Well, the band and Hannett that is, and not necessarily in that order. There's an argument to be made that Hannett overproduced this album, but if all overproduction was like this I'd never use the term as an insult. I mean, let's face it; the raw materials for this album (a middling post-punk power-trio + a rambling prophet of doom) could have ended up along the lines of Mister Band (Nice Pete's band in Achewood) in an unskilled set of hands, but Hannett is able to draw out every possible bit of interest and atmosphere that the material could provide (and the drums sound fantastic in a not-quite-70s-not-quite-80s sort of way). Aside from the treatment of the instruments, the production effects are also fascinating; highlights for me are the upward *whoosh* sounds in "Disorder" (which sound EXACTLY like the elevator sounds in Sim Tower 15 years later), the Space Invaders laser beams in "Insight," and ESPECIALLY the vocal effects in "She's Lost Control," where the echoes of Curtis' voice spiral up to the sky or down into the ground in disorienting ways.

Of course, even great production effects can't save all of the material. Even after coming around to the bulk of the material on this album, I never really gained an appreciation for "Candidate" or the closing "I Remember Nothing," the slowest songs on here. I get how they function as atmospheric showcases and as change-of-pace tracks and all that, and I do consider them necessary for the album, but they drone on and on in a pretty boring way that makes me consider them necessary nuisances. At least "Candidate" is only 3 minutes long, but "I Remember Nothing" is almost 6, and the various atmospheric nooks and crannies in the latter can't offset how silly Curtis sounds to me in it or how little else happens. For what it's worth, I consider "The Overload," a Talking Heads track from the following year that the band supposedly wrote after hearing a description of what Joy Division sounded like without ever actually hearing them, a far superior track to "I Remember Nothing," and I don't really love that one either.

Of the other eight tracks, only the aforementioned "Insight" really doesn't do much for me, and even that one has that silly stretch with the space lasers on top of the plodding bassline. The rest of the album is pretty great, though. My favorite is "Shadowplay," which isn't an adventurous choice by any means, but I think it's pretty clearly one of the band's three best songs or so, and I'll just have to forego creativity in this case. The build of the bass over the drums until the guitar bursts onto the scene is stunning, and Albrecht's guitar, whether in the breaks between verses or the glorious supernova (it's hard to avoid imagery of sound growing from something small to something huge when Joy Division is firing on all cylinders) of post-punk guitar parts in the end, is an absolute treat. Curtis sounds especially fantastic here as well.

Oddly, the two tracks surrounding it are my other two favorites on the album. Aside from the great vocal effects, "She's Lost Control" is as memorable and as rhythmically punchy as can be, and the effect of having Hook playing "lead" bass in the highest registers while the guitar growls underneath it is fantastic. Also, as much as I don't generally focus in on Curtis' lyrics, it's hard not to find sympathy in this (obviously autobiographical even if it's about a woman) look at a woman suffering from epilepsy. I'm also very fond of "Wilderness," an obviously slowed-down punk number that doesn't get as much attention as some more famous numbers on the album; so help me, I could listen to that sequence with the quick slide up and down in the bass followed by the two loud guitar chords forever and not get tired of it.

Of the other four, "Interzone" is probably the least important, but I find it a lot of fun to have a track that was clearly transported straight from the band's punk days and inserted into an atmospheric post-punk album with only a little bit of atmospheric echo to make it sound like it "belongs." It's also the closest we get to hearing Curtis' natural singing voice; again, his voice isn't great in this state, but it's weirdly refreshing to hear the artifice dropped at least for a moment.

