Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
 Don't need the deluxe edition..this is the one! May 20, 2010
Mr. Anthony Cox
This is 'The Cure' at their gothic best..and what a sound..this was their last release before they went more commercial..great album..1982
 Great album ruined November 22, 2009
A. C. Brand (rutland, england)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Pornography is a great album by a fine band.
Unfortunately, if you listen on anything that passes for a decent system, the re-mastered version is painfully bad. Whoever was responsible for the sound quality must be deaf - such a shame.
Probably OK on a portable/car/budget system, but real hi-fi fans should get the original.
A dark masterpiece August 6, 2009
Mr. Sj Beddoes
"Gothic rock" isn't easy music to listen to. Put on a CD of "My Dying Bride" or anything this side of the more synthesizer-heavy "Bauhaus"-like goth music and most of us will find ourselves struggling to make it to the end track without at least taking a break to sniff some flowers or something.
Dark, depressing and dramatic, "Pornography" will come as a shock to the system for anybody who associates Robert Smith with "Friday I'm in love". Each of The Cure's 'phases' have produced great music, peaking with 1989's epic "Disintegration", but Pornography represents by far the darkest place The Cure have visited.
Opening with the heart-stopping "One Hundred Years", Smith opens with the line "Doens't matter if we all die", and the tone for the album is set. Smith, Gallup and Tolhurst will walk you through the valley of the shadow of death without so much as a stop to catch your breath.
If "Friday I'm in love" or The Cure's other happy-go-lucky material is your bag (I'll admit, it's also my bag, I love everything they've done) then buying this may be a huge mistake. On the other hand, it could be one of the best musical purchases you make. Dark, powerful goth rock which is actually worth listening to.
One of the greatest post-punk albums ever October 15, 2008
Mark Edwards
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I never rated the Cure when they first started. All that stuff about jumping other people's trains, killing middle-easterners and not crying 'cos you're a boy didn't do much for me.
However a mate persuaded me to go and see them on the "Faith" tour and I was blown away. Bought "Faith" the next day and, when "Pornography" came out, I just had to have it (made even better by the childish pleasure of asking my parents to buy me "Pornography" for my birthday).
I loved "Faith" and I loved Joy Division, the Banshees, and the rest of the post-punk crowd, but this was something else.
With an opening line of "It doesn't matter if we all die" and a closing line of "I must fight this sickness, find a cure", and a whole range of (un)healthy emotions and obsessions explored inbetween, this was just the thing to listen to for those of us who didn't buy into the emptiness of New Pop and the Thatcher Dream. Lots of people thought it was morbid and depressing - more fool them. It made us feel more alive than ever.
And as for the music ... you'll find no better soundtrack to a slasher movie scripted by William Burroughs and Jean-Paul Sartre than this. Now if only someone would make that movie.
More than 20 years on, I bought it again on CD. It was just as good as before, in fact if anything better for now being out of its historical context.
A timeless record. Now, where's my lipstick and face paint......
The shock of what was new June 6, 2008
Vitamino (London)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
It's a shame in a way that nowadays this album seems to fit in with a vast amount of similarly aggressive and agonising music. On it's release it was the first of it's kind and to describe its impact as harrowing would be a serious understatement.
Seminal it undoubtably was but where other bands strive to achieve the same effect they fail because 'Pornography' is so sincere. Only Nirvana reached the level of outright desperation that brutally stabs out of this recording. But cacophony in itself is not enough. These are really great songs produced by a man who was driving himself way too hard.
In amongst the relentlessly attacking sound, evidence of a great songwriter emerges in moments of astonishing beauty. This is why the Cure's more recent releases fail. Smith was still discovering his ability and wrote as a man in some kind of genuine purgatory. Now, he's wealthy and comfortable and no matter how hard he digs, the well of desparate memories and wondrous revelations have run dry.
So considering it's utterly uncompromising sound it's not surprising that this shocking album didn't sell on release. It left people either stunned (like watching someone having a nervous breakdown at a party) or alienated, after all, it's predecessors were low key and fanciful in comparison.
It marked a change in Smith's life. Although the following album had it's moments of crushing beauty he moved firmly into the land of the 'Lovecats', commercial success and some kind of weird happiness. And unlike Kurt Cobain there really was a happy ending.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
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