New Order’s ‘Brotherhood’ turns 40 on 29 September
Factory Records released New Order’s “Brotherhood” on 29 September 1986, the band’s fourth album featuring “Bizarre Love Triangle”. It turns 40 this year.
New Order released their fourth studio album, “Brotherhood,” through Factory Records on 29 September 1986. The Manchester band split the record’s two sides between guitar-driven post-punk and synth-pop electronics. “Brotherhood” turns 40 this year.
New Order recorded “Brotherhood” during 1986 at Jam Studios in London, Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin and Amazon Studios in Liverpool, with Michael Johnson engineering and the band credited as its own producer. The sleeve, designed by Peter Saville, photographed a sheet of titanium-zinc alloy. The album opens with a rock-facing first side – “Paradise,” “Weirdo,” “As It Is When It Was,” “Broken Promise” and “Way of Life” – before turning electronic on side two with “Bizarre Love Triangle,” “All Day Long,” “Angel Dust” and “Every Little Counts.” “Bizarre Love Triangle” became a top 20 hit in Australia and New Zealand and remains the album’s only single. “Brotherhood” streams on Spotify.
About New Order
New Order formed in Manchester in 1980, after singer Ian Curtis’s death ended Joy Division, when surviving members Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris continued as a trio and were joined that October by keyboardist Gillian Gilbert. The band’s debut single, “Ceremony,” a song written in Joy Division’s final weeks, appeared in January 1981, and the debut album “Movement” followed on Factory Records that November. “Power, Corruption & Lies” (1983) pushed the band further into synthesizers and sequencers, and its non-album single “Blue Monday” became the best-selling 12-inch single in UK chart history. “Low-Life” (1985) refined that mix of guitars and electronics on tracks including “The Perfect Kiss” and “Sub-culture.”
“Brotherhood” arrived on 29 September 1986, dividing its rock and dance instincts across two album sides. New Order’s early singles, including those surrounding “Brotherhood,” were gathered the following year on the compilation “Substance” (1987), and the band reached UK number one with “Technique” in 1989. New Order also co-owned Manchester’s Haçienda nightclub with Factory Records, a venture whose costs contributed to the label’s 1992 collapse alongside labelmates Happy Mondays. The band moved to London Records for “Republic” (1993), split in 1993, reunited in 1998, and released “Get Ready” in 2001. Peter Hook left in 2007 following disputes with the rest of the band, and New Order continued as a quartet, releasing “Music Complete” in 2015 and the “Be a Rebel” single and remix EP in 2020 and 2021. In 2026, Joy Division and New Order were announced as joint inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with the ceremony set for November. “Brotherhood,” the record that opened New Order’s run of transatlantic hits, turns 40 this year.
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