The rest is fine. "Disorder" and "Day of the Lords" make for a rousing 1-2 opening punch, even for somebody like me who doesn't really care about Curtis' lyrics. "Disorder" is a nice showcase of the band's ability to create a great overall effect when it's not immediately clear that any of the band members are doing anything special, and the build in intensity (especially in the guitar) is so gradual and natural that when Curtis belts out his vocal climax, it feels completely necessary and an appropriate extension of what everybody else is doing (and not at all gimmicky, like I originally felt). "Day of the Lords" is most easily remembered for Curtis' "Where will it end? WHERE WILL IT END?" bellowings, but there are some surprisingly growly and heavy guitar lines buried underneath Curtis and the high-pitched synth, and the constrast in the guitars between the droning parts in the verses and the loud fast strumming near the end is a real treat. And finally, "New Dawn Fades" seems to be a particular fan favorite, and while I'm not totally sure it would make my top 5 from the album (Curtis' vocal performance doesn't seem that impressive to me in the quieter parts, though his parts during the more intense portions seem fine), it has a real winner of a bassline and a great slow guitar solo in the second half, so I definitely like it quite a bit.

Put it all together, and I can almost give it a rating of D, despite the fact that I don't really care for well over a quarter of it and I don't really care about most of the lyrics even though they're clearly a central part of the album. The high points and the general atmosphere are terrific, no doubt about it, and I can absolutely understand why so many people are so in love with this album. As for my perception of it, this album has come a long way through the years, and while I very much doubt it will go up any more in my esteem, I have to give grudging respect to an album that could change my mind about it largely against my own will. Regardless of specific rating, anybody who doesn't have blinders to music after the "classic rock" era should be all over this if they don't have it already.

The thing that people tend to overlook, though, is that even if Curtis helped make this album with the intent of this being his last album (and thus Joy Division's last album), I'm willing to bet the other members sure didn't intend for this to be the band's big symbolic swan-song. They would have approached this as their second album, one where they wanted to avoid the dreaded sophomore slump and establish themselves as a force to be reckoned with for years to come. In this they absolutely succeeded; the high points aren't quite as high as on its predecessor, but there aren't any low points either, and while I prefer Unknown Pleasures to this one by a sliver I'm also more likely to listen to this one start to finish.

Truth be told, as much focus as Curtis generally gets in regards to this album, I'd have to say that I consider him the album's weakest link by a good margin, which is somewhat of a problem given how heavily featured he is. There are some interesting vocal melodies here and there (and his voice helps with the general atmosphere), but the lyrics continue to mean very little to me, and more than that there are some vocal parts where he really sounds pretty bad (parts of "Heart and Soul" are the worst offenders, but I don't like his vocals in "Atrocity Exhibition" or "Passover" or "Colony" much either). This is a shame, because when I put my focus primarily on the Hook/Morris/Albrecht trio, treating Curtis only as window dressing, I enjoy the living daylights out of this album. Martin Hannett puts in another great performance as producer; he's gotten rid of most of the sound effects, and the sound is generally much brighter and shinier than on Unknown Pleasures, but it's still very distinctive, and the instrumental parts sound fantastic throughout. The album also generally shows a surprising amount of variety in style and mood, as well as a willingness to incorporate synths in a more central manner than before, and I'm all for these developments (some may miss the consistent mood of Unknown Pleasures but I never really loved that mood).

The opening "Atrocity Exhibition" has some interesting lyrics, but I find myself mostly drawn to the Can-like drumming (good grief that's a fascinating and complex set of beats to hold in place for six minutes), the incessant bass and the gnarly guitar sounds, and if it's overlong I'm willing to forgive it. "Isolation" provides a great foil for Curtis' self-flagellating lyrics with a great cheery synth line over a great beat and bassline, "Passover" provides a great support for Curtis' self-flagellating lyrics with another great beat and periodic eerie guitar lines, "Colony" provides a great support for Curtis' existential crisis with yet another great beat and GREAT post-punk guitar textures, and "A Means to an End" provides a great support for Curtis' lament of betrayal with a solid 4/4 rock groove. No, this is not a cheery half lyrically, but the other three members, oblivious as they might have been to Curtis' state of mind, managed to write some solid music in this half.

