Pornography

Smith said he had two choices, either giving in completely or making a record of it, and that he wanted the ultimate record of defiance. He expected to sign off the band with it. The sessions involved heavy LSD and alcohol, the band slept in the label office, and a mountain of empties built up. Conny Plank was considered as producer, and Phil Thornalley worked with the band for the first time. This was Tolhurst's first album playing keyboards and his last as drummer. Polydor disliked the title. The single "Charlotte Sometimes" came first, and "The Hanging Garden" reached number 32.

The album reached number eight in Britain. Reviews at the time were harsh. NME's Dave Hill called it Phil Spector in Hell, and Rolling Stone's J. D. Considine likened it to a bad toothache. Later writers reversed the verdict. Uncut called it a masterpiece of claustrophobic self-loathing, NME said it was arguably the album that invented goth, and Mojo placed it at number 83 in its 100 Records That Changed the World. Damnation A.D. covered the whole record in 2017 and Leaether Strip did so in 2024.

In 2024 the Guardian's Alexis Petridis ranked One Hundred Years third among the band's twenty greatest songs, noting its sea-sick guitars, punishing rhythm track and opening line that it doesn't matter if we all die. He placed A Strange Day eleventh and called it the poppiest track on the record, though such things are relative. Reviewing Songs of a Lost World, he heard the drums as a return to the punishing rhythms of Pornography.