Unknown Pleasures |
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Released: June 14, 1979 Peak: -- US, 5 UK, -- CN, -- AU Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- US, 0.30 UK, 0.33 world (includes US and UK) Genre: goth rock |
Tracks:Song Title (Writers) [time] (date of single release, chart peaks)
All songs by Curtis, Hook, Morris, and Sumner. Total Running Time: 39:24 The Players:
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Rating: 3.973 out of 5.00 (average of 21 ratings)
Quotable:Unknown Pleasures “amounts to the beginnings of a new rock and roll language.” – Tom Moon, 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You DieAwards:(Click on award to learn more).
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A New Kind of Goth-Punk Grandeur“Joy Division came from the northern England industrial gloom of Manchester, four blue-collar lads chasing a new kind of goth-punk grandeur.” 500 They met at a Sex Pistols show in Manchester in 1977 TM and formed a band, originally under the name Warsaw. They were originally “one of dozens of second-tier punk bands formed in the wake of the Sex Pistols’ romp through the UK but soon transcended the genre and created a distinct sound all their own.” PK“They seized the blunt expressions and me-first narcissism of punk, then filtered them through restrained, and at times elegant, melodies.” TM “Punk…was on the verge of imploding. Britain suffered from poverty and everything seemed bleak…Musical influences? Kraftwerk sounded like aliens. Iggy Pop was debauched yet utterly cool. Fans of the Velvet Underground were still some sort of secret society.” AD Out of all this, Joy Division was born. The PlayersIan Curtis provides “soul-scraping vocals” CQ with his “deadpan delivery” PM and “Jim Morrison-esque” PK baritone. He “synthesizes and purifies every last impulse, his voice shot through with the desire first and foremost to connect.” AM“Bernard Sumner’s heart-piercing guitar lines” CQ “redefined heavy metal sludge as chilling feedback fear and explosive energy.” AM “Peter Hook’s top-heavy bass lines” CQ were “instantly recognizable” AM and “at once warm and forbidding.” AM He “elevated the bassline to prominence.” PK “Stephen Morris’ highly-concentrated beats.” CQ “Those drum patterns…disturbingly mirrored Ian's own epileptic fits. He’d dance that way, like he was having a fit. Then he’d have an actual fit, but it’d be a good few minutes before anybody realised.” AD Add “intense lyrics, and haunting studio effects to create a truly unique sound.” PK Regarding the lyrics, “Ian was a wonderful writer…Many rock lyrics, written out on a piece of paper, look like shit. They may sound great when sung, but they aren’t exactly poetry…These lyrics work as well as literature as they do song lyrics.” AD The Album’s InfluenceIt’s hard to know what might have come of the band had Curtis lived beyond 1980” PM but it isn’t unreasonable to think that “Joy Division was on a crash-course for the heights and reverence that The Smiths would get four years later.” PM “Their influence is still felt today, from Goth bands like Bauhaus and early Cure to industrial bands like Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson.” PK “It’s a perfect album that continues to influence groups like Fontaines D.C., shame and Yard Act.” PMTheir debut album, Unknown Pleasures, “amounts to the beginnings of a new rock and roll language.” TM It “stands as one of the most influential records of all time.” CQ It is “all visceral, all emotional, all theatrical, all perfect – one of the best albums ever.” AM It “resonated with an extraordinary number of musicians who became rock stars in the ‘80s and ‘90s, among them the Smiths, U2, the Cure, Depeche Mode, and Nine Inch Nails. Just about any rock that carries more than a veneer of darkness owes some debt to Joy Division and this still-surprising album.” TM “Black-clad young bands have been imitating Joy Division ever since.” 500 Monument to Despair“There’s nothing about Joy Division’s debut that’s sunny, peachy, or even remotely positive.” CQ “Although most of its rhythm is catchy and ironically poppy…the morbid lyrical imagery courtesy of the late Ian Curtis keeps things in perspective.” CQ The album is “a monument to passion, energy, and cathartic despair.” AM “It’s one of the most depressing records in music history.” CQHowever, “that’s what makes it so unique…You can’t help but feel isolated, alone, and distorted while listening.” CQ It “is a blazing portrait of stark depression and oppressiveness.” PK “What makes this all so compelling is that this album is less a collection of music and more of a snapshot of thoughts and feelings. Everyone tears at their own soul here.” CQ It may not be “a ringing endorsement for people who aren’t clinically depressed, but even the happiest folks enjoy spending an occasional evening moping around in the dark.” PK The ProductionThe band’s sound owes “a great debt to producer