Bernard Sumner redefined heavy metal sludge as chilling feedback fear and explosive energy, Peter Hook's instantly recognizable bass work was at once warm and forbidding, and Stephen Morris' drumming smacked through the speakers above all else. But even though this is Hannett's album as much as anyone's, the songs and performances are the true key. Songs fade in behind furtive noises of motion and activity, glass breaks with the force and clarity of doom, and minimal keyboard lines add to an air of looming disaster - something, somehow, seems to wait or lurk beyond the edge of hearing.

The quantum leap from the earliest thrashy singles to Unknown Pleasures can be heard through every note, with Martin Hannett's deservedly famous production - emphasizing space in the most revelatory way since the dawn of dub - as much a hallmark as the music itself. If that were all Unknown Pleasures was, it wouldn't be discussed so much, but the ten songs inside, quite simply, are stone-cold landmarks, the whole album a monument to passion, energy, and cathartic despair. It even looks like something classic, beyond its time or place of origin even as it was a clear product of both - one of Peter Saville's earliest and best designs, a transcription of a signal showing a star going nova, on a black embossed sleeve.