There is no band of the Eighties generation who've remained both as big, and as great, as Depeche Mode. Duran Duran? Lightweights. U2? Sunk into self-parody a long time ago. But the boys from Basildon are something else: they've come through all the pressures of fame, addiction, ageing and the rest…

As you might have gathered from my Classic Album – Violator piece, I’m a Depeche Mode fan. Reviewing them objectively can be hard given my, ahem, devotion to the band and the fact that a new Depeche album has come along thrills me. My job for you though is to tell you if it’s a good or a bad album…

So after first listen I am quite impressed with 'Spirit' although I can fully understand the views previously expressed by Samuli, Michael and some others that have heard it as there are no stand out tracks and nothing jumps out as a second single Going BackwardsA strong first track with a sound…

A politicised return, unafraid to look afresh at the band's sound and approach... “We’re fucked,” sings Martin Gore on ‘Fail’, the final track on the new Depeche Mode album ‘Spirit’. It’s not exactly the uplifting, elegiac ending to an album that one is badly in need…

Dave Gahan, Martin Gore and Andy Fletcher return this spring with Depeche Mode‘s 14th album and second for Columbia, Spirit. Four years on from the chart-topping success of Delta Machine, the new work sprawls across 12 tracks that were produced by James Ford, aka half of Simian Mobile Disco, whose…

Julian Marszalek went to the Spiritland bar in Kings Cross to listen to Depeche Mode's 14th album. Here he gives us his first listen, track by track run down of what we have in store Spirit is the 14th album by Depeche Mode; their second released by the label Columbia and their first…

So I've just heard Spirit. I'm glad that I read Ozan's and ModeMan101's reviews yesterday, because otherwise I would have been quite shocked. Spirit is indeed heavy going, their most consistently gloomy, oppressive and non-commercial offering ever. This album should have been titled Delta Machine in…

Electro-pop veterans call for revolution on Spirit, a thirteenth album with a breathtaking modernity.And if "Spirit", the new Depeche Mode, already established itself as one of the most relevant albums of 2017? Even if they do not have anything to prove, Martin Gore, Dave Gahan and Andy Fletcher…

"Spirit" is the first Depeche Mode song collection since the launch of "Delta Machine" in 2013. Those of Basildon return with a herculean work and with reminiscences to the industrial past of the group. His new album sucks and breathes recovering the somewhat lazy muscle of his latest studio…