Violator!

xxpost:

Yeah, it's understandable to think that. Violator represents a peak of sorts - the one it was all leading up to, and the one that everything after was in the shadow of. I still think Songs of Faith and Devotion and Ultra are great records, though - and generally see 1984-1998 as one long extended period of greatness. After that, it gets spotty.

As of last week, "Personal Jesus" is now thirty years old.

Your own
Middle-aged
Jesus

I have a good friend, a bit older than me, who used to be at least a casual fan of Depeche Mode throughout the '80s... until Violator! I can't really conceive of that album being the jump-ship point. He reserves a huge hunk of animus for "Personal Jesus," specifically.

There is a subset of DM fandom who went "ew guitars" on that song

That Rich Cotton Dub of Enjoy the Silence is so good.

All discerning Depeche Mode fans bailed after Violator. It was obvious on SoFAD that the band were done creatively and now it was just Junkie Dave thinking he's Jesus and over-singing every song. There's nothing essential released after 1990.

Er... no.

Yeah, that's...wrong.

There is a subset of DM fandom who went "ew guitars" on that song

"...you know there's guitars on "Never Let Me Down Again" and "Behind the Wheel," right?"

"NOT LISTENING!"

I was going to follow up with "these are, of course, the same morons who lose their shit when any given MFTM single pops up" but got distracted

I have a good friend, a bit older than me, who used to be at least a casual fan of Depeche Mode throughout the '80s... until Violator!

display names vmic

they peaked with Speak and Spell

more like peak and pell

lol

I hate the term “bucket list” but this band is one of my top “bucket list” bands to see live

Not that I haven’t had zillions of opportunities!!

All discerning Depeche Mode fans bailed after Violator. It was obvious on SoFAD that the band were done creatively and now it was just Junkie Dave thinking he's Jesus and over-singing every song. There's nothing essential released after 1990.

― brotherlovesdub

This is clearly trolling, and yet it describes my relationship with their music pretty accurately

I can sort of see why someone would think that Depeche Mode didn't do anything worthwhile after violator or that an 80s Depeche Mode fan would not like Personal Jesus, but I can't imagine why a Depeche Mode fan would not like something like World in my Eyes or sweetest perfection

can we post 50 reasons why we love "Halo" like we did in the Tusk thread?

I’ve said this before, but “Halo” is a proper second verse short of greatness.

Thirty years old today.

Happy birthday! The production on this has aged very well.

Yeah it really pops

Still one of the GOATs.

Celebrating the 30th birthday by blasting this today. What an album.

I have nothing bad to say about this album (except maybe ... 'undetectedly'?) Listening to the bonus tracks though makes it all the more remarkable, they are entirely lacking in whatever kind of magic was captured in the album proper.

Totally, the drop in quality is pretty incredible. The album seems to have been born fully formed

"Dangerous" and "Sea of Sin" are two of their best ever b-sides, but it's true that neither would fit on the album proper. They're great songs, but they still can't touch most of Violator.

sea of sun and happiest girl are songs I would place pretty high in my ranking of Depeche Mode tracks, but as mentioned, neither would have fit in this album.

this is almost certainly the album I've listened to the most in my life and while I don't really listen to it that much anymore (I can play it entirely in my head whenever I want) it still holds up surprisingly well

“Dangerous” comes closest to feeling like it could slot in. Then again, I’ve always had that feeling about “Never Let Me Down Again”, too. Production-wise especially, that track sounds like a sonic bridge from the record before.

man this is the best album ever made

It's burned into my brain to the point I barely need to listen to it anymore, but I think this probably is still the best album ever made. I've never really taken to the Violator b-sides though (or many DM b-sides at all)

I don't think I've ever heard a song from this, on the radio, on the stereo, in the car, where it hasn't made me think this could be the best produced and mixed album of all time.

Yeah I'm always struck by how crisp it sounds. Obviously this album has its forebears and influences, but from that standpoint alone you could make an argument for it being the "first nineties album".

It also makes for a very interesting contrast to the previous album, since Music for the Masses was almost scaled to sound like it was echoing in an arena, not that they were there yet. But there's a lot of reverb, echo etc. throughout, a thick-sounding release for lack of a better term. Whereas Violator clicks out of the gate and you can always hear the space in each song, for the most part.

Absolutely. I'd say that one of the things I always struggled with on Music For The Masses (only in relative terms - it's obviously a great album) is that the sound of it made it feel quite distant for precisely the reasons you identify - as compared to the "up close" sleazy intimacy of Violator.

To be fair, if you were up close to “Never Let Me Down Again” all of the skin would be blasted off of your body

Why here's Dave shedding some skin now in just that circumstance:

https://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/dm-rose-bowl-101.jpg

help i'm addicted to listening to violator

since Music for the Masses was almost scaled to sound like it was echoing in an arena, not that they were there yet.

they were already playing arenas on the Black Celebration tour!

Hmm, fair. Stadia, then.

The Perfecto mix of "Never Let Me Down Again" solves my intimacy problems.

I'll add another vote to the movement making Violator among the best mixed of albums. The guitars, keyboards, and vocals get discrete spaces yet sound as if they could turn into each other -- not even Achtung Baby sounded like this.

er, Split Mix of NLMDA, I meant.

I loved it as a cassette in my Ford Escort then, I love it on fancy-schmancy speakers now

not even Achtung Baby sounded like this.

It's funny, because not long after I posted I started thinking of other candidates and I briefly considered "Achtung." And of course that is an impeccably made album (one that clearly had an influence on subsequent Depeche, and everyone else, too), but it has the benefit of a kind of at times intentionally blurry, imprecise shoegazing element to it. Whereas "Violator," yeah, it's just got such a perfect sense of space. Everything is exactly where it needs to be, and yet it's never static. It's electronic, but so alive. Things are bouncing around, moving, the balance of low end and treble is astounding, things sit and float and pierce right where they need to, at the exact right time and place, and it's never distractingly dense with information. Flood is a genius, of course, but François Kevorkian was no slouch.

I think New Order got it with PC&L, or Simple Minds on New Gold Dream

Achtung Baby sounds very much like the album you make if you’re hip to both the precision of Violator and the blurriness of shoegazer/early grunge and want to pay tribute to both at once.

I remember that in an interview with Alan Wilder, in the Violator era, he commented that he had come to dislike the use of reverb, "because of the distancing effect it gives". So that sensibility was probably what lead to the unusual tautness of the album's sound.