The Scream

Both hugely influential whilst simultaneously passing me right by. 17yr old me listened to this a lot more than boring current me does.

I prefer Kaleidoscope and Juju, but this is still a cool debut album! 3.5

The Scream is another amazing album from Siouxsie and the Banshees. It has been a long while since i did an album by this band and because of that, i have forgotten just how good they really are. There is already the fact that the guitars and vocals in the songs are great and really do a lot to help me enjoy them as much as i do. This album is also home to my second favorite Helter Skelter cover (My favorite is the Rob Zombie/Marilyn Manson one). I don't think this album is as good as Juju though i can't really pinpoint why. Regardless, i think both albums are some of the best listens i have had on this project.
Best Song: Mirage
Worst Song: Suburban Relapse

Pretty good. Nice darkness to the sound. Nothing too memorable on here though.

Crazy energy. Would love to attend a show with them in 78!

For this review, I will not include the bonus tracks "Hong Kong Garden" and "The Staircase (Mystery)" from the 2006 reissue.

I've heard of Siouxsie and the Banshees as an influential band in the post-punk and alternative genres. I certainly respect that the Banshees' debut album The Scream is considered the genesis of several later acts. After giving the album a couple of listens, I like it albeit with some caveats.

Let's start with the positives. I genuinely enjoy the melodrama in Siouxise Sioux's vibrato vocal delivery, where she commanded attention with near-operatic wails. She's backed up well by John McKay's crunchy guitar riffs, Kenny Morris's pounding tom-tom-focused percussion, and Steven Severin's elegant bass. Songs like "Jigsaw Feeling", "Carcass", and "Mirage" pop off well early on in the album given how synchronized the band was in their unorthodox mannerisms.

That said, not every song on The Scream is great. It took two minutes for this album to get going with the intro track "Pure" taking a while to crescendo. Halfway through, "Metal Postcard (Mittageisen)" kills the pacing starts. I understand if they were going for a more mechanical-sounding presentation for a track about the metal aesthetic, but I find it a slog. By the time that song is over, the album has difficulty getting its momentum back, even with fun tracks like "Nicotine Stain" and the seven-minute closer "The Switch".

Overall, I enjoyed The Scream and what Siouxsie and the Banshees brought to their table with their sound. It can be a difficult listen, but one that is worth the effort.

Such a singular sound. Intense and focused throughout.

Das Debütalbum der britischen Rockband erschien im November 1978 und gilt als ein wegweisendes Werk des Post-Punk, dass zwar einige beeindruckende Momente bietet, aber nicht überdurchschnittlich ist. Positiv ist der
Innovativer Sound durch seine experimentelle Herangehensweise. Einflussreiche Songs wie “Jigsaw Feeling” und “Metal Postcard (Mittageisen)” zeigen die Fähigkeit der Band, düstere und eindringliche Atmosphären zu schaffen. Leider ist es auch über längere Phasen zu viel des Guten an Experimenten. Hier hätte dem Album sicher ein Hauch von Wave gutgetan.

Sioux's vocals are so raw and intense. This is a wild debut album that really shows where they would go. The Beatles cover is an interesting inclusion, but I really like their take on it.

Holy shit. Blown away by this album. I know I've heard of Siouxsie and the Banshees but I am not sure I ever listened to them. Honestly probably judged a band by its name and rightly know I made a mistake because this is one of the coolest albums I've ever heard. So angsty and angry and bleeding influence into the bands that followed them. Pleasantly unpleasant. Never ever judge a band by their name because you never know what you're missing until you actually listen.

Painful. All I heard was whining and shouting for 45 minutes. This is giving actual banshees a bad rep

Metal Postcard was enough to drive me to insanity

And the Helter Skelter cover was honestly a hate crime

2 ⭐️

While this doesn't sound super terrible, it wasn't the best either.

Punk met een zangeres. Het stomme is dat ik soms wel wordt gegrepen door een simpel melodielijntje of zelfs door de zangeres als ze even niet expres zo vals zingt. Maar meer dan 2 sterren kan ik er niet van maken.

This album is apparently their debut album. It has Helter Skelter on it..... That Beatles song Charles Manson thought had hidden prophesies in it .... So that's creepy as fuck. This version is dark as hell.

I'm not a huge Siouxsie fan, but this album isn't bad. It isn't great, but I can see how it was a turning point in post punk/goth rock which influenced a shit ton of bands to follow. This one is better than the other one I had (Juju).

Favourite songs: Carcass, Metal Postcard (Mittageisen), Nicotine Stain

Least favourite songs: Pure (just random moaning)

3/5

This very much reminded me of Joy Division. I really liked it, but I can’t say I enjoyed it more than Unknown Pleasures so it gets the same score. Will definitely be returning to this. The cover of Helter Skelter was awesome. Favorite songs were Overground, Carcass, Helter Skelter, and Switch.

Soild album deserves its place on the list but not as good as JuJu though so won’t be getting added to my frequent rotation.

If there is one thing I adore about music, it is finding what is seemingly an artist you love out of nowhere. It happened with me and Sparks, my now favorite band, and while there could be a world where I still hadn't discovered them, I'm extremely happy that my music journey led me to them. So, getting that feeling again is always great, and that seems to be the case with me and Siouxsie and the Banshees. I mean, I could assume I would like them just because of my general enjoyment of post-punk and, to a lesser extent, gothic rock, but to find out they may be one of my favorites of the genre and era is an extremely nice surprise. Siouxsie's vocals are unique and emotionally strained without being difficult to listen to, and their instrumentation on this album is amazing, with tons of riffs and hooks that are surprisingly catchy for such a dissonant album. This should be an album where you stare into space and overthink every thing that has ever happened to you, but you can't help but rock out a little while you do it. Siouxsie and the Banshees seem to love their unique covers, and this features a fascinating Helter Skelter cover that towers over other Beatles covers for actually doing something different whilst not removing the ton of the original, and the whole album is just haunting. The album cover is perfect, just being something relatively normal, but distorting it to a point of being terrifying, and while perhaps by modern standards this album could come off a little cheesy, by 1978 standards this feels like a nightmare, albeit a lesser one. This debut just feels like something sinister is afoot, and while their later, more rock oriented releases are amazing in their own right, this take is something I just really enjoy, being exactly what I go to post-punk for. That pure anxious energy that few others can balance with purely great songwriting so well. It is a treat, and I look forward to diving into their discography more in my own time.

Not bad. Kind of a early punk rock feel to it. 3/5

Not quite as electrifying as *Juju*, but rock solid

This is a cool record. Really an innovative sound to get the whole british alternative punk scene going. Though not so divorced from the British punk sound that you couldn't say have a Clash Banshees bill, which would be sick.