Faith
by The Cure

From MadhattanJack 03/11/2026 20:53 | #313518

Most people already know that the album cover is a photo of the ruins of the front tympanum arch of the Bolton Abbey Priory, taken on a very foggy day by Andy Vella (https://velladesign.com/the-cure-faith), who later went on to do the angry-bull cover of Swervedriver's "Mezcal Head" LP. The priory photo was intentionally blurred and washed out to make it even more spooky-looking — and this was at a time when you couldn't just load your photos onto a computer and run them through a Photoshop "Make it Spooky" plugin like you can today, you had to know how to do stuff like that manually, unless you could afford to hire an outside "spookiness consultant" to do it for you. But what people DON'T know is that "Bolton" isn't a palindrome — spelled backwards, it would actually be "Notlob."

Difficult to be objective as this was the album I bought second-hand and played over and over again as a teen.

It's dark, mesmeric and repetitive - heavily based on drum, bass, guitar and of course Robert. The lyrics are cryptic and literary (The Drowning man is one of my favourite songs of all time and based around Gormenghast for instance).

This is the 2nd in the Dark-Cure trilogy (before they became a pop band) and stands side by side with the others as a truly great album.

From HoldenM 09/07/2023 01:57 | #299012

What it lacks in the relative accessibility of Three Imaginary Boys and Seventeen Seconds, Faith makes up for by being one of the most haunting and forward thinking goth rock records of the day. The Joy Division influence is still present, but so is that of psychedelic and krautrock. It's a dense, abrasive, despondent work of genius. While Seventeen Seconds sees the band explore sonic landscapes akin to romantic-era ghost stories, Faith is much more morbid, spending its time wandering through a cemetery in a dense fog. All patient, gloomy texture. It's foreboding, but captivating nonetheless.

From Brandon8 12/23/2022 03:52 | #292150

2nd album of trilogy it’s lesser of the 3 but they’re all classic. Primary and The Funeral Party are great songs and the rest of the album works well.

They continue style that they created on Seventeen Seconds - very dark, depressing and gothic. It is similar in quality to its predecessor.

Just dull. I'm a fan of the band, they could release a double greatest hits album and it'd be great. But some of their albums just don't click for me. And this is one of them sadly.

A very dark record which is demonstrated perfectly on the title track which is a perfect album closer as well. Every other song on Faith continues this theme making it such a consistently amazing album. The lyrics on this album also allow for deeper inspection and is one of the highlights of the album. Tolhurst and Gallup also deserves a lot of recognition as the drum work and bass really set the tone for every song and create this ominous, moody atmosphere throughout. In addition, Robert Smith's lyrics and vocal point are just perfect and make the album the masterpiece that it is.

Really good album. Favorite tracks: Holy Hour, Other Voices, and The Funeral Party.

From santropez 04/15/2019 23:29 | #235039

Favourite track: "The Funeral Party"
Least-liked track: "Doubt"

From LedZep 09/19/2017 23:33 | #198301

Cannot decide between this and Pornography. Both are masterpieces of the darkest and the most "goth" Cure period. Holy Hour against One Hundred Years, All Cats Are Gray against A Strange Day and so on...