Being Boiled

AMG Review of Being Boiled

Dave Thompson
All Music Guide

The Human League's first single was released in June 1978, then revived four years later in the wake of the band's big-time breakthrough. And anybody picking it up in the hopes of hearing even a glimmer of their recent hits -- Dare was only three months old, "Don't You Want Me" was still the U.K. number one -- would have had their faith in pure pop melodicism shaken to the core. Cut at a time when only vocalist Phil Oakey, of all the '80s-era Leaguers, was actually in the band, both "Being Boiled" and "Circus of Death" are experiments in synth attack. Purposefully grinding, fiendishly grueling, they are beautiful in the same way that slabs of gray concrete can be beautiful, and about as colorful. As musical statements, of course, they are worth more than most of the records the group went on to make; more, too, than Oakey's original bandmates, Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware, would create with their own new band, Heaven 17 -- it was from records like "Being Boiled" and, alongside it, early efforts by Ultravox, Rikki & the Last Days of Earth, the Normal, and so on, that the entire synth pop movement drew its first breaths, but the likes of Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle, too, can be detected reflected by its monochromatic sheen. So yes, "Being Boiled" probably would have shocked the fashion-frenzied fan club that raced out to pick it up. But it would have educated them as well, and that was well worth the price of a single 45.