Mark E. Smith was the lead vocalist, songwriter, bandleader, and general mastermind of the Fall, the longest-lived and most prolific band of the British post-punk movement. Smith's uncompromisingly abrasive music and bitterly cranky persona made him a cult icon in underground rock circles, and even if the Fall's appeal was far from universal, their harsh experimentalism left a huge imprint on '90s indie rock. Notoriously confrontational and difficult to work with, Smith had a penchant for firing bandmembers on whims, yet the Fall's sound remained essentially the same: jagged, angular guitars, tense rhythms, and stabbing keyboards, all overlaid with Smith's snarling monotone vocal rants. There were flirtations with pop and/or dance as the years went by, but only on a relative scale; Smith's original vision for the band endured largely intact. His lyrics -- at least, when he delivered them intelligibly -- were generally the Fall's focal point: abstract poetry filled with complicated wordplay, bone-dry wit, cutting social observations, and general misanthropy (sometimes more implied than clearly stated, but apparent nonetheless).