In this respect, Dreamtime was more like a second album, with bits of an imaginary debut thrown in to maintain the continuity. It was the sound of a band in a state of stylistic flux.

"The album is a new thing to a lot of people, but to us it's ancient history," Billy told the NME at the time. "Our past is catching up with us and we have to contend with that and going forwards."

The Cult's earliest songs dated from their incarnation as post-Gothic rockers Death Cult (April 1983-January 1984), and though they'd served their function of making a splash in the press, this early material was already receding into the distance in terms of its limited commerciality and veiled, esoteric sentiments. 'Horse Nation' and 'A Flower In The Desert' were awesome, yes, but what made them so was their intricate guitar figures and their heavy manners. It wasn't exactly daytime radio stuff, even at its most audience-friendly.

It dawned on Ian and Billy that if they were to move on up into the mainstream, they'd have to simplify what they were doing. As closet fans of Hendrix, the Doors and Janis Joplin, the natural answer was to gradually fuse their sound with the slower, harder, bluesier rock.

At a time when the music press were using 'rockist' as a pejorative term to encapsulate all the wanton self-indulgence and spiritual bankruptcy of pre-'76 AOR, such a move was a bit like going for a swim with a bag of housebricks tied to your neck. Yet, for the band, it was an inevitable evolution from what they were already doing, and it was hard to put the brakes on. Sticking to their guns, the Cult boldly went where no credible British group had gone since the '70s and Dreamtime became one of the first alternative 'rock' albums (in the loosest sense) of the '80s.

Admittedly, it wasn't exactly a full-on blues rocker in the vein of the Cult's later recordings but there was enough hard, straight playing on this LP to infuse the residual Gothic elements of songs like 'Dreamtime', 'Spirit Walker' and 'Go West' with an echo of the very best in late '60s psychedelic blues.

The Dreamtime era coincided with a new sense of purpose in the Cult camp. Until their appearance on the Friday night rock programme, The Tube, on 13th January 1984, the band - Ian, Billy, bassist Jamie Stewart and drummer Nigel Preston -had still been known as Death Cult. The 'Death' part of their name was dropped for the occasion because of its negative connotations. Around the same time, Ian reverted to his real surname, Astbury. For the first time since forming nine months earlier, the group seemed at last to have developed a strong sense of identity.

"We were coming to terms with the fact we were a blues rock act, at a time when it was highly unfashionable," recalls Jamie. "We were realising that our common ground was Hendrix, the Doors, Led Zeppelin. Ian was the protagonist - he'd got into the whole Hendrix collection. Then Billy started doing the psychedelic, wah-wah guitar thing."

There were other reference points that shaped the band's collective psyche, too. "There had been this odd fixation with Vietnam going around Brixton," Jamie continues. "Apocalypse Now and 'The End' had a huge influence on all those post-punk bands there . Under Two Flags, U.K. Decay, the Sex Gang Children. Ian and Billy were into it, too. I think Ian kind of related to the idea of young men being thrown into an alien and outrageous situation."

In April 1984, the band booked into Rockfield Studio in Wales with producer John Brand, to record their debut album, Dreamtime. With the group re-working the Southern Death Cult track, 'Flowers In The Forest' (as 'A Flower In The Desert') and Death Cult's tumultuous 'Horse Nation', it was clear from the start that the record would still have one foot firmly entrenched the clamorous, Gothic style of old.

Elsewhere, though, there were signs of the band's growing interest in psychedelia and blues rock. True, 'Spiritwalker', released as a taster single the following month, kicked off with deafening post-punk tom-toms, but it quickly surrendered to a fast, swirling, effects-heavy riff. Evidently, the band were setting their sights on mainstream chart success - though 'Spiritwalker' confined itself to the indie chart.

'Go West', also lifted as a single, was equally catchy, as was the punishing Goth rock of 'Dreamtime', topped off with a snatch of incongruous New Age hippie rhetoric: "I will wear my hair long, my hair long, my hair long/An extension of my soulä" And the last track, 'Bad Medicine Waltz', revealed a band with a musical depth and maturity quite astonishing for a bunch of 22-year-olds. Dreamtime was a two-fingered salute to anyone who ever doubted the potential of Astbury and Duffy's songwriting partnership.

When the album finally appeared in September 1984, with the first 30,000 copies including a free live album, recorded at London's Lyceum Theatre, the NME was moved to observe that, "something magnificent glows within these songsäthe Cult don't come out of a packet."

Yet Ian was still worried that, as Goth's first supergroup, the weight of expectation on the Cult's shoulders might yet crush them. Although they'd been well-received on a recent visit to the States, they were still getting criticism from their fans back home.

"Over here you know a certain element of your audience," the singer explained. "So it hurts a lot more when they say, you're not as good as you were - not as good as Southern Death Cult or Theatre Of Hate."

Determined not to tread water, the band became less guarded about their aspirations to play straight rock. Just two months after Dreamtime came out, they issued a brand new single, 'Resurrection Joe', a bold slab of soaring, white-knuckle riffery that grabbed the ghost of Led Zeppelin and gave it a good kicking.

To promote it, the Cult set out on tour, supporting Big Country in the U.K. at Christmas, and trekking across Europe with the Sisterhood (soon to become the Mission). Finally, it felt as if the band was finding their niche, but they still had problems to contend with. Nigel Preston, known throughout the Cult camp as the group's wildman, was suffering from manic depression and becoming increasingly unreliable.

It was obvious that Preston (who sadly died in 1992) would have to go, though he hung on long enough to play on the record that would take the Cult to a worldwide audience, and set the tone for their next LP, Love. That record was 'She Sells Sanctuary'.

Pat Gilbert, Record Collector magazine - London, May 1996.