MOG

By the time Siouxsie Sioux and her band, The Banshees, released their long-awaited debut album in 1978, they had been making rounds on the punk scene for almost two years, building up a strong reputation andfan base. The Scream was probably already marked for success, but this is not an album from a band who's already glad-handing itself, resting upon already-won laurels. Even from the first track, "The Pure," audiences get something that few bands (and definitely few, if any, punk bands) offered: an song that is experimental in the way it plays with open space, but, at the same time, stays will in the line with the dark and menacing sounds of the time.

"The Pure" stands as a quiet moment perched at the beginning, as it easily slides into "Jigsaw Feeling," a fantastic musical romp full of heavy drums, expressivebasslines, and guitars that zoom along at a break-neck pace, always driving and clunging along. And the whole time, Siouxsie sings an almost melodic rant about a mind that is "one day...feeling total, the next day split in two."

The album from this point on rarely breaks the intensity or cadence set by "Jigsaw Feeling." The few moments that The Scream gives us to breathe, the looming grind and pound to come hangs like the air before a huge rainstorm. Not to say that this album blends together into an indistinguishable and unremarkable pastiche of sound. Their cover of the Beatles' "Helter Skelter" is almost unrecognizable for the first few seconds, but, as it opens up, captures the spirit and energy of the original perfectly. And "Mirage," one of the stand-out tracks, mixes (dare I say it) slightlypoppiness into a song that still rocks your face off.

The Scream stands out from the rest of the albums from this era in the equal attention it pays to the extreme intensity and energy that punk rock brought back to music in truckloads, and melodic complexity that would (and has) set it apart from most other albums and bands of the time. This album started what was to be an innovative and brilliant career forSiouxsie & the Banshees, inspiring scores of artists and bands to new realms of possibilities.