By 1982 The Cure had reached a breaking point. Pornography was the final installment in their so-called goth trilogy from the early 80’s and it sure as hell sounds like a band clawing its way through darkness while barely holding it together. From the opening line (“It doesn’t matter if we all die”) the album plunges you headfirst into a world of claustrophobic despair. Their lead singer (the enigmatic Robert Smith) was unraveling under the weight of his mounting depression which ultimately infused every corner of his lyrics and the rest of the band seemed eager to follow suit. Smith’s guitars swirl like black fog, Lol Torhurst’s drums pound with ritualistic menace, and Simon Gallup’s bass lines drone on like a march to the gallows. There’s a suffocating beauty to these tracks that capture what The Cure were going through at the time.
The atmosphere in the studio was equally bleak. All the band members were fighting, taking psychedelics, and locking themselves in isolation during the recording sessions. Producer Phil Thornalley recalled days when communication had all but broken down and the band didn’t utter a single word to one another. Yet somehow out of this collapse came a record that defined The Cure’s identity as more than just post-punk mope merchants. It became a statement that pushed the sonic boundaries of what goth rock could be. What could have been a low point ended up being a watershed moment which eventually led to the release of their magnum opus Disintegration later in 1989.
Standout Songs: “One Hundred Years”, “The Figurehead”, “Cold”
