OK, I'LL fess up: I was never a Cure fan. I never bought the tidy, whiny package of angst that bushy-haired, raccoon-eyed Robert Smith was waving back in the day. It just seemed a bit slim, a little lacking in real substance. Much ado, smudged eyeliner, and black duds about nothing. Scratch the noirish surface – was there more than some pouty little tantrum about bad magic-mushroom tea, cable TV on the fritz, or lousy domesticity going on beneath Pornography, "Let's Go to Bed," "The Love Cats," etc.? I was skeptical about Smith's royal snits.

Like their juniors and fellow depressives the Smiths, the Cure were a morose product of sordid Thatcher-era conservatism, another permutation of post-punk rebellion. Smith's language was plainer and less literary than that of his would-be brothers-by-other-mothers – was he playing a determinedly brutish, childlike Gertrude Stein to Morrissey's sublime Oscar Wilde? In any case, one might argue the Cure's music was more doggedly experimental, willfully less appealing than most. In their hands, dour days in the 'burbs were complicated by a push-pull between the darkness of their early albums and the lightness of their effervescent pop.

There was something pleasurably subversive about their blend of bippity-boppity, upbeat pop hooks and Smith's grumpy mien and plaintive moans. Regardless of the many cringes Smith inspired with his vocal stylings, the Cure left their mark, and maybe even some scars, on a new goth generation who got their groove on posing on the dance floor. Some of that influence probably even touched a few of the bands on the Curiosa tour, which parks in, of all places, SBC Park Aug. 28. Memo to Barry Bonds: if your notorious La-Z-Boy recliner smells vaguely of cloves, you'll know which mop top to berate.

All that said, why is the band's new self-titled album on Geffen such a puzzle? I assumed it was a clear, front-and-center statement of the gothfathers here and now, and at first listen, it sounded appealingly rocky, with shoegazer moments ("Labyrinth") and Smith up to his old love-my-hooks-love-my-depression tricks ("Before Three"). The latter track kicks off with the vocalist outright squealing, ferally mewling in his best big, black, reluctantly carefree pussycat mode and topping it off by yelping, "Yeah, yeah, yeah!" in case anyone's the least bit confused about the general positivity. Everything's not so bleak here, with its invocations of romance, a "sea of gold," and "silver sand," despite brief references to being "up next to you so fucked and high," which are cozily knitted into a lush, creamy-thick wall of Britpop sound. Smith immediately tops himself with "The End of the World," which delightfully regurgitates a euphoric arch-Cure melody line, counterpointing it with his always-mixed feelings of love and fatalism.

So you get those concessions to the Cure's singles dilettantes like myself – how to explain the rest of The Cure's mixed bag? "Never" witnesses Smith posturing and flexing Ian Astley-style vocal muscles we always feared he had, amid quasi-psych-power rock of dubious fury and originality, whereas "Anniversary" takes a page sonically from moody electronic rockers like Air and Goldfrapp. Maybe "(I Don't Know What's Going) On" (strewn with recycled Cure-like electronic-vibe effects) and the musically pedestrian "alt.end" hint at the problem: apart from contemporizing touches like "Anniversary" and the closing 10-minute-plus noise-jam anomaly "The Promise," Smith and his ever mutating posse are also more than a little infatuated with fashion, much more so than with any somber goth love object, and frankly these days they feel a little out of the loop. Judging from a misguided title like "alt.end," one can only guess how bewildering, say, e-mail might be for Smith. And thinking about remotely goth revival groups like the Faint, Veronica Lipgloss and the Evil Eyes, and the Vanishing (who are incidentally rumored to be relocating from the Bay Area to Berlin), it's safe to say that despite appearances and eye makeup, the connection between the Cure and their progeny is getting ever more remote.

Dark knights? The brouhaha might have seemed like a tempest in a tin helmet, but at first glance, the Knights of the New Crusades' CD, My God Is Alive! Sorry about Yours!, seemed dead serious to KUSF-FM DJ Prem, he told me via e-mail. Rumor had it that members of the Mummies and the Phantom Surfers were behind the group, but Prem wasn't buying it.

"I was pissed off at first because I thought the whole Inquisition-esque thing was real (that Web site of theirs and its links are pretty disturbing, not to mention their lyrics), but now I realize this is their way of commenting on the Republican right," he wrote. "Still, I don't know how this CD of theirs would be received, say, in the south. I mean, here in S.F. we can laugh at this kind of stuff, but some of those militias in the south might really get off on it."

After a bit of debate among DJs, Prem said he was convinced the hardcore – nay, armored – Christian garage-rock stance of the band, who claim to want to rescue Christian contemporary music from Creed, was indeed a joke. Hey, how else can you interpret the counter on their Web site (www.crusadenow.com) that reads, "Souls saved: 2701" beneath a praying aluminum can-helmet-wearing Crusader. Prem went on to say that other DJs at the station are playing some of the tracks off the CD, but he still stays away from it "because it'll probably end up getting someone hurt or even killed by fanatics."

But are these Knights for real? Mike One of the Emeryville-via-Fresno group, speaking on the phone before their Hemlock Tavern show Aug. 15, assured me the band are sincere – and aren't in the business of advocating religious warfare. "Racial prejudice is one of Satan's tools. As Little Richard said, 'We're all part of God's bouquet,' " he said. The band assembled a year ago and decided to spread the word to secular and devout audiences (Mike One said they're currently on a tour of churches and coffee houses–ah, caffeine, the devil's other brew) because they felt a need for a stronger, more hard-rockin' message in the Christian music scene. More disconcerting: their September gig serenading the Christian Defense League's protest of the GOP convention because, Mike One explained, "there's not enough God in government." "It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of God," he intoned. Either that or someone's scarily good at staying in character.

The Cure play with the Rapture, Interpol, Mogwai, Cursive, and others Aug. 28, 5 p.m., SBC Park, 24 Willie Mays Plaza, S.F. $49.50. (415) 972-1800.

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Contact Kimberly Chun at kimberly@sfbg.com.