Violator (album)

Depeche Mode supported their previous album, Music for the Masses (1987), with the Music for the Masses Tour, which ran from late 1987 through mid-1988, and was documented on the live album 101, released in March 1989. Both Music for the Masses and 101 were successful and regarded as instrumental in propelling Depeche Mode into mainstream success in the United States, which up until that point had eluded them. Music for the Masses had marked a turning point in both the band's sound and visual identity, with band member Alan Wilder's production influencing the music and Anton Corbijn's involvement in most of the accompanying music videos and promotional materials. During a break after the Music for the Masses Tour had completed, band members Wilder and Martin Gore pursued their own solo projects, with Wilder releasing his Recoil project's album Hydrology (1988), and Gore releasing his debut solo recording, Counterfeit EP (1989). ==Recording==

Selecting a co-producer In early 1989, Mute label owner and former co-producer with the band Daniel Miller suggested that the band reach out to Mark Ellis, known as "Flood", to help with their new material's production. Flood had some history with Depeche Mode, having remixed the B-side to their single "Shake the Disease" (1986) and producing Vince Clarke's Erasure band's two recent albums, Wonderland (1986) and The Circus (1987). Said Miller, "Flood is technically very good, very musical, and very open. He's not one of these: 'This is the way it has to be'. It’s more like: 'How can we do it differently?' He was in sync with the band's mentality – and my own." After three weeks in London, the entire band flew to Milan, Italy, for a seven-week session at Logic Studios. The band had asked Martin Gore, their main songwriter, to bring in simpler, less complete demos to give the band an opportunity to more fully collaborate and work in the studio. Said band member Andy Fletcher, "Over the years Martin's studio at home got progressively better and better so the demos he was producing and giving to us were very good quality. ... We were basically re-recording Martin's demos with better sounds, better production and Dave's [Gahan's] vocals." Gore agreed, saying "Over the last five years I think we'd perfected a formula; my demos, a month in a programming studio, etc. etc. We decided that our first record of the '90s ought to be different." Depeche Mode were looking for a harder sound, and Flood had worked with both U2 and Erasure previously, saying "I'd been working with synth and rock bands. I'd felt that there was a way that the two forms of music could actually work together. In a way, Depeche [Mode] were the perfect band to work with that idea and methodology." Although the band didn't get much recording done in Milan, the process did help the band and Flood coalesce around their new sound and working style. One track produced out of these sessions was from one of Gore's demos called "Personal Jesus". True to his word, Gore kept his demo very simple, just a beat and a melody played on his acoustic guitar. In the studio, Wilder and Flood sent the rest of the band away most of the time while they worked on the song. Said Wilder, "In the earlier years, everybody would be there [in the studio] with the result often being lots of chat and mucking around with little actual work being achieved. As time went on, we all realised that less people in the control room equaled more work done." Miller later suggested that this was the beginning of cracks in the band, with Wilder often irritated at other members of the band, who would wander into the control room with unwanted feedback before wandering off again. For the song, the band continued their tradition of building new samples for their music, recording people jumping on road cases for the 'stomping' sound used in the song. Wilder noticed that Gahan was showing some increasingly unstable behavior during their time in Milan as Gahan's dabbling with drugs became more pronounced. Said Wilder, "I think Dave [Gahan] was increasingly living in his own world. The most unsettling thing was that his drug use adversely affected his personality, either through enhanced aggression or the loss of his greatest asset: his sense of humour. I think I [first] noticed it during the recording of Violator in Milan ... I remember, for no reason, he deliberately picked a fight with about ten locals just walking down the street. I was petrified, expecting to be knifed at any point, but somehow he always got away with that sort of behavior." Gahan would later say "It's no secret I've been drinking and using drugs for a long time – probably since I was about 12; popping a couple of my mum's phenobarbitones every now and then; hash; amphetamines; coke came along. Alcohol was always there, hand in hand with drugs." Gahan's drug use worsened in 1990, and by the end of 1990 he was regularly using heroin. The band chose to release "Personal Jesus" as a single, with Flood saying it was partially chosen because "it stood out head and shoulders as a perfect track to say 'Here's Depeche Mode, but not as you know them.'" Their fears were unfounded, however, and "Personal Jesus" went on to become Mute's best selling 12" single of all time up to that point, surpassing releases by artists such as Prince and Madonna. "Halo" was "on a shortlist" of songs from the album considered to be released as singles, and a video for it was shot and included on the video compilation Strange Too (1990), but it was never officially released as a single itself. "Waiting for the Night" was, at that point, one of the few Depeche Mode songs that featured both Gore and Gahan on vocals. According to Classic Pop magazine, the song "builds to an almost psychedelic conclusion", which Wilder explained as "the kind of thing you resort to when you haven’t really got an ending." although he clarified that the original wasn't sampled, rather, "it [Clean] was programmed using a combination of analogue synth and [in-house] sampled bass guitar." To maintain a less machine-like feel to the songs, most of the album's percussion was sampled and played back through loops via samplers. Wilder felt that by sampling live percussion and looping it, it kept the imperfect "human" element, which helped avoid the cold, electronic feel of a drum machine. Gahan provided some guitar on the segue/hidden track "Interlude #2 (Crucified)" between "Enjoy the Silence" and "Policy of Truth", a first for the singer on a Depeche Mode album. Overall, Gore summarised the songs on the album as about "relationships, power, desire, love, good and bad, incest, sin, religion, and immorality." The Church Studios , pictured in 2012, where final mixing of Violator took place.|thumb|left|upright|alt=A picture of a church, built out of stone, with stained glass windows, viewed upwards from the street. Behind the church, a blue sky is lightly filled with white clouds. By September 1989, the band returned to England to finish and mix the album at The Church Studios, at the time owned by Dave Stewart of Eurythmics, with eight of the album's nine tracks already recorded. They reported to their fan magazine their intention to stay at The Church Studios until at least Christmas that year, where they were going to record a few of the album's B-sides and remixes. A total of six B-sides were recorded for Violator: "Dangerous", "Memphisto", "Sibeling", "Kaleid", "Happiest Girl", and "Sea of Sin". According to Wilder, "Happiest Girl" was originally slated for inclusion on the album, but ultimately was only released as a B-side. By the time all tracks were recorded, Flood was no longer available, so Miller brought in François Kevorkian to do the album's final mix. Miller was a fan of Kevorkian's, appreciating his work on Kraftwerk's album Electric Café (1986) as well as his remixes of Yazoo's "Situation" (1982). Miller later called Kevorkian "obsessive" and "one of the most intense people" that he knew, saying that Kevorkian "would work for 18 hours a day and I think he got through at least three different engineers, because they couldn't take it," although Miller also called him "brilliant". Some of the band, however, were less enthusiastic about Kevorkian's work, with Gore complaining that he didn't share what he was doing until he was done. "Enjoy the Silence" was originally mixed by Kevorkian, but the final mix was done by Miller. Wilder preferred the original mix, complaining that "our most successful single ever was one of the flattest, dullest-sounding mixes, with a snare drum that sounds like a sticky toffee pudding!". Overall, the band were upbeat during the recording sessions for Violator. Gore said the album "shines a light on the mood of the band at the time and, in particular, the excitement that was being generated with what was then a new producer in Flood and how they were approaching the entire process." Gahan later said, "We were aware that we were making a record that was exciting. It was certainly exciting to make. I have very fond memories of making Violator on every level. ... the experimentation, the excitement in the studio, the songs. But I don't think we were really aware of what was going on in terms of people waiting for this record." Flood later said "I will always remember the playback session for the album. It was the first time I'd heard it all put together. I just turned around and looked at Miller. Both of us went, 'this is a really really really good album.'" In 2006, Gore called Violator his favorite Depeche Mode album ever. ==Title and artwork==

