The Banshees prepare for the eighties.

The unexpected failure of Israel was more than compensated for by the news that John McGeoch had finally joined the Banshees as a full member and was busy writing with them for a fourth album to be recorded in March and April 1981 after a short British tour.  The band split of September 1979 was behind them and with both Budgie and John McGeoch as permanent members, the departure of McKay and Morris had actually improved the band in every possible way instead of destroying it.

The news of McGeoch's decision was in fact far more significant even than it at first seemed:  it was vitally important to the future of the Banshees as a recording band that 1981 should find them at full strength and power as 1981 was the year in which Polydor could choose either to offer a new - hopefully better - contract or drop the band, having completed the full three-year term of their June 1978 contract.  Obviously, the stability and future potential of the band would have a great deal of influence on what the Polydor executives decided.  The addition of a respected musician like John McGeoch could hardly have come at a better time.

The first result of the album sessions by the now-permanent Banshees line-up was the single Spellbound which proved that Israel was nothing more than a curious, isolated failure, by selling even better than Happy House and putting another typically Banshees tale of mystery and imagination into the singles charts.  (It was no coincidence that Spellbound was also the title of a Hitchcock thriller and that the dominant theme of the album they were preparing was the Supernatural.)