The third and final album from new romantic icons
Visage
found foppish frontman
Steve Strange
and drummer
Rusty Egan
almost completely without most of the high-profile sidemen -- like
Midge Ure
, keyboardist
Billy Currie
and bassist
Barry Adamson
-- who'd played such a big role in crafting the group's lush, haunting
synth pop
. Undeterred,
Strange
and
Egan
recruited a new lineup that gave a prominent role to saxophonist
Gary Barnacle
. But the real shock to fans was the shrieking, metallic guitar that appeared on most cuts, an intrusion that seemed completely at odds with the suave, continental image suggested by past hits like
"Fade to Grey"
"The Damned Don't Cry."
In fact, the guitar muscle worked surprisingly well when simply overlaid atop the group's familiar dance pulse, as on the title track and
"The Promise."
But straight-up rockers like the endless
"Only the Good (Die Young)"
"Casualty"
featured a lethal combination of ham-handed riffs and dumb lyrics, thoroughly alienating the blitz kids who'd once packed the London discos
ran. Those fans made a club hit of the melodic
"Love Glove,"
the closest thing here to
's classic sound, but ignored the rest, making
Beat Boy
a disappointing swan song for the group. Yet despite the uneven songwriting, hindsight showed that
's ear for the next big trend hadn't deserted him. The next year, the success of
Duran Duran
offshoot
the Power Station
had synth poppers on both sides of the Atlantic scurrying to rough up their dance tracks with heavy guitar. Perhaps in this case, the colorfully costumed
-- who later displayed his sartorial sense in a new band,
Strange Cruise
, before largely bowing out of the music biz -- was just too far in front of the fashion curve. ~ Dan LeRoy