This Leaden Pall is the fourth album released by UK rock band Half Man Half Biscuit

Half Man Half Biscuit

Half Man Half Biscuit, often "HMHB", are an English rock band from Birkenhead, Merseyside, active since the mid-1980s, known for satirical, sardonic, and sometimes surreal songs. The group comprises Nigel Blackwell , Neil Crossley , Ken Hancock , and Carl Henry...

 in 1993.

The album cover features a bleak overdeveloped picture of the now demolished Hale Wood pub in Halewood

Halewood

Halewood is in Merseyside, England and is located in the Metropolitan Borough of Knowsley. The district lies near Liverpool's southeastern boundary, bordered by the suburbs of Hunts Cross and Woolton....

, Merseyside

Merseyside

Merseyside is a metropolitan county in North West England, with a population of 1,365,900. It encompasses the metropolitan area centred on both banks of the lower reaches of the Mersey Estuary, and comprises five metropolitan boroughs: Knowsley, St Helens, Sefton, Wirral, and the city of Liverpool...

. In 2001 it was voted the 93rd best LP sleeve of all time in Q Magazine.

Anecdotely, lead singer Nigel Blackwell has referred to the album as their Closer

Closer (Joy Division album)

Closer is the second and final studio album by the English post-punk band Joy Division, released , two months following the suicide of lead singer Ian Curtis. The album was originally scheduled to be released on . The record was originally released on the Factory Records label as a 12" LP and...

.

At the time of its release, NME

NME

The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...

writer Johnny Cigarettes gave the album a 6/10 review, describing "Running Order Squabble Fest" as "a mini-epic of Spinal Tap proprtions" and Blackwell as "the only rival to Vic Reeves

Vic Reeves

James Roderick Moir , better known by the stage name Vic Reeves, is an English comedian, best known for his double act with Bob Mortimer . He is known for his surreal and non sequitur sense of humour....

 in making cultural ephemera unfeasibly funny". The same publication revisited the album in 1999, with John Robinson stating that it "understood just as much as OK Computer

OK Computer

OK Computer is the third studio album by the English alternative rock band Radiohead, released on 16 June 1997 on Parlophone in the UK and 1 July 1997 by Capitol Records in the US. It marks a deliberate attempt by the band to move away from the introspective guitar-oriented sound of their previous...

the bravery needed to accomplish modern living".

Track listing

1. "M-6-ster"
2. "4AD
   4AD
   4AD is a British independent record label that was started in 1979 by Ivo Watts-Russell and Peter Kent, funded by Beggars Banquet Records, and is still active today...
   
   3DCD"
3. "Running Order Squabble Fest"
4. "Whiteness thy name is Meltonian"
5. "This Leaden Pall"
6. "Turned up Clocked on Laid off"
7. "Improv Workshop Mimeshow Gobshite"
8. "13 Eurogoths floating in the Dead Sea"
9. "Whit Week Malarkey"
10. "Doreen"
11. "Quality Janitor"
12. "Floreat Inertia"
13. "Malayan Jelutong
    Jelutong (tree)
    The jelutong is a species of tree in the oleander subfamily. It grows to approximately 60 metres tall with diameters of 2 metres , or even to 80 m tall with diameters to 3 m , and boles clear and straight for 30 m...
    
    "
14. "Numanoid Hang-glide"
15. "Footprints"