#342 - Depeche Mode - Violator (1990)

MUSIC HISTORY COMPILED BY ADAM BERNARD:

DEPECHE MODE BIO

Depeche Mode formed in 1980, and initially consisted of Andy Fletcher (bass, then keyboards), Dave Gahan (lead vocals and co-songwriter), Martin Gore (keyboards, guitar, co-lead vocals and songwriter), and Vince Clarke (vocals and keyboard). Clarke left the band (who later went on to form Erasure) after a couple of years, and was replaced Alan Wilder on keyboards (and later on, drums). Their debut album came out in 1981, bringing them on to the new wave scene. That was followed by 5 albums over the next 6 years, becoming one of the best-selling international groups in the process. Within the decade they took underground club sounds to a larger audience with synthesizers being at the base of a lot of their work. They had an ability to write both bouncy, poppy electronic songs, while also being able to go in to a darker, more dramatic place. Fresh off the heels of a tour that had no problem filling up football stadiums, the band embarked on recording today's album in 1989. 

BACKGROUND – VIOLATOR

The seventh album from Depeche Mode came out in 1990, and has been described as synth-pop and alternative rock. The band tried a new recording method for this album - feeling like they had become too formulaic in their writing process, they limited the amount of pre-production work. Instead they each had their own roles in the process. Keyboardist Alan Wilder describes it - "We accepted that we all had different roles and not actually all trying to do the same thing. So we ended up with this unwritten agreement in the band, where we'd all throw together a few ideas at the beginning of a track. Then Fletch and Mart would go away, and they'd come back after we'd worked on it for a while to give an opinion." The album was written and recorded in studios in London, Milan, and Denmark, and produced by "Flood" aka Mark Ellis, who has worked with New Order, U2, Nine Inch Nails, The Smashing Pumpkins, Ministry, Thirty Seconds To Mars and many more. It was mixed by Francois Kevorkian, who is considered one of the forefathers of house music.

Regarding the album title, Gore said, "We called it Violator as a joke. We wanted to come up with the most extreme, ridiculously Heavy Metal title that we could. I'll be surprised if people will get the joke." This was the first Depeche Mode album to sell a million copies in the United States. 

This album reached #2 on the UK Albums Chart, and was the band's first album to chart inside the top 10 of the Billboard 200, peaking at #7. It reached #17 on the Billboard Year End Chart for 1990. 

"Before this, we'd been going along quite nicely," recalled Andy Fletcher. "Then when it came to Violator we inexplicably went huge. It was just incredible, and in many ways we never really recovered from that. After that, we just felt like we wanted to muck it up a bit." 

AllMusic.com says this is "Goth without ever being stupidly hammy, synth without sounding like the clinical stereotype of synth music, rock without ever sounding like a "rock" band, Depeche here reach astounding heights indeed."