Battered by personal bereavements, exhaustion from playing 200 gigs a year, and a debilitating depression, The Cure’s Robert Smith was at a very low ebb early in 1982. “I had every intention of signing off,” he admitted in Jeff Apter’s Never Enough: The Story Of The Cure. “I wanted to make the ultimate ‘f__k off’ record and then sign off.” Artistically, Smith achieved his aim with The Cure’s fourth album, the controversially titled Pornography. Released in May 1982 – and later hailed as a proto-goth masterpiece – the album remains one of the darkest and most extreme records known to rock, though it rightly ranks highly among the most essential platters in Smith and co’s illustrious canon.