The Cure - Self titled album

I really like the album. I do love the way that it was recorded. Almost as a live take of each song.
And I never really felt a nu metal vibe at all.

Agree with you about the live rendition of the songs.
I like the feeling of this album, except for the pop songs, but I like the inspiration of it. For sure, it's less melodic than the previous recordings and in that way, it's closer to Pornography than any other Cure album (don't get me wrong, I don't mean it actually sounds like Pornography).
About the production, I only listen to the vinyl edition and the sound is not that crappy, almost compared to the 4:13 thing.
maybe Robert is a bit too much talkative on it, but the more I listen to it, the more I find it pleasant.
And to come back to the first point, the song played live in 2004 sounded great, Lost was a very good opening song on stage and The promise closed the main set perfectly.

Have to say I've never felt a nu-metal vibe to it either. It's not one of my favourite albums, but I don't hate it either. I think like every album it has a few great tracks on it.

I have been thinking about this album lately, and How I should take it up again.

It´s by far not my favorite album, but I do like the "hardness" that is over it. it had the potential to be a Very amazing album (almost inline with pornography), but sadly it fail.

the best song for me is anniversary (you probably all think this one is ****, but the first time I heard it, I started crying, which has NEVER happened before. it touch me in some deep way. like ripping out my heart, and put in words what it felt)

then labyrinth, the promise and alt.end are also fine songs for me.

True that.
It's not one of those albums you can really play over & over in a short space of time, but if you listen carefully to the tracks it has all sorts of layers that hark back to "classic" The Cure. Maybe they could be higher in the mix, but I guess that was deliberate.
& I felt the production was a heck of a lot better than on 4:13 Dream.
4:13 Dream is (by & large) a great collection of tunes but the production is atrocious (IMHO).
Add to that the fact that some tracks don't actually belong on it, then it loses coherence as an album as a whole.
I'd be very interested to hear what the original track list was supposed to be before someone ordered it to be a single album release.
At least The Cure exists as an album & not just a collection of songs.

I agree. I listened to it properly last week and it was alright. Not what I remembered from the first few listens.
Mind you, I remember not understanding Pornography when I first heard it but then that's probably because I met The Cure via Top Of The Pops.