“From the Lion’s Mouth” – A Cry from the Cathedral of Shadows

The Sound’s Desperate Elegy to a Vanishing World

“No song can heal the wound if the knife still turns in your chest.”

There are albums that document a time, others that define one. “From the Lion’s Mouth”, the second full-length album by The Sound, released in 1981, does something else entirely: it mourns time itself, past, present, and future, while clawing at the invisible walls of psychic prisons. It is not simply a Post-Punk record; it is a cathedral of suffering, doubt, and transcendence, built on a foundation of thunderous basslines, spectral keys, and the defiant voice of a man already aware of the abyss.

That man was Adrian Borland, singer, guitarist, poet, and a wounded prophet in a world too busy to listen. “If Jeopardy” (1980), their debut, was the raw cry of a young band rushing into the unknown with urgency and unfiltered energy, “From the Lion’s Mouth” is the sound of that same urgency refined into solemn fire. It is darker, colder, more structured, but also paradoxically more human.

1981: In the Shadow of Decline

By the time “From the Lion’s Mouth” emerged, the UK was wrapped in post-industrial fatigue. Thatcherism was tightening its grip. Cities were crumbling. Youth unemployment had become the soundtrack of a generation. And music, particularly Post-Punk, had become the mirror to this deterioration. Bands like Joy Division had already turned alienation into poetry; The Cure into icy theatre. Yet The Sound remained different: less theatrical, more rawly sincere. While others were abstract, Borland bled. The Sound were not poseurs nor poets; they were craftsmen of agony, masons of mental disarray who chose melody not to decorate the void, but to measure it.

Track by Track: Chorales of Collapse

1. "Winning"

If there's a thesis statement to From the Lion’s Mouth, it's “Winning”. But do not be misled by the title, this is no hymn to victory. With an opening riff that trembles like a rising wave, and a delivery that borders on desperate prophecy, Borland howls:

“What holds your hope together,

Make sure it's strong enough…”

It’s both challenge and confession, a trembling acknowledgment that we may already be broken before we begin. The guitar work is taut, deliberate, evoking the locked-jaw panic of someone gripping too hard for control.

2. "Sense of Purpose"

Driven by a martial rhythm, this track acts like a chase scene in slow motion. Borland is stalked not by time, but the fear of wasting it. It’s existential Post-Punk par excellence: guitar lines stretch like taut wires, drums march ever forward, and Borland, caught between defiance and despair, delivers a vocal full of clenched teeth. 

3. "Contact the Fact"

This track burns slower but deeper. There’s a fatigue here, not physical, but moral. “I don't trust you,” he sings, with a chilling calmness. Synths shimmer in the background like distant threats. It is paranoia rendered elegant*, the sound of trust being deconstructed in real time.

4. "Skeletons"

A short, sharp descent into the psyche. The title evokes closets, secrets, and regrets, and the music matches. It’s one of the most minimal tracks, but its silence speaks volumes. The Sound were never maximalists; they used restraint like a weapon.

5. "Judgement"

One of the most criminally underrated songs of the era. It is epic without grandeur, a war-hymn for invisible battles. “Where’s the sense in love and sadness?” Borland asks, not rhetorically, but like someone who’s spent too long searching for the answer in ash. The guitars sear, the bass lurches, and everything feels one tremor away from collapse.

6. "Fatal Flaw"

The heart of the album. A trembling confession, a look into the mirror that doesn’t flinch. Borland sings like a man surrounded by mirrors, each reflecting a different version of himself. The flaws aren’t just personal; they’re spiritual, societal. “If I could change myself… I’d still be wrong.” The tragedy is complete. 

7. "Possession"

Not merely about literal possession, but the act of being possessed by the past, by grief, by guilt. The rhythm section here deserves a shrine: rhythmic yet suffocating, pulsing like a heartbeat through chloroform.

8. "The Fire"

A slow burner that simmers with repressed rage and devotion. It's a funeral dirge set in a burning house. One can almost imagine Borland standing alone in the wreckage of youth, guitar in hand, smoke curling into memory.

9. "Silent Air"

The most haunting moment of the album. The piano lines drift like fog in a ruined chapel. Borland’s voice softens here, as if finally surrendering to silence itself. The song moves like grief, unpredictable, ebbing and flowing in tides of numbness.

“The silent air surrounds me

And holds me like a child…”

There is something in this song that lives outside time. It feels both ancient and uncomfortably modern. It’s one of the most beautiful pieces ever laid to tape in the Post-Punk canon.

10. "New Dark Age"

The closer. And what a closer. It’s not a warning, it’s a prophecy. The guitars are apocalyptic, the drums hit like fate, and Borland’s voice becomes thunder. It doesn’t resolve. It collapses. Not with clarity, but with honest exhaustion.

It is not just a “new dark age” — it is now.

The Sound of a Soul at War

Adrian Borland never played games with his demons. Where others cloaked theirs in metaphor, Borland brought his to the mic, raw and unedited. His later suicide in 1999, after years of struggling with schizoaffective disorder, casts an unavoidable shadow over every lyric, every note of “From the Lion’s Mouth”. But to reduce this album to a suicide note is to diminish its grandeur. It is not about dying. It is about trying, fighting tooth and nail for meaning in a disintegrating world. Where Joy Division was cryptic, and The Cure theatrical, The Sound was intimate. Brutally, disarmingly intimate. Borland’s voice never aimed for perfection; it aimed for truth. And on From the Lion’s Mouth, he comes closer than almost anyone ever has to capturing what it feels like to stand naked before despair and sing anyway.

Legacy and Reverberation

Despite its brilliance, “From the Lion’s Mouth” was criminally underheard. The Sound never achieved the fame of their contemporaries. Their name rarely graces retrospectives. But those who know… know. The album is a cult treasure, passed like a secret between kindred spirits. It echoes in the music of bands like Interpol, Editors, and Protomartyr. And in its own quietly apocalyptic way, it has never stopped being relevant. Because the world has never stopped falling apart. And we’ve never stopped needing people like Adrian Borland, people brave enough to feel without filter, to sing without certainty, to write elegies before the funeral is over.

Final Word

“From the Lion’s Mouth” is more than an album. It is a testament. A trembling, defiant document of the human condition in its most honest form: fearful, yearning, beautiful, and bruised. To listen to it is to touch the soul of a man who lived too hard, felt too deeply, and sang like it was the only thing keeping him alive, until it wasn’t. But the songs remain. They always do.