Rolling Stone (p.84) - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "[T]he album's tension between masochistic experiment and big pop still blazes."

Entertainment Weekly (p.117) - "[T]his album of ultra-romantic synth dirges broke goths' cold hearts and became the Cure's biggest record." -- Grade: A

CMJ (1/6/03, p.15) - Included in CMJ's list of "Top 25 College Radio Albums of All Time"

CMJ (1/5/04, p.26) - Ranked #1 in CMJ's "Top 20 Most-Played Albums of 1989"

Billboard (p.33) - "The nuances that Robert Smith and David M. Allen lent the final production -- warm tones, balanced tempos, cascading guitars -- saved the album's comforting gloom from becoming innocuous."

Mojo (Publisher) (p.110) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[A] work of tragic, ineffable beauty....[With] a sound of frosty, slo-mo grandeur, constructed around boomy drumming, flanged guitar and magisterial synths."

Paste (magazine) - "DISINTEGRATION is less a collection of epically needy songs and more the distillation of a specific feeling..."

Pitchfork (Website) - "It's a single, grand, dense, continual, epic trip into core stuff the Cure did well."