Where the first half was generally upbeat in the music, the second half gets awfully morose, yet continues to show an important amount of variety. "Heart and Soul" has the aforementioned bad vocals, but it also has a GREAT tricky beat in the drums, and its maintenace of intensity over six minutes, largely thanks to the droning and uncomfortable guitar lines, is breathtaking. "Twenty Four Hours" is a great bolt of intensity itself, this time presented in a VERY bass-heavy "rocker" with lots of speed-ups and slow-downs. Curtis also sounds really good in this track; the heaviness in his vocal tone works very well with the heavy emphasis on bass, and while I'm not a huge fan of his lyrics on most of the album, the despair here is so well-articulated that I can't help but be moved and impressed.

Ultimately, though, it's the last two tracks that end up standing out most on this album, and not entirely because of Curtis' death. "The Eternal" is probably the simplest track on the album, which should be a problem given its length, but it's also the most effective and most moving. It's just a slow bass-heavy drone, with some great piano lines (and occasional low-key guitar parts) and with Curtis' voice and lyrics front and center, but the sense of gloom and despair is inescapable, and the enormity of the sound is really amazing. I really dig those digital "hissing" noises in the last minute, too. "Decades" is a little less impressive than "The Eternal" and doesn't earn its six minutes as well (it rambles a bit too much for my tastes), but some of the keyboard parts are absolutely crushing, and I could see where the coda could lead a serious fan of the band to break out in tears on every listen. I certainly wouldn't go that far, of course, but I could understand it.

While Ian's death brought this album extra notoriety, I have to assume that, had he lived, this album would be at least 90% as revered as it is today. For all of the ambivalence that I have towards Ian in this context, I still like this album a great deal, and more than that this album leaves me wishing the band had been able to make more albums in this lineup; even if Ian's contributions themselves weren't always my ideal, he provided an essential creative foil and guide for the others. If you have Unknown Pleasures there's no good reason not to have this.

Truth be told, I feel like this album gets off to a pretty weak start. "Warsaw" and "Leaders of Men," from the band's debut EP, An Ideal for Living, are indeed very startling for how punk-ish and underproduced they are (and for how different and anonymous Curtis sounds as a tenor), but while there's definitely novelty in hearing the band as a sort of proto-Gang of Four, the tracks don't sound very remarkable. Clearly the band didn't think much of them either, because the next track, "Digital" (recorded 10 months later) sounds completely different, with Curtis forcing his voice downward and the instrumentation starting to sound a little more familiar (it was the first recording they did with Hannett). I'm not a big fan of this one either, though; it's fun in a way to hear the classic version of the band doing something almost boogie-ish (especially in the bass), but the track doesn't go much beyond a novelty for me. "Autosuggestion," which is clearly from the Unknown Pleasures sessions, isn't the worst way to spend six minutes, and the "SAY YOU TRIED" climax (over guitar parts that sound an awful lot like what The Edge would be doing with U2 a couple of years later) is rousing, but it mostly sounds like a warmup exercise in preparation to record other material from that album.

Fortunately, just when I'm about to give up hope, the collection suddenly comes to life in a great way. "Transmission" is pre-Closer Joy Division at its very best, an up-tempo anthemic rocker that builds into an up-tempo ANTHEMIC ROCKER, with a fantastic Curtis delivery (and good lyrics) and a chorus that depicts "I'm totally dead inside but I can do an imitation of real human emotion if I have to" as well as anything can. "Dance dance dance dance dance to the radio" is absolutely the perfect line to serve as the rousing climax to one of Joy Division's most famous songs; it's basically what a robot would write if it were asked to create something that would make people rock out.

The single version of "She's Lost Control" is the same as the album version in terms of melody, but the drum sound is very different, and there's a prominent synth line throughout; I used to like it a good deal less than its album counterpart, but now I like them about the same. "Incubation" is an instrumental that rocks in a way that's much more "A Means to an End" than "Digital," and I love listening to the main Albrecht lick (before the guitar becomes a noise texture machine near the end). "Dead Souls" has a lengthy instrumental passage all its own to start off the song, and Curtis' vocal melody has strength to match the strong riffs from Albrecht's guitar.

