The Scream is the debut studio album by British rock band Siouxsie and the Banshees, released on November 13, 1978, by Polydor Records. Prior to recording of the album, the band recorded two sessions for BBC radio, during which they had premiered the tracks "Metal Postcard" and "Overground". After taping their debut single, "Hong Kong Garden", the band returned to the studio with the same co-producer, Steve Lillywhite. The Scream was recorded in one week and mixed in three weeks at RAK.
The record was hailed as a landmark by reviewers and it is considered a pioneering work of post-punk. The music combines an angular and jagged guitar, a bass-led rhythm, with machine-like drums heavy on tom-toms. The sound has been described as claustrophobic, big with a lot of space. In the UK, The Scream reached number twelve on the Albums chart.
Besides post-punk, it profoundly impacted noise rock and alternative rock genres and rock guitar playing in general. Bands and musicians including Joy Division, U2, Killing Joke, Steve Albini of Big Black and the Jesus and Mary Chain have cited it as an influence.
Background In late 1977, Siouxsie and the Banshees received major press coverage but failed to secure a recording deal. In October 1977, Sounds reported that someone had sprayed the walls of 15 record companies with the words "Sign the Banshees: Do it now". The following year (1978) in June, the band signed with Polydor.
John McKay had become the band's guitarist in July 1977; music historian Clinton Heylin argued that the recruitment of McKay (along with the first steps of Magazine in late 1977 and the formation of PiL in mid-1978), marked the "true starting-point for English post-punk". Several songs off The Scream had already been recorded and broadcast on BBC Radio 1 for two John Peel sessions: "Mirage", "Metal Postcard" and "Suburban Relapse" premiered in November 1977, and "Overground" and "Carcass" were aired three months later in February 1978. When recording their first Peel session, Siouxsie Sioux and bassist Steven Severin had described their music as "cold, machine-like and passionate at the same time". Music journalist Vivien Goldman wrote: "Siouxsie and the Banshees sound like a 21st century industrial plant". Their first Peel session became one of the most requested in the show’s history.
Recording, music and lyrics The Scream was recorded in one week during August 1978, and mixed in three weeks with Steve Lillywhite co-producing. The group was in the studio while their debut single "Hong Kong Garden" was released. Lillywhite was recruited because he recorded the drums in a different way. He asked drummer Kenny Morris to play the bass drum and the snare drum first. Then he did the cymbals and the tom-toms later. Morris used cymbals sparingly: in the early days of the group, he didn't use cymbals. On "Metal Postcard", there is a "motorik austerity" in the rhythm patterns. Music journalist Kris Needs noted that Lillywhite used "deep echo" on drums. Joy Division's drummer Stephen Morris wrote in his autobiography that the Banshees used "the bass-led rhythm" and their drummer "Kenny Morris played mostly toms". Percussion was an important component of the music: future Banshees drummer Budgie remarked that Morris did "a lot of percussion overdubs" and "they are really part of the songs"."196: Budgie (The Slits, Siouxsie Sioux and The Banshees, The Creatures, John Grant) - interview". Thetrapset.net. 2 January 2019. Retrieved 15 January 2024. "[From 00:32:55] Looking back the first album The Scream there are a lot of percussion overdubs, they are really part of the songs."
Music historian Simon Goddard described the music on The Scream as a "claustrophobic abyss of angst and angularity", saying it was part of a triptych of albums layering the foundations of post-punk. The opening cut, "Pure", had a spacious, atmospheric sound. Journalist Miranda Sawyer noted that Siouxsie's "vocals came from a distance", that "there was a lot of space" and that "the sound was big and slow". Music journalist Ian Birch wrote that "Pure" was an atmosphere piece; "a snarling, predatory bass stalks its ground before it's met by teeth-grinding guitar splinters, and the distant footfall of drums. Siouxsie's voice becomes an instrument." Siouxsie's way of singing was singular: musician Boz Boorer observed that "the whooping vocal wasn't just singing a tune, it would slide around." Kris Needs remarked that at the end of "Pure", it seeps out into "Jigsaw Feeling", a "song of disorientation and bewilderment" with a "huge, sometimes awe-inspiring sound". Another song, "Switch", was divided in three sections, one per character; "for the different people who swap jobs with terrible results - scientists, general practitioner and vicar". The music was "monochrome and minimal".
The "original... idea" was "a pure musical democracy" . The group didn't want any lead instrument, neither the voice nor the guitar "which usually dominated" the music. Every member of the band "occupied their own space, melodically and rhythmically". Severin didn't see "the bass as a supporting instrument": he always thought of it "as a driving instrument". Siouxsie wanted the Banshees' music to be "cinematic"; Bernard Herrmann's score to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho inspired the music of "Suburban Relapse", where the guitars echo the knife-screeching violins of the famous shower scene. The group didn't want a guitar to sound like a guitar. They wanted "their music to be exciting, with a sense of fear, of uneasiness to it". The soundtrack of The Omen also inspired them.
