The Scream is the debut album by Siouxsie and the Banshees. It was an almost instant commercial success, peaking at No. 12 on the UK Albums Chart and was recorded in only one week and mixed in three during August 1978. The album was released on 13 November 1978 by Polydor. Before the album's release, the band had developed a strong reputation as a live act, and had achieved a Top 10 UK single with "Hong Kong Garden”, a track which did not appear on the original album, but was added not much later to most others issues of Scream.

Upon release, The Scream was widely acclaimed by critics. It was also a commercial success, peaking at No. 12 in the UK Albums Chart. The album is regarded as a landmark of post-punk.

Late 1977 and early 1978, Siouxsie and the Banshees received major press coverage but failed to secure a recording deal. A fan undertook a graffiti campaign in London, spraying the walls of the major record companies with the words "Sign the Banshees: do it now".[2] Polydor finally signed them in June.

J. G. Ballard and William Burroughs provided the reference points for the lyrics of The Scream.

Since its release, The Scream has received a number of accolades from the music press. NME rated it at No. 57 in their "Writers All Time 100 Albums" list in 1985. Uncut magazine placed it at No. 43 in their list of the 100 greatest debut albums. It was featured in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

The Scream placed the group among the pioneers of post-punk, as Robert Smith of the Cure said:

"When The Scream came out, I remember it was much slower than everybody thought. It was like the forerunner of the Joy Division sound. It was just big-sounding."

Joy Division's Peter Hook, who saw the band in concert in Manchester in 1977, said about The Scream: "Siouxsie And The Banshees were one of our big influences, The Banshees first LP was one of my favourite ever records, the way the guitarist and the drummer played was a really unusual way of playing."

The Scream had a strong impact on other musicians. Massive Attack covered and sampled "Metal Postcard (Mittageisen)" on their song "Superpredators (Metal Postcard)" in 1997.

Scream (1978 LP) - Tracklist

DISCOGS

Pink Flag – Wire’s Radical Debut and the Birth of Post-Punk Minimalism

When Pink Flag appeared in November 1977, 48 years ago, it sounded like nothing else in Britain’s already restless punk landscape. The debut album by London’s Wire — Colin Newman (vocals, guitar), Bruce Gilbert (guitar), Graham Lewis (bass), and Robert Gotobed (drums) — took punk’s raw immediacy and stripped it down to its barest essence. Released on Harvest Records, the album crammed 21 songs into just 35 minutes, with several tracks lasting barely over a minute. Yet, within that brevity, Pink Flag redefined what punk — and rock itself — could be.

Where their contemporaries often chased volume and attitude, Wire pursued structure and concept. Songs like “Field Day for the Sundays” and “Surgeon’s Girl” flash by in seconds, more like sharp sonic ideas than traditional compositions. “Three Girl Rhumba” and “Ex Lion Tamer” showcase the band’s knack for catchy repetition, angular guitar riffs, and deadpan vocals that hinted at irony rather than rage. The title track, meanwhile, closes the album with an unexpected sense of grandeur — a slow, ominous march that encapsulates Wire’s ability to turn minimalism into something epic.

Critics quickly recognized Pink Flag as a boundary-breaking statement. It eschewed the sloganeering of early punk for an art-school precision, prefiguring post-punk’s intellectual edge. Its skeletal arrangements and conceptual clarity would later influence bands ranging from R.E.M. and Sonic Youth to Elastica (who borrowed from “Three Girl Rhumba” for their hit “Connection”). Even hardcore punk’s concise song structures can trace a lineage back to Wire’s 1977 experiment in reduction.

Decades later, Pink Flag still sounds astonishingly modern. Its clipped energy, cryptic lyrics, and refusal to conform make it both a product of its time and a timeless blueprint for musical reinvention. Wire didn’t just debut with a punk album — they built the scaffolding for an entire movement that followed. Pink Flag remains a radical document of how far less can truly mean more.

Wire - Pink Flag (SHSP 4076)

DISCOGS

Alien Sex Fiend – 42 Years of ‘Who’s Been Sleeping in My Brain’

Released 11 November (Germany)*, 25 November (UK)* 1983 on the iconic indie label Anagram Records, Who’s Been Sleeping in My Brain marked the arrival of one of the most distinctive and chaotic forces in the gothic rock and post-punk underground: Alien Sex Fiend. Emerging from the grimy, neon-lit corners of London’s Batcave scene, the band — fronted by the flamboyant and unhinged Nik Fiend, alongside Mrs. Fiend (keyboards), Yaxi Highrizer (guitar), and Johnny Ha-Ha (drums) — fused punk energy, horror imagery, and electronic experimentation into a sound that defied easy categorization.

The album was recorded at Aosis Studios in London and produced by the legendary Tony “Brooke Bond” James (of Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Generation X fame). From its opening track “Wish I Woz a Dog” to the menacing “Ignore the Machine,” Who’s Been Sleeping in My Brain captured Alien Sex Fiend’s wild theatricality and sense of dark humor. The record brims with twisted samples, warped vocals, and primitive drum machines — a surreal collision of horror-punk aesthetics and proto-industrial textures that made the band instant cult favorites.

