Upon parting ways with his former bandmates, Andrew Eldritch decided that goth music wasn’t properly Gothic without flying buttresses and hired Meat Loaf conspirator Jim Steinman to help him build the definitive post-punk cathedral in the middle of a perpetual rainstorm. Club staples like “This Corrosion,” “Dominion,” and “Lucretia, My Reflection” cement this album’s legendary status, but it’s the more intimate etchings of the “Flood” duo that provide the foundation.

– Jeff Treppel