McKay co-wrote most of the songs. Only "Carcass" dated from the band's time with Peter Fenton, their guitarist from January to July 1977.
J. G. Ballard and William S. Burroughs provided the reference points for the lyrics of The Scream. In a track such as "Suburban Relapse", the band wrote about suburbia, where they were born and raised. Severin emphasized: "That's why J.G. Ballard resonated so much with us, because all his near-future tales were set in this bizarre suburban wasteland. Suburbia is a place where you can imagine any kind of possibility, because there's space, not urban clutter".
Title and sleeve The title of the album was in part inspired by the 1968 film The Swimmer (starring Burt Lancaster), in which main character, Neddy Merrill, intended to swim home, using open-air pools. Climbing over garden fences, from pool to pool, his journey put him into a state of mental and physical exhaustion, and in the end, Goddard said, "all Neddy Merrill could think to do was scream, [...] as a scream of exhausted jubilance after a troubled, arduous journey".
The idea for the cover was Siouxsie's. Photographer Paul Wakefield met with her and the band to discuss the project. Wakefield later said:
The idea was to shoot disquieting and unnerving images underwater in a swimming pool – you can't scream underwater. I wanted to be able to completely control the lighting, and so an indoor pool was the only option. I scouted quite a few pools, but when I saw this pool in the YMCA in Central London, which was dark blue tiled with light blue lane stripes instead of the normal reverse colours, I knew it was the ideal location. I wanted to give it an eerie underwater night-time feel, and this setting was perfect. We used a number of 1000K and 2000K lights around the pool edge. I used schoolkids as models and they pretty well ran riot.
Release More than one month prior to its release, DJ John Peel broadcast the album on BBC radio 1 from an advance copy on a cassette, from the beginning to end, with no interruptions. When he finished playing it, he said, "that's the one boys and girls, that's the one."
The Scream was released on 13 November 1978. It was an almost instant commercial success, peaking at No. 12 on the UK Albums Chart. No singles were released to promote the album.
The Scream was reissued on CD in the UK on 27 October 2005 as part of Universal's Deluxe Edition series. The new edition featured a remastered version of the album on the first disc, while the second disc contained demo and live tracks together with the singles from that period. A single-disc edition of the album was also released with the two non-album singles "Kong Kong Garden" and "The Staircase (Mystery)" as bonus tracks.
A 180g black vinyl LP reissue of the original edition, mastered from the original ¼ inch tapes and cut half-speed at Abbey Road Studios by Miles Showell, was released in September 2018.
Critical reception
The Scream was named "the best debut album of the year" by Sounds. Reviewer Peter Silverton gave the album 5 stars out of 5, and the paper listed it at number 2 in its end-of-year best album list. Record Mirror also published a 5-star review, saying: The Scream "points to the future, real music for the new age.... It is vital, it's moving. It's a ... landmark." Chris Westwood praised the cohesion between the words and the music: "The album's lyrical frame of mind is perfectly reflected in the work of [guitarist] McKay. [Bassist] Severin and [drummer] Morris; constantly shifting, restless, controlled aggression, they are as essential as Siouxsie." Melody Maker described the sound as "strong, abrasive, visceral and constantly inventive, with a thrust that makes the spaces equal partners to the notes", with the critic comparing the album's textures to that of Wire and Pere Ubu. ZigZag qualified it as a "magnificent record", with reviewer Kris Needs writing: "I can't think of another group who could have made an LP so uncompromising, powerful and disturbing, yet so captivating and enjoyable... It is certainly a special classic to join milestones like [David Bowie's] Diamond Dogs, Roxy [Music]'s first and [Lou Reed's] Berlin. This is music of such strength and vision that you just can't not be moved by the time they swing into the final climactic passage of 'Switch', the closing track." Needs qualified the sound as "huge, sometimes awe-inspiring" and commented that drummer Morris created "one of the best drum sounds I've ever heard – the deep echo and floor-shuddering mix accentuating his muted Glitter Band stomp". Critic Adam Sweeting began his review by saying, "This is a chilling, intense masterpiece". Sweeting then noted that the musicians "have perfected a group sound which is powerful but streamlined", adding that "the words and music combine to produce coolly dazzling images".Adam Sweeting. "The Scream - review". 1979 - reproduced in Ray Stevenson's book: Siouxsie and the Banshees - Photo Book (1983). Omnibus Press. .
Several journalists from NME also praised the record. Nick Kent first stated that the band sounded "like some unique hybrid of the Velvet Underground mated with much of the ingenuity of Tago Mago-era Can." He then focused his attention on the opening track, saying: "Pure" "takes the sound to its ultimate juncture, leaving spaces that say as much as the notes being played. Certainly, the traditional three-piece sound has never been used in a more unorthodox fashion with such stunning results." In December 1978, another critic from NME, Paul Morley, described the music on The Scream as "unlike anything in rock":