Unlike many of their goth contemporaries, Alien Sex Fiend didn’t just dwell in gloom — they injected a dose of deranged fun into their macabre world. Nik Fiend’s manic stage presence, corpse-paint makeup, and tongue-in-cheek lyrics set the band apart from the more solemn tone of bands like Bauhaus or The Sisters of Mercy. Who’s Been Sleeping in My Brainreflected this rebellious, DIY ethos, standing as both a parody and celebration of gothic culture.

The standout track “Ignore the Machine” became an underground anthem, its hypnotic rhythm and bizarre charm earning the band recognition across the UK and beyond. The album’s raw production and unapologetic weirdness paved the way for Alien Sex Fiend’s enduring career and influence on the darker fringes of electronic and industrial music.

Over four decades later, Who’s Been Sleeping in My Brain remains a seminal debut — a chaotic, campy, and utterly original statement from a band that proved being strange was not just an attitude, but an art form.

Who's Been Sleepin In My Brain (LP GRAM 10)

DISCOGS

* SPEX magazine 12/83 (Germany)
** Music Week magazine 26//11/83 (UK)

What some have called the most original and best album of the original punk generation was unleashed 47 years on 10 November 1978, ‘Germfree Adolescents’ by X-Ray Spex stands at the pinnacle of what punk would accomplish in its first incarnation.

The dynamo that drove this punk-rock strike of defiance was loaded with anti-capitalist view which all spewed from an unlikely young girl, only nineteen at the time of its recording but this respectable, well-mannered young girl with braces on her teeth which were a feature when she smiled, but then she would open her mouth to sing and the shy, quiet Marion Joan Elliot-Said would transform into the high-priestess of a revolution, Poly Styrene.

The album opens with a four-syllable disdain: “Ar-ti-fic-ial!”, as it phases the music launches and this Richard Hell in knickers summons up the powerful and depressed emotions of the day in a twelve-track assault. It becomes clear that Poly Styrene delivers conviction in every word she sings, every sneer and roll of the tongue, each phrase is delivered with the same oppressed intensity as the last.

As for the musicianship of X-Ray Spex, they provide the perfect backdrop for Styrene to wage a verbal war, this album contains some of the best drumming on a punk record over which a very loud, old-school guitar pumps distorted rock and roll riffs that build in intensity throughout the albumthe inclusion of a saxophone to give the songs an extra depth may not be not common on records of the ‘Generation-X’ but it works here in galvanizing the sound.

The songs themselves are not love songs as such, they are rather the points of everyday society such as “Warrior In Woolworths”, “Plastic Bag”, “ I Am A Poseur” and of course the title track, not many bands could make songs about personal hygiene and supermarkets cool, though these themes make the album relatable and accessible to the youth of the day and stands as a time-capsule of late 70s culture.

Germfree Adolescents (original 1978 track list)

Side A

'Art-I-Ficial' – 3:24
'Obsessed with You' – 2:30
'Warrior in Woolworths' – 3:06
'Let's Submerge' – 3:26
'I Can't Do Anything' – 2:58
'Identity' – 2:25

Side B;

'Genetic Engineering' – 2:49
'I Live Off You' – 2:09
'I Am a Poseur' – 2:34
'Germ Free Adolescents' – 3:14
'Plastic Bag' – 4:54
'The Day the World Turned Dayglo' – 2:53

DISCOGS

[KB]

“Jesus died for somebody’s sins,
But not mine..”

This day 50 years ago, Patti Smith released her groundbreaking debut album “Horses” (10 November, 1975) and music thankfully was never the same since.

The album went on to become the most influential and important release of the Punk-Rock movement, in fact it is quoted as not just being the album held on the punk-pedestal but one of the true artistic statements in twentieth-century music.

What separates “Horses” from other releases of the day is down to the intelligence in the songs of Smith, a deeper meaning not usually associated with punk, poetry set to the sound of rage and delivered with a snarling-venomous voice and three chords played exceptionally loud.

New York and in particular CBGB’s quickly became her battlefield and the birthplace of a legend, “Horses” was born out of the frustration and the pain Smith felt in the loss of the dominant, otherworldly rock stars such as Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.
“All I ever wanted, since I was a child, was to do something wonderful”.

The album opens with a quiet moment of self-realization, that slowly gathers tempo, “Gloria” a track recorded originally recorded by Them and then The Doors and it is Morrison’s version she claims here, a slice of power and angst as producer John Cale steered the runaway train from leaving the tracks.

Across the albums eight-tracks all avenues are explored in full, from gender to violence, the influence “Horses” cast is heard in the music of Siouxsie And The Banshees, The Smith’s, R.E.M, The Slits and PJ Harvey who all owe a debt to the electric troubadour.
But her arrival on the music scene was exactly what Punk needed, with inspired lyrics similar to the folk-rock crossover that erupted ten years before when Dylan turned electric she blended aggression with intuitive words that rang in the ears of the listeners making nobody feel alone.

“In the sheets
There was a man
Dancing around
To the simple
Rock & roll
Song”

Horses (Original 1975 Track Listing)
Gloria
Redondo Beach
Birdland
Free Money
Kimberly
Break It Up
Land: Horses/Land Of A Thousand Dances/La Mer (De)
Elegie

DISCOGS

[KB]