The Cure - Pornography [Deluxe Edition]

Pornography opens with Robert Smith announcing that it does not matter if we all die, and the following forty three minutes make no attempt to walk that back. Released in May 1982, it is the third and final part of the Cure's early trilogy of despair, made by a band that was drinking itself apart and would break up within months of finishing it.

Phil Thornalley engineered and co-produced, and the sound is the point: drums recorded to sound like artillery, guitars buried under flange, Smith's vocal pushed so far back in the mix that on "The Figurehead" and "A Strange Day" he seems to be shouting from another building. "One Hundred Years" is the opener and still the most brutal thing in the catalogue. "The Hanging Garden" was the only single, and it charted, which surprised everyone including the label.

Simon Gallup left immediately afterward. Smith regrouped with the pop singles that made the band famous, and Pornography sat waiting for two decades until the goth and post punk revivals confirmed it as the record the rest of the trilogy had been building toward.

This deluxe edition, compiled by Robert Smith and remastered from the original tapes, pairs the album with a full second disc of 1981 and 1982 rarities including instrumental demos, the Airlock tour film soundtrack, and live recordings from Hammersmith Odeon and Brussels. Eight panel fold out digipak with a twenty page booklet.