Regarding the album's title, Gore said, "We called it Violator as a joke. We wanted to come up with the most extreme, ridiculously heavy metal title that we could. I'll be surprised if people will get the joke." Anton Corbijn designed the album's cover art, a red rose on a black background. ==Release and promotion==

From late 1989 through early 1990, the band performed new tracks "Personal Jesus" and "Enjoy the Silence" on a variety of European TV shows, including ''Peter's Pop Show and the Dutch music show Countdown''. On 18 March 1990, the day before the album was due to be released, the band agreed to participate in a promotional record-signing event at a record store in downtown Los Angeles. The event was expected to draw a few thousand fans, but instead drew over 15,000. The unexpectedly large crowd caused traffic issues in the area, and what was supposed to be a four-hour signing lasted only a few minutes as the band were taken away due to potentially unsafe conditions around the record store. Private security hired for the event could not handle the crowd, and riot police had to be called. In the UK, the album was assigned catalogue number STUMM64. The album charted well, hitting number one in France and Spain, number 2 in the UK, Germany and Switzerland, and landing in the top seven in four other countries, including the US, where it spent a year and a half on the album charts. As a result, it went triple-platinum in the US. Before the end of 1990, the album had sold 4,000,000 copies, and by 2006, it was estimated to have sold over 7,000,000 copies globally. The single "Personal Jesus" went on to sell a million copies, and "Enjoy the Silence" became Depeche Mode's best selling single ever, ==Critical reception==

