The Cult are descendants of Southern Death Cult, a band which formed two years ago and went directly from rehearsals in a Bradford basement to a tour with Theatre Of Hate (former TOH guitarist Bill Duffy now strums for The Cult) and instantly gained a substantial grass roots following.

Southern Death Cult became simply Death Cult and while both tasted success at indie chart level, the new and even more simply named ensemble are aiming for the headier realms of mainstream acceptance.

Their recent single 'Go West' was their most aggressively commercial to date and to coincide with the above mentioned debut album is an hour-long live video culled from a show earlier this year at London's Lyceum.

"We wanted something that showed us at the time of the album", explains Ian, "we felt that the band had grown up a lot and finally come into its own since the days of Death Cult. That was the first period when we felt really confident. We wanted a live video to capture that, it's not a commercial ploy it's more something for our fans."

Ian has a penchant for exotic headware, Victorian clothing and a stage manner undeniably exuberant. The video certainly captures the latter but can watching it generate the same degree of excitement as actually being there?

"Yes and no, I think probably more on the no side because the atmosphere at that concert was tremendous. It was the end of 13 dates in a row and everyone was a bit delirious. It was a bit magical, we all dropped our inhibitions and the whole band were utterly absorbed in the show. There were 2,000 people there and we went on to a huge roar which we didn't expect and at the end did two encores even after the house lights had been turned on."

The impressively titled (cough!) 'Dreamtime Live At The Lyceum' is very much a straightforward recording of the event. There is a noticeable absence of dazzling technology and trick effects. is this some kind of reaction against the bottomless budget approach which seems to afflict many artists' forays into the visual field?

"No, we just didn't have any money! We're looking to do something conceptual with our next recording. We want to do a 12 inch dance thing called 'Resurrection Joe' with a sort of funk/disco rhythm but much heavier than Frankie Goes To Hollywood. The music and the video for that should be really powerful and stunning. But Beggar's Banquet, our record company, are relatively new and have a very limited budget. We have to instil confidence in them before they'll spend money.

"We'd like to do a video for everything we record, it's such an established medium now. In America every club has a video and there are lots of video shows on TV but over here everything is so tacky and low budget. It's a special event seeing Frankie Goes To Hollywood at one in the morning, just the fact of TV being on at that time is really exciting. In the States it's just incidental.

"It would be nice if there was more young people's music on TV here instead of 26 to 40 year olds trying to make conceptual videos like Rod Stewart. 1 think there's a demand for genuinely young people's music. BBC2 always seems to be showing those annoying things about psychology or this-ology or that-ology. I'm not interested in that."

Ian has often been criticised for his apparent obsession with Red Indians. It is a theme which has been predominant in many of his songs. "I like the way they say what they mean and don't conceal their feelings," he says. Ian himself is just as direct and forthright particularly when discussing The Cult's striving for a higher profile and bigger audience.

"Purely for the fact that we're honest in what we do, I think we're set above a lot of other people. We're not trying to emulate anything or do anything wacky or out of the ordinary. We just do what we feel at the time. We're just playing music and I feel people respect us for that.

"With Southern Death Cult we got 'big phenomena' headlines and a lot of attention was focused on us although we never made statements like Theatre Of Hate did about leading the young people of England to revolution.

I think now we're getting ahead in our own way, breaking a few barriers and sensible people are coming around to us. We can communicate to a far wider audience now. The image on record is far less intense and we're much more accessible."

Doubtless some cynics would take that dropping of intensity as signifying a weakening of the band.

"You have to achieve a balance in covering both your image and your music. Keep the same feeling right across the board and impress people at both ends. You get some bands who spend a lot of time in the studio and maintain a certain image from that but when they do go out and play live they're awful.

I believe we have the strength to transcend all the cynicism that's around at the moment and produce some really good music. You can forget all the politics and pseudo intellectualisms, we just write some really good music and lyrics. And I know that because I do most of it!