Martin Hammett’s delicate atmospherics.” PK His “deservedly famous” AM “rough-yet-precise production” CQ is “as much a hallmark as the music itself.” AM“Joy Division had “recorded a number of songs, far more straightforward punk, and also recorded an album for RCA records that was horribly produced and sapped the power from the group.” AD When “sonic visionary Hannett” RD took the reigns, the group recorded Unknown Pleasures at Stockport’s Strawberry Studios in a week. RD “The quantum leap from the earliest thrashy singles to Unknown Pleasures can be heard through every note” AM thanks to his talent for “emphasizing space in the most revelatory way since the dawn of dub.” AM With his help, the group “created a muted, unnerving ambience through pioneering use of digital effects, muffled screams, and crashing glass.” RD “Songs fade in behind furtive noises of motion and activity, glass breaks with the force and clarity of doom, minimal keyboard lines add to an air of looming disaster – something, somehow, seems to wait or lurk beyond the edge of hearing.” AM Tony Wilson and Factory RecordsThis was “the first release of note on the influential independent Manchester-based Factory Records.” TB Tony Wilson, “a local television presenter…formed the label in 1978, several months after he had started a popular alternative-music club night in Manchester, also called Factory. Joy Division was one of the first bands to play at the club.” TB“We should only be so happy that…Wilson sank all his life savings into it. He didn’t see the returns (possibly ever, really), but rest assured, it paid off. Big time.” CQ The CoverThe “stark, iconic album cover” CQ “even looks like something classic, beyond its time or place of origin even as it was a clear product of both – one of Peter Saville’s earliest and best designs, a transcription of a signal showing a star going nova, on a black embossed sleeve.” AM “The eerie sound waves…look all too similar to a jagged razor blade.” CQ Paste magazine called it “one of the most recognizable album covers post-Dark Side of the Moon.” PMThe Songs“Right from the opening, Disorder, Unknown Pleasures sounds like nothing else, with the doomed Ian Curtis yelping his dark poetry (‘I got the spirit!’) over Peter Hook’s bass pulse.” 500 It “reminds listeners of the band’s fierce live reputation.” RDOn Day of the Lords, it “sounds like the whole world is ending…You don’t have to have ever made a suicide pact with anybody in order to think it’s a wonderfully great song.” AD “Candidate has everything, the quintessential sound of Unknown Pleasures.” AD “A few of the songs here start in almost complete silence. Insight is one of those.” AD It features a “nervous drive towards some sort of apocalypse.” AM There are also “more brooding, slower numbers like the menacing,” PK “harrowing call for release” AM of the “majestic death anthem New Dawn Fades.” RD “It’s so dark and heavy, it really makes the supposedly dark and ‘satantic’ Black Sabbath seem like a kids’ cartoon. You want music to reflect and create the feeling of a horror movie? Joy Division did that, and more. They reflected real life, far more horrific.” AD Curtis “documents his experiences as an epileptic in the mutant disco of She’s Lost Control.” RD The song “is groovy rhythms, strange rhythms, very melodic whilst still retaining the darkness you can either immerse yourself in, take solace from, or simply ignore and enjoy the fantastic music.” AD There’s also “the romance in hell of Shadowplay” AM which “conjures images of the urban decay and paranoia of late-1970s Manchester.” RD The song “is pretty much perfect. Just wait for the instrumental section. The guitar is genuinely fantastic…quite unlike a punk guitar, but more punk than anything else. The guitar in Joy Division rarely provided the melody…With ‘Shadowplay’ the bass and drums provide the melody. The bass especially. The guitar is allowed free to provide both percussion – and in this case, wonderful solos.” AD “Wilderness is all echoed drums, all bass rhythms and melodies.” AD “Disorder” “and Interzone are built around simple but infectious bass hooks that are hard to get out of your head.” PK “For all the despair, there’s something inspiring in the surge of ‘Interzone.’” 500 It is “easily the most straightforward song on the entire record. Just a two-minute punk styled blast. It has a place, though.” AD The album wraps up with “the haunting I Remember Nothing.” RD The End“The band’s follow-up album, Closer, was even more intense; while neither album is exactly mainstream-friendly, Joy Division did enjoy huge critical success in the UK. Sadly, singer Ian Curtis hung himself on the eve of the band’s American debut; the rest of the band regrouped as New Order.” PKNotes:The 2007 reissue added a second disc with a live show performed at the Factory in Manchester on July 13, 1979. |
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First posted 3/26/2010; last updated 10/13/2026. |
