{"id":372,"date":"2015-07-11T20:27:17","date_gmt":"2015-07-11T18:27:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/?p=372"},"modified":"2015-07-11T20:27:17","modified_gmt":"2015-07-11T18:27:17","slug":"violator-review-all-roads-lead-to-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/violator-review-all-roads-lead-to-this\/","title":{"rendered":"Violator Review: All Roads Lead To This"},"content":{"rendered":"

I used to be very much into pop music during the 1980\u2019s. There was something about that period \u2013 and that period\u2019s popular music \u2013 that sparked a fire in me. Lots of it was very happy-go-lucky and easily digestible. There were perennial, simple themes like love and loss of love and growing up that all seemed to mesh well with the vibrant palette of the era. We will never have those giant shoulder-pads again. Or those neon colours splashed all over everything.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s kind of a loss for the human race. I say \u201ckind of\u201d because sometimes, growing up and becoming darker and more emotional and more in tune with the actual you that isn\u2019t just the surface is pretty important.<\/p>\n

One of the bands that were making this exact transformation at about the same time I was undergoing this personal journey was Depeche Mode.<\/p>\n

To understand Violator means to listen to all the albums that preceded it, because each album, in turn, gave something to Violator itself. From the simple [but layered] melodies of Speak And Spell [even if the lyrical content of that album was…lacking, at best] all the way through to their previous opus, Music For The Masses [with it\u2019s wonderful, smooth synthetic sounds] \u2013 one could hear the progression toward this seminal moment. And when it arrived…<\/p>\n

…well, it arrived in a very peculiar way, delivered as it was by advertisements that talked about \u201cyour own personal Jesus\u201d with a number that you could dial so you could hear the song. [amusingly, the telephone concept found its way into the lyrics, so rather an apt way of getting the message across.]<\/p>\n

But the birth of the single Personal Jesus was different in lots of ways for Depeche Mode who had only really flirted with guitars and guitar sounds up until that point. There was a distinctive guitar riff on both Route 66 and Behind the Wheel, of course, but this was the first time a guitar was the true heart of one of their songs.<\/p>\n

So, it was clear that \u201csomething different this way comes\u201d right from the outset.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
Such stark simplicity.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The album cover, itself, was another gracious, simple design. Black, white and red all mingled together to form quite a minimalist, simplistic sleeve that said everything you needed to understand about this album: it was beautiful, but it had thorns and it could bite.<\/p>\n

Of course, once you got over the shock of Personal Jesus and you listened to the whole thing, you could clearly hear the thinking going on over at the Depeche Mode camp:<\/p>\n

Take all the best, smoothest parts of Music for the Masses, sprinkle with some controversial lyrics from Black Celebration, mingle with a little bit of industrial flair, courtesy of Some Great Reward [and Construction time again], now add in the layered approach to melody found on both A Broken Frame and Speak And spell and out comes Violator.<\/p>\n

For this band at this point in their career, it was the only logical step.<\/p>\n

[The next logical step, of course, is shattering this mould completely, but that\u2019s a different review for a different day when we delve into Songs Of Faith And Devotion.]<\/p>\n

\"Drinking<\/a>
Drinking Game Time: Read the song titles. Guess which ones are about sin and\/or lust and\/or God and\/or all three at the same time.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Unfortunately, not all of this ends well: Martin Gore\u2019s lyrical fascination with sin, lust, and general darkness of the soul continue to take root here. The last vestiges of light found on Music for the Masses are all but gone. There\u2019s no lyrical lightness such as was found on Sacred. The simple declarations of love shown on It Doesn\u2019t Matter Two are compounded with sex and smuttiness that earlier Martin Gore was hinting at and flirting with, but that never really<\/em> became the basis for most of a record. [I mean, really, you can\u2019t have a song called A Question of Lust and not have it be about anything else, right?]<\/p>\n

Depeche Mode had gone all gothic here, but gothic in a way only they could do: synthesizers building upon one another to create a lush soundscape that demanded your attention. Preferably with headphones \u2013 if you wanted the best experience of the album.<\/p>\n

That darkness found me and touched me in a way that pop could never have done. I loved the Pet Shop Boys and while they\u2019d made some denser and darker sounding songs before, the content of those songs never touched on God or sin in the way that Depeche Mode were doing, and given that I was at a point where those concepts mattered a lot to me, it seemed to help to have a foil to ask heavier, denser questions than I was maybe ready for: Is this God guy on the up and up? Why does He allow all these atrocities if He\u2019s so benevolent? And for that, Depeche Mode was a blast of fresh air. They suggested that while He might be there, it might be wise to have a touch of doubt about the whole thing. After all, doubt and scepticism are healthy.<\/p>\n

Is this album worth your time? I think that, years later, the sound of Violator still stands out. It\u2019s an album filled to the brim with amazing attention to detail that sounds as crisp and smooth [and wonderfully engineered] as it did the first time I sat down to listen to it. The lyrical content, on the other hand doesn\u2019t hold up very well. Twenty five years along, I appreciate the raw energy and the sentiment behind Personal Jesus, but the controversy of it makes me shrug. Enjoy the Silence, while by turns a song about \u201cenjoying what we have, here and now\u201d can easily be misconstrued as \u201cit\u2019s not a real good idea if we talk. That just complicates things.\u201d Meanwhile, \u201cWorld In My Eyes\u201d is basically a song all about sex. Finally, the basic premise of \u201cPolicy of Truth\u201d is solid, if surprising, given Martin Gore\u2019s continued fixation on sin and the like.<\/p>\n

I am singling those four songs out, primarily because they\u2019re the release singles and you\u2019ve possibly already heard them. If you like them, then I can completely endorse this record. It contains one of my favourite Depeche Mode songs in the form of \u201cWaiting for the Night\u201d which is an amazing song that should be tracked down and heard from end to end.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t like those four songs, then this is going to be a difficult sell. Maybe you\u2019re not on board with the electronica on display here. If so, skip to the next album [Songs of Faith and Devotion], which does rock in a very distinct way.<\/p>\n

Either way, the music \u2013 if nothing else is very intriguing and worth a listen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I used to be very much into pop music during the 1980\u2019s. There was something about that period \u2013 and that period\u2019s popular music \u2013 that sparked a fire in me. Lots of it was very happy-go-lucky and easily digestible. There were perennial, simple themes like love and loss of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[58,57,47,59],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":373,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions\/373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}