10 Amazing Final Albums From Legendary Artists

10. Joy Division - Closer

Officially unveiled two short months after the band's frontman and leading light Ian Curtis took his own life at his home in Macclesfield, Joy Division are a band that inarguably disbanded at the peak of their powers.

While its predecessor 'Unknown Pleasures' may be the record that launched a thousand t-shirt sales and laid the blueprint for the droves of post-punk pretenders that would emulate their material, their sophomore effort 'Closer' is the band at their most startlingly brilliant. Written and recorded whilst Curtis' problems with epilepsy and prescription pill aided depression worsened and led him down a desolate pit of despair that he'd never recover from, tracks such as 'Atrocity Exhibition' and 'Colony' providing an unflinching window into his tortured, battered psyche.

With the band continuing to widen their musical palette and Martin Hannett once again bringing his seemingly endless stream of unorthodox production techniques to the table, the record's sound and the tragic event which it acted as a precursor to gives it a sense of otherworldliness that few other albums could possess.

The sinister basslines of Peter Hook on 'Twenty Four Hours', the jagged guitars of 'Passover' and the impenetrable despondency of 'The Eternal' may come as a shock to those whose understanding of Joy Division begins and ends with 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' but 'Closer' is a truly remarkable album that will swallow you whole if you let it. Whether his bandmates ever reached similar heights under their new guise of New Order is hotly debated.