Professional ratings
Retrospective reviews
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Christgau's Record Guide	A−
Encyclopedia of Popular Music
NME	10/10
Pitchfork	10/10
Q
Rolling Stone
Select	5/5
Spin Alternative Record Guide	9/10
Uncut

Unknown Pleasures is the debut studio album by English rock band Joy Division, released on 15 June 1979 on Tony Wilson's Factory Records. It followed an abandoned session for RCA Records, and was recorded and mixed over three weekends at Strawberry Studios, in April 1979 with record producer Martin Hannett. The cover artwork was designed by artist Peter Saville.

Factory did not release any singles from the album, and it did not chart despite the relative success of the group's non-album debut single "Transmission". Unknown Pleasures has gone on to receive sustained critical acclaim as a pioneering and influential post-punk album. It has been named as one of the best albums ever by publications such as NME, AllMusic, and Select.

Joy Division formed in Salford, Greater Manchester in 1976 during the first wave of punk rock. Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook had separately attended a Sex Pistols show at the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall on 4 June 1976 and both embraced that band's simplicity, speed and aggression. Forming a band with their friend Terry Mason on drums, Sumner on guitar and Hook on bass, they advertised for a singer. Ian Curtis, who Sumner and Hook already knew, applied and, without having to audition, was taken on. After a number of changes of drummer, Stephen Morris joined the band—at that time called Warsaw—in August 1977. To avoid confusion with the London punk band Warsaw Pakt, they renamed themselves Joy Division in late 1977.

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