emento Mori – “remember that you die” – would have been an appropriate album title for black leather synthrockers Depeche mode anytime, but it feels particularly powerful right now. Conceived during the early part of the pandemic, when death loomed in most people’s minds, the band’s fifteenth album was also haunted by the fact that, when they reached their sixties, chief songwriter Martin Gore was about to be the same age as his stepfather, who raised him, when he died.
Then-founder Andy “Fletch” Fletcher died suddenly, aged 60, of an aortic dissection last May. Like The Rolling Stones lose Charlie Watts or The WHO With the loss of John Entwistle, Fletch lacked star quality alongside the mercurial Gore or grave singer Dave Gahan, but his absence changes the dynamic significantly. Without their buffer, the often remote surviving pair work more closely together. Others who fell into the fold this time around include James Ford, once the Arctic Monkeys producer who also worked on the latest Depeche Mode album, experimental Italian producer Marta Salogni, and Psychedelic Furs frontman Richard Butler, who together played four wrote songs.
Right from the angel wings paying homage to flowers on the black and white cover to the opening track, My Cosmos is Mine, the mood is set. Industrial beats ring and hiss, an electronic bass plays the grittiest melody and Gahan intones in low slow motion: “No rain, no clouds, no pain, no shrouds/No final breaths, no senseless deaths.”
While the band has successfully blended electronic soundscapes with grandiose rock dynamics in the past, a guitar is a rare sight here, though a raw riff appears in the chorus of Never Let Me Go. More often, the dominant synth sounds recall the early days of electronics music. People Are Good’s repeated motif sounds like a telltale Kraftwerk homage. Wagging Tongue could have been created by the 1980s incarnation of the band.
The pace remains slow, the mood sombre, even on the catchier single Ghosts Again. The power comes from the scale of the computer effects, which build to towering magnitude on that track and reach a heavenly grandeur on the beatless finale, Speak to Me.
As a new duo, there is a strong motivation for them to do more than simply add a few acceptable tunes to their latest stadium setlist. Always serious, you can hear that they really mean it this time.
Colombia