Only Theatre of Pain is the debut studio album by the American rock band Christian Death, released on March 24, 1982, by the Frontier record label.

Williams was raised in a Southern Baptist family, which makes his adversarial appropriation of Catholic imagery more nuanced than simple blasphemy; he’s approaching the cross from the perspective of both Protestantism and what one can only assume to be either atheism or Satanism".

[2] Around the time of its release, a presenter on a religious TV program, in a special on "Satanic influences", reportedly broke a copy of the album on air.

Club wrote that, of the group's musical peers, "none had exemplified the nascent subgenre [gothic rock] with as much sinew, vision, and iconoclasm", calling it "a depraved masterpiece".

At the time, it was reported by Blabbermouth that the band was working on new songs and was to begin the recording of a new album later in the year, but this never materialized.