Matt Mitchell of Paste Magazine opined that "the songs are so indebted to pop architecture that you can sometimes forget how sad and spellbinding they are down to the core," calling tracks on the album "bigger, bolder and more anthemic" than any of Depeche Mode's previous material. The styles have been categorised as synth-pop, alternative rock, dance, and gothic rock. Tim Nicholson of Record Mirror was enthused by the stripped-down quality of the songs and called the album a "compromise between pop music and something a little more sinister", adding: "There are no noises out of place in this perfectly formed void." Ian Cranna of Q found the music subtly clever and deemed Violator "a fine record which may not set the world on fire but deserves to singe it a bit." NME writer Helen Mead felt that the album "seems almost a step back, in that it's cleaner, sparser, more clinical" than Music for the Masses, but concluded that "there is security in the knowledge that everything is very clear cut in Depeche Mode's blue and white world." In a less enthusiastic review, Robert Christgau said that Depeche Mode conceded to fickle teenage demographics on Violator. For Entertainment Weekly, Greg Sandow wrote that the songs "hint at unspecified meanings, in a mannered way that might well be called pompous". Among retrospective appraisals, AllMusic critic Ned Raggett viewed Violator as "song for song... simply the best, most consistent effort yet from the band", Writing for Q, John Aizlewood singled out Flood's production on the album for praise, saying that the resulting "warmth" of the music "has helped Violator to age with consummate grace." Rankings Violator was ranked number 57 on Rolling Stones 2010 list of the 100 best albums of the 1990s. It was ranked number 342 on the 2003 and 2012 editions of the magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and number 167 on the list's 2020 edition. Violator has also featured on lists of the greatest albums of all time made by publications such as Q and Spin, and is included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. It was also included on Pitchfork, NME and Slant Magazine Top 100 Albums of the 1990s, Slant Magazine also included it on their 2003 list of 50 Essential Pop Albums. In 2015, VICE News wrote: "Part pop saveur, part lecherous perv, Violator at 25 [years old] is still creepy-sexy enough to arrest a new generation in its tracks." Violator reached number 17 on the Billboard 200 year-end chart of 1990, and was the first Depeche Mode album to sell a million copies in the United States. In 2023, Matt Mitchell of Paste wrote: "As close to a blockbuster synth-pop album as we'll ever see, Depeche Mode made a record accessible to everyone from aging punks to cynical teens. The tracklist is timeless, and the songs of Violator endure 30 years later." ==Legacy==

Violator was instrumental in turning the music press in favor of the band, which had been against them for years. "Before this, we'd been going along quite nicely," recalled Andy Fletcher. "Then when it came to Violator we inexplicably went huge. It was just incredible, and in many ways we never really recovered from that. After that, we just felt like we wanted to muck it up a bit." Miller later wrote in the 2006 re-release liner notes that "We all believed that Violator had universal appeal and a huge potential, but nobody could have predicted just how enormous it would become." Between the near-riot in LA, their ubiquitous presence on MTV, and the popularity boost from Music for the Masses and 101 the years before, Violator made Depeche Mode superstars in America in 1990. Many people involved in the production of Violator or the band's other albums have named Violator as their favorite Depeche Mode album of all time, including Gareth Jones, Tim Simenon, David Bascombe (who co-produced Music for the Masses), Daryl Bamonte and Martyn Atkins, who had created nearly all the band's album covers prior to this one. ==Track listing==

Notes Japanese first pressing A double-disc version was released in Japan. It comes in a thick double CD jewel case with the twelve-page lyric inlay booklet, sixteen-page Japanese insert, 'Enjoy the Silence' insert, and forty-page 1991 wall calendar. The second edition double CD was fixed and included 'Enjoy the Silence' (Hands and Feet mix) instead of the edited Ecstatic dub mix. 2006 Collector's edition CD + DVD ==Personnel==

Credits adapted from the liner notes of Violator. Depeche Mode • Alan Wilder • David Gahan • Andrew Fletcher • Martin Gore Technical • Depeche Mode – production • Flood – production ; mixing • François Kevorkian – mixing • Daniel Miller – mixing • Pino Pischetola – engineering • Peter Iversen – engineering • Steve Lyon – engineering • Goh Hotoda – engineering • Alan Gregorie – engineering • Dennis Mitchell – engineering • Phil Legg – engineering • Daryl Bamonte – engineering assistance • Dick Meaney – engineering assistance • David Browne – engineering assistance • Mark Flannery – engineering assistance Artwork • Anton Corbijn – sleeve • Area – sleeve ==Charts==

Weekly charts Year-end charts ==Certifications and sales==