Siouxsie & The Banshees: The Scream LP

Future U2 producer Steve Lillywhite's first major project behind the console, Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees' silver-selling 1978 debut, Scream shot to No. 12 in the UK Top 40. In retrospect, its mainstream performance is all the more remarkable, as hooks and radio-friendly choruses were low on the record's totem pole. The Scream's contents were nonetheless compelling, not to mention significantly different from anything previously pigeonholed as simply "punk." Decades on, its primal power still cuts through loud and clear.

Built upon the bedrock of Kenny Morris' tribal, tom-heavy drums and John McKay's guttural, metallic guitar, "Jigsaw Feeling" and "Metal Postcard (Mittageisen)" were stark and monochromatic; the domestic violence-related "Suburban Relapse" (influenced by Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho) was brutally harrowing; and even the record's lone cover version – an eerie deconstruction of The Beatles' "Helter Skelter" – provided little in the way of respite. Contemporaneous critics, however, unanimously doled out 5-star praise and Sounds enthusiastically proclaimed the record to be "the best debut album of the year." Now frequently cited alongside PiL's First Issue and Magazine's Real Life as one of the post-punk era's landmark releases, The Scream has never fallen from favor.