"Violator" at 35: Why Depeche Mode’s Masterpiece Still Sounds Like the Future
Taking stock of the synth-pop band's best and one of my personal favorites.
This album review looks back at one of the best releases of the 1990s, marking its 35th anniversary in 2025.
Genre: Synth-Pop, Darkwave, Electronic
Label: Sire
Release Date: March 19, 1990
Vibe: 💯
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Let's cut to the chase: Violator doesn’t "hold up." It hovers, ghost-like, in the alluring nexus point where industrial pop, spiritual surrender, and full-body ecstasy converge. It’s the album that catapulted Depeche Mode into the rarified air reserved for global music icons, sending crowds numbering in the tens of thousands into a state of simultaneous ecstasy. It’s an elusive kind of pop record we seldom get these days, one that feels like it’s transmitting its message from some distant emotional frequency, gleefully blurring the lines between desire, guilt, and bliss. Though it was released in 1990, Violator doesn’t sound of a piece with the rest of the mainstream records that hit it big around the same time (I'm talking "Pump Up the Jam," "Groove is in the Heart," etc.). Instead, it sounds like a dream (or, depending on who you ask, maybe a nightmare) the ’90s were trying to wake up from. Maybe it never did.
I had the pleasure of seeing Depeche Mode live in 2023 as part of their tour supporting Memento Mori, an album that merits a listen if you're into this one's vibe. They played a lot of cuts from Violator, much to my delight and that of the rest of the audience, and I was reminded of how exacting each of those songs is. When Martin Gore, Dave Gahan, and company reached back into this tracklist, its steely magnetism cut right through to your soul without ever sounding cheap or manipulative. Call the record's overall aesthetic whatever you want—goth, emo, darkwave, disaffected new wave, and so on—but that uncompromising earnestness (one might even be tempted to call it romanticism) is what makes it brilliant, detached-sounding exterior notwithstanding. Like Robert Smith’s best material, it grounds its emotional extremes by ensuring those outsized swells come from a place of deep yearning for connection. For sensory fulfillment.
By the time Depeche Mode began the recording session for Violator, they were already one of the world's most respected and influential electronic acts. Their prior album, 1987's Music for the Masses, marked a turning point both creatively and commercially, introducing their fan base to a more expansive, atmospheric style that shattered the synth-pop glass ceiling their earlier records had established. You can hear first drafts of moods and movements that would end up on Violator in songs like "Never Let Me Down Again" and "Strangelove," bolder compositions that walk the tightrope between anthemic and intimate. Masses sold well, especially in the United States, providing their label with a use case that, yes, their brooding, stark songwriting could be scaled to arena-sized proportions without sacrificing any emotional resonance. I doubt anyone would've predicted how well they'd refine that model in a few short years.
But, despite their success, Depeche Mode were more restless than ever behind the scenes, as evidenced in their 1988 live documentary 101, which was filmed during the final leg of the Masses tour. In subtle but significant bursts, you can see Gore's reflective intensity clashing with Gahan's restless charisma and multi-instrumentalist Alan Wilder's perfectionist tendencies. The late Andy Fletcher's grounding presence often meant he was the peacemaker, something Gahan admitted to during the show I attended as part of a loving tribute to their longtime friend and colleague. Despite those growing divisions, the group agreed that what they really wanted to do was redefine their sonic boundaries yet again, if for no other reason than to prove to themselves that Masses wasn't a one-off fluke.
For the Violator sessions, Depeche Mode turned to Flood, a British producer whose influence can't be overstated in the context of this album's greatness. Known for his work with artists like U2 and Erasure, he helped the band strip things back to create tracks that moved with a distinctive, sinister elegance. He urged the group to record songs live, emphasizing analog textures and, more broadly, spontaneity over polish. This wasn’t just about capturing sound; it was about bottling atmosphere. Recording took place across multiple studios in Milan, London, and Denmark, the latter of which lent a chilly atmosphere to the final mixes. Wilder’s painstaking attention to detail with the arrangements, paired with Gahan’s growing vocal confidence, allowed Violator to transcend any one member’s artistic vision. Today, it plays as a shared confessional of their deepest, often darkest impulses.