After the rock-out stretch of the last few tracks comes a sudden shift into gentle, synth-heavy Closer-like balladry in "Atmosphere," and while Curtis' singing strikes me as a little silly here, the synth lines (over a subtle set of winning basslines and great subtle drumming) are gorgeous enough to compensate. And finally, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is "Love Will Tear Us Apart." Maybe it's become overplayed and overexposed compared to other tracks in the band's catalogue, but it's a fantastic song all the same. As one would expect, Curtis gets the bulk of the attention, but it's largely deserved, and not just because of the lyrics; his vocal part almost sounds like a ghost, there but not really there with the rest of the band, and it fits in with what happened perfectly. The others are at the top of their game as well, and among so many details I especially love the strong presence of guitar at the beginning that never really reappears (with the drums, bass and synth taking center stage thereafter).

As mentioned previously, the album then proceeds to circle back to the beginning of the band's life, but I actually like this path through the band's earlier history better than what came before. "No Love Lost" and "Failures" sound much more interesting than the other two tracks from An Ideal for Living did; "No Love Lost" has a distinctive bassline and strong guitar sounds, and "Failures" has much stronger rhythmic punch and better guitar than the first two tracks did. "Glass" strikes me as far superior to "Digital," as it features stronger production and nice Hannett effects and a more atmospheric and angry Curtis. "From Safety to Wear" is a bit of a throwaway, but I'd definitely rather have 2:27 of this Unknown Pleasures warm-up than the 6:08 of Unknown Pleasures warm-up that was "Autosuggestion."

"Novelty," the b-side to "Transmission," obviously can't live up to its counterpart, but it doesn't really try, and it's a relatively low-key rocker without strong hooks but with a pretty decent vocal part, so it can stick around. "Komakino" would have fit in perfectly on Closer: Curtis has something goofy going on in his voice that's a little distracting, and the instrumental part, driven by a set of bouncy, jagged guitar lines over busy drum parts, makes me not really mind overall. And finally, "These Days" is very much a b-side, with the band contrasting "Love Will Tear Us Apart" with a goofy rocker with a silly bassline, but it leaves me with a good taste in my mouth.

In short, this may not be anywhere near a perfect collection, but I find it quite an enjoyable one, and I almost considered giving this a higher grade despite the fact that the first 14 minutes totally bore me and that I don't always love the rest of the songs. Even for the slightly cynical part of me that scoffs at the idea of actually having a copy of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" (even as the rest of me adores it), the need to own a recording of "Transmission" or lesser-known tracks like "Dead Souls" or "Glass" is enough to make me glad to own this. If you like Unknown Pleasures and Closer, this is essential.

The live material is similarly uneven and disappointing on the whole, though not without its occasional fun parts. In particular, the seven-minute cover of "Sister Ray" is kind of a crack up; I mean, it's much less interesting than the grotesque original, but for such a serious and gloomy band to take this on can't help but be interesting. The rest, though, probably should not have been released, no matter how much historical significance is here (the material comes from the band's final concert, a couple of weeks before Curtis' death). The recording quality is a disaster; the biggest problems are in "Ceremony" (which was later released as a New Order single), where Curtis' voice accidentally becomes inaudible for the first half of the song, and "Decades," where the synths are so ugly and out-of-tune (how does that even happen??) that the track becomes unlistenable. The other tracks are performed decently all things considered, but the sound quality never really improves, and it's hard to come away from this album with much of a good feeling for Joy Division as a live band.

I should note that my version of the album is the CD release from 1990 and not the 2007 reissue that has additional live material from earlier in the year, and it's entirely possible that the cleanup and additional material could raise my attitude towards the album a good deal. As is, it's a letdown and an unfortunate epilogue for the band. Only really hardcore fans need this.