On March 24th 1986, BALAAM AND THE ANGEL released the single ‘She Knows’.
Mark Morris, Jim Morris and Des Morris — vocalist and bassist, guitarist, and drummer respectively. Moving south from Scotland to the English Midlands, they formed Balaam and the Angel in the early 80s, borrowing the name from the Old Testament story of the prophet whose donkey was made to speak by an angel — a piece of Biblical mysticism that fitted the brooding atmosphere they were constructing around themselves. Where many bands of the era applied gothic trappings like a coat of paint, the Morris brothers seemed to arrive at them from a different angle entirely.
Their early path was self-funded and self-directed. They set up their own Chapter 22 Records label and began releasing a series of 12-inch EPs: 'World of Light' in November 1984, followed by 'Love Me' and 'Day and Night' in 1985. These were lean, post-punk records with a psychedelic undercurrent that set them slightly apart from the more strictly monochrome end of the goth scene. A run of support dates for The Cult including the 'She Sells Sanctuary' tour of 1985 — sharpened their live act and helped raise their profile considerably. As that wider audience began to take notice, Virgin entered the picture, signing the band on the strength of what they'd already demonstrated they could do on their own terms.
'She Knows; was among the first fruits of that major-label relationship, released on Virgin Records. It was a confident statement of intent: three and a half minutes of driven, atmospheric rock with Mark's low, commanding vocals sitting over Jim's guitar work and Des's firm rhythmic foundation. The song appeared as the third track on their debut album "THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD" — between 'Don't Look Down' and 'Burn Me Down' — and it illustrated precisely what the band did well: a melodic directness that their underground reputation sometimes obscured. Trouser Press, noting the tension at the core of the band's appeal, observed that "the trio's melodies are too often buried in feeble attempts to whip up a vague air of menace," which was perhaps a shade ungenerous — but it acknowledged that the tunes themselves were always present and worth finding.
The single entered the UK chart and peaked at number 70, spending four weeks on the chart — a solid Top 75 placing and the band's best performance to date, a distinction that would remain unchallenged across the rest of their career. The music video, filmed on a darkened set, opened with a striking image of a man holding a drumstick while white paper swirled around him, low-budget but effective, the sort of visual that fitted neatly into the then-flourishing world of MTV rotation, which the band were happy to exploit.
1986 was a productive and pivotal year in the band's wider trajectory. ‘She Knows' was followed by the singles ‘Light of the World’ and then ‘Slow Down’, the latter peaking at number 87 in June 1986.
'The Greatest Story Ever Told' arrived in August of that year, reaching number 67 on the UK Albums Chart. The album’s twelve tracks mapped out a band operating at full stretch. It was not a radical departure from what the Chapter 22 EPs had suggested, but it was better focused and better produced. The same year, the band played a memorable night at the University of London Union (ULU), Mark reportedly appearing in a crushed red velvet suit, detail enough to suggest that the gothic-rock label, while not entirely inaccurate, never quite captured the whole picture.
Balaam and the Angel were and are never quite what people assumed they were, and ‘She Knows’ exemplifies that quality: accessible enough to chart, atmospheric enough to satisfy the underground followers.
The band's wider story after 1986 took several turns. 'The Greatest Story Ever Told' was followed by THE ALBUM 'Live Free or Die' in 1988, produced by Steve Brown, who had previously worked with The Cult, and the band drafted in Ian McKean of Twenty Flight Rockers as a second guitarist, the first member outside the siblings. That album shifted the sound perceptibly towards hard rock, a direction that divided opinion but reflected where the Morris brothers were heading musically. They toured the United States with Kiss and Iggy Pop, a remarkable circuit for a band who had been self-releasing EPs in the West Midlands just a few years earlier. Their track 'I'll Show You Something Special' found its way onto the soundtrack of John Hughes's Planes, Trains and Automobiles in 1987, providing US exposure to a track that deserved it.
'Days of Madness' followed in 1989, recorded in San Francisco, before Virgin dropped them in around 1990 during a period of significant financial restructuring at the label. A brief reappearance in 1991 under the shortened name Balaam, with the mini-album No More Innocence, and a final studio record, Prime Time, in 1993, marked the end of their sustained commercial activity. Keyboard player Chris Williams joined them for live shows from 1994 onwards, and the three Morris brothers — all of whom built careers outside music in the intervening years — maintained a core loyalty to the band's legacy, making carefully chosen appearances and maintaining contact with a fanbase that never entirely dispersed.
In October 2024, forty years on from the 'World of Light' EP, Balaam & The Angel returned with 'Forces of Evil’, a four-track 12-inch released on their own Darklands Recordings label, recorded at Oxygene Studios in Manchester with Christophe Bride, who had recently worked with Chameleons and Kirk Brandon's various incarnations. The record appeared on coloured vinyl and as a picture disc, with no CD or cassette option, a deliberate echo of how the band had arrived in the first place: on vinyl, on their own terms.