You can hear the friction between Gore and Gahan clearly on a track like "Clean," where the former's fixation on self-purification clashes with Gahan's serpentine hedonism. There’s a confrontational streak in the songwriting that’s indicative of the push-pull dynamic present in the band’s best work. Depeche Mode, it seems, couldn’t thrive unless there was some level of creative tension fueling their process. That dissonance enriches the overall vision of Violator, underpinning its meticulous veneer with a beautiful nuance that I have rarely encountered elsewhere. The obsession with sin, seduction, and spiritual salvation is dissected with a scalpel, not demolished with a sledgehammer.
Arguably my favorite aspect of Violator is how every track adds another layer of complexity to the record’s overarching meditations. Each new moment deepens the experience, with absolutely no wasted notes or breaths anywhere. It doesn’t open with some big bang moment, but with “World in My Eyes,” which is a very specific kind of intimate. It’s less a love song and more of a slick, almost sneering come-on. I’ve also come to see it as extremely meta, a commentary on the sensation of desire in and of itself, expertly setting the table for the album's erotic, existential terrain. Gahan’s vocal delivery beckons and excites, throbbing over a strutting bassline and staccato synths. You feel seduced but never safe.
Next is “Sweetest Perfection,” showcasing Gore at his most vulnerable and dangerous. Desire and substance abuse blur together like flashbacks to a night (or several) you’d rather forget. The lyrics may promise you escape or catharsis, but the arrangement that frames him hints at certain doom. It’s twitchy, halting, and downright unsettling, but that’s the point. It’s not meant to sound pretty. In the same vein, you have the equally brilliant “Policy of Truth,” a track that threads the needle between delivering a sermon on one’s demons and surrendering to them. The melody is deceptively sweet, cutting deep with its lyrics while riding a pulsing, ominous groove: "Never again is what you swore/The time before.” Is that meant to undermine honesty or celebrate transparently manipulative behavior?
The lead single, “Personal Jesus,” is the strangest song on this left-field masterpiece and remains one of the group’s most compelling hits. Inspired by a Priscilla Presley biography in which she described Elvis as her savior (your mileage may vary with that assessment, but her words, not mine), it’s a critique of blind devotion to any deity, religious or otherwise. That elastic, blues-adjacent guitar riff was a sonic revelation for Depeche Mode at the time, bringing them back into rock and even metal territory without completely abandoning their electronic roots. It’s an instrumental, bolstered by pounding, almost tribal drums, that’s in the running for the most operatic piece of gothic theater they ever produced, which is saying something. Ultimately, the song never really answers its own question: who, or what, are we willing to worship? If spirituality, as examined through that lens, is nothing but commodified intimacy, then how close can we hope to get to a higher power?
Then there’s my favorite cut, “Enjoy the Silence,” which I only found out recently was initially conceived as a slow ballad. Can you imagine? Thankfully, Wilder helped guide it in another direction. It’s undoubtedly one of the most beloved electronic songs of all time, a panoramic anthem about how communication breaks down. "Words like violence break the silence/Come crashing in into my little world,” the song begins. "Painful to me, pierce right through me.” The arrangement is genuinely phenomenal, with every element working perfectly in tandem. The reverb-drenched drum machine, the gloomy synth pads, and the delicately stabbing guitar—all building to that bittersweet chorus. It’s the album’s emotional centerpiece, a tranquil harbor from unpredictable waters where wave after wave of doubt and desire crash against the shore.
Violator is the kind of album we don’t see much of anymore: a confidently adult psychodrama. Every detail is calibrated to amplify the emotional stakes, adding just the right amount of echoey effects and textural grain to evoke a devastating kind of longing, one that lingers in your mind and soul long after the record’s over. It’s intimate, intensely so, but never small. That duality, balancing the personal and the monolithic, makes for a uniquely gripping collection of music. After seeing them live, I can attest to how incredible these tracks still sound and how deeply moving they are as artistic texts. If you’ve never let its brilliance wash over you, I urge you to commune with it as soon as possible.
Also, if there’s any LP that will blow you away if you listen to it on a hi-res pair of headphones, it’s this one.
What Depeche Mode song is your favorite? Sound off in the comments?