murphy the chance to indulge his passion for assonance and alliteration. That song's "make no mistake about Jungle-faced Jake" was matched with such pearls as "telltale tongues lick at seven senses" on album track Nerves.
Arrangements on In The Flat Field ranged between the frenzied and the spare. The cyclical, tom-heavy beats that drove the likes of the title track and St Vitus Dance gave way to yawning chasms of space in The Spy In The Cab.
The clipped guitars and amphetamine-disco rhythms of Dive and A God In An Alcove threw elements of Gang of Four, Wire and A Certain Ratio into the mix.
The album, packed with lyrical tongue-twisters and jagged guitar parts, possessed a crypt-kicking quality based more on rock's devilish zest than on prophesies of doom.
If Murphy approached high priest status anywhere, it was on Stigmata Martyr. Incanting Latin verse in a whirling exorcism of shredding, distorted guitars, he grew hoarse with the effort.
