You've got a problem. You've had hit singles but you want to turn away from the pop and embrace the dark, go from sweet love to sticky, move from the meaning of love to the meaning of god. What are you going to do? Buy a sampler and four plane tickets to Berlin, that's what.
It's easy to see it in hindsight, of course, but Depeche Mode’s early- to late-'80s period was the band’s most important. This is when they turned the loss of main man Vince Clarke into the biggest, darkest positive, keeping elements of the synth sound that defined early recordings, but layering it into an all-new industrial electronic rock.
