I sometimes fear that The Unforgettable Fire gets overlooked in U2’s catalog due its location between 1983’s War and 1987’s The Joshua Tree. True, it features one of the Irish band’s biggest anthems — the MLK-inspired “Pride (In the Name of Love)” — but most of its ten songs don’t really seem to enter the conversation when discussing U2’s discography.

But I’d argue that The Unforgettable Fire laid the foundation for U2 as we currently know them, due in large part to the band opting to work with producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. Although the resulting album still features plenty of Bono’s powerful voice and The Edge’s intricate guitar work, it’s also awash in texture and atmosphere thanks to Eno and Lanois. This is particularly apparent on the title track, a haunting tune inspired by an art exhibit about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Here, The Edge’s guitar ripples and shimmers in a 4AD-esque manner while Bono’s lyrics grow increasingly impressionistic. (As an added bonus, there are even some honest-to-goodness orchestral hits.)

The Unforgettable Fire does get a bit too lost in its atmospherics, as on “Promenade” or the instrumental “4th of July,” and some of its songs feel more like sketches than anything else. But there’s a definite sense of experimentation, of a band challenging themselves to explore new sonic directions instead of sticking to what fans might expect — and I can’t help but respect that.