10/25/1990 All Music Guide
Pornography
Pornography is the culmination of the band's gloom-and-doom period. It's not that they've changed their mood much since Faith -- this is still pretty bleak stuff -- but this album marks a more aggressive stance, incorporating faster, near-tribal rhythms and layers of heavy, distorted guitars that serve to bring out Smith's echoed vocals and doom-laden lyrics like "It doesn't matter if we all die." Pornography isn't their most interesting album -- much of it suffers from same-sounding monotony -- but it did manage to crack the U.K. Top Ten and was undoubtedly influential in the emerging goth-rock movement.
- Chris Woodstra
