I hear "goth rock" get tagged onto a lot of different albums - but this by far is the most goth rock goth rock album I've ever heard. Drenched in reverb, sorrow, dread, and unease - it feels like such a contrast to the warm, coziness of The Cure's 'Disintegration'. And while it's not as vibrant or luscious as that album, it's certainly more consistent. I love that tribal drum pattern and picked bassline driving the song 'The Hanging Garden' - the rhythm section of this album is consistently tight and clean - filled with reverb snares and melodic basslines. The guitars, on the other hand, feel intangible - there are certainly hints of riffs here, especially with the haunting opener 'One Hundred Years', but most of the time they sound like faint memories and unwelcoming swellings. They're blurry - kind of like this cover. My favorite song from an instrumental standpoint is 'A Strange Day' with that riff in the instrumental break. I also love the inclusion of the eerie sample that opens up the noise and industrial-esque closing title track. But the thing that drew me in the most on this album was the imagery. Here Smith generally paints love as this super unpleasant disease, like the complete opposite of a song like 'Lovesong' that would come later in the Cure's discography. Everything here feels dreadful and ugly - an atmosphere only elevated by the drug-induced visions that occasionally crop up. A song like 'Siamese Twins' has these images of writhing and worms eating skin in a song about something supposedly beautiful and enjoyable - sex. But he paints this as an ugly, humiliating act, to an almost horror-like degree. Another example is 'The Figurehead' in which Smith talks about being unable to sleep, and with maybe the most extreme example here on the closing title track, he goes into these homicidal utterings. "One more day like today and I'll kill you" ... sick. This is an album that delves into the schizophrenic mascarades of love. Smith feels it's all fake, hence the name 'Pornography'. This album sounds like the beginning of calamity, an imminent destruction too huge for anyone to comprehend - a destruction sourced from one's undying love, and simultaneous hate, for another.