Fire Of Unknown Origin

This last spark from the original lineup of these idiosyncratic Long Island arsonists turned into a blaze – “Burnin’ for You,” originally intended for guitarist Buck Dharma’s solo joint, lit up the Billboard charts. Even the words on that one are plenty obtuse (“I’m livin’ for givin’ the devil his due”), and the rest of the record contains some of their most beautiful, sinister moments. There’s a song written for the movie Heavy Metal that wasn’t used in it and a Michael Moorcock-penned sci-fi lament that was, an unsettling ode to paranoia, and a genuinely chilling piano-driven story about the apocalypse heralded by a zombified camp icon. The last was also somehow a hit. Can’t accuse them of being predictable to the end, that’s for sure.