Depeche Mode – Black Celebration

This is the point at which Depeche Mode’s sound started shifting from the interestingly experimental sampling and synths of Some Great Reward to a much heavier, more industrial sound… and I have to confess, they lost me for a long time after this one last really good album. If anything saves this album, it’s the slower songs and ballads, such as “A Question Of Lust”, “World Full Of Nothing”, and the menacing “Dressed In Black”. Faster-paced songs worthy of mention include “A Question Of Time” and the atypically bouncy “But Not Tonight”. The vocals on Black Celebration seem to be above the par set for the previous releases, though the album also falls flat for trying to copy the style of the group’s own well-received earlier material – “Sometimes” and “It Doesn’t Matter Two” are conscious attempts to reproduce earlier songs such as “Somebody” and “It Doesn’t Matter” from the previous album, and both fall very, very flat. This album is a very mixed bag.

1. Black Celebration (4:55)
2. Fly on the Windscreen – final (5:18)
3. A Question of Lust (4:20)
4. Sometimes (1:53)
5. It Doesn’t Matter Two (2:50)
6. A Question of Time (4:10)
7. Stripped (4:16)
8. Here is the House (4:15)
9. World Full Of Nothing (2:50)
10. Dressed in Black (2:32)
11. New Dress (3:42)
12. But Not Tonight (4:15)

Released by: Mute
Release date: 1986
Total running time: 45:16