The Unfan

So I'm going to try to do a few of these a week. Please also recommend stuff. Any genre will do. I'll probably throw a few myspaces in here too simply because they shouldn't take that long to do. No editing, no going back over. Typed in real time and posted as is.


Depeche Mode - Violator


The first track on this album starts off with a slightly funky synth line and dancy drums. The vocals kick in with a slightly melancholic yet fitting. The chorus section adds some atmosphere with thick keys that sound moderately dark, a bit gothy yet playful. After a few repetitions of the verse-chorus bit we get a nice keyboard lead followed by a final chorus and some fading out. A very simple song structure yet an all around strong opener for an album.

As Sweetest Perfection fades in we hear a more brooding sound that is fairly dissimular to the previous song. The vocals sound a bit more mournful here and aptly so. A chorus section followed by some epic film-score-esque keyboard playing bring a nice change of pace followed by another verse which sounds subtly different than the first two. More bleeps and bloops over a repeated chorus section bring the song to an end. Again, a very good track.

Personal Jesus is well...Personal Jesus. Instead of actually reviewing this track I'm going to go make some tea as it plays in the background. You should be familiar with it. So I made it back with about a minute and half in the song. The twangy guitar lead in this song is so good and the plingy (is that a word?) keyboard bits add a lot of depth to it.

Halo starts off with some bassy thuds and vocal scratches and then swiftly adds a few layers of synths followed by some crooning. This is another slow goth-pop piece like Sweetest Perfect. Not quite as much tempo variance here, but the pianos add a whole new level of greatness. The Castlevania sounding keyboards that surround the chorus make this song sound really rich and thick. A very nice track indeed, though simply fading out makes it sound incomplete.

Waiting For The Night begins with these eerie keyboard bleeps. Very light and airy yet highly melodic. The subtle progression and build up in this song make for a great atmosphere. The vocals in this song pop out more than they do in other songs due to the simplicity of the music. Not much is happening so the vocals actually seem to be the centerpiece here unlike in the previous tracks. The dual vocal harmonies about 4 and a half minutes drives this point home. Some spacey leads and melodic singing bring the track to a close as the rest sort of deconstructs itself underneath.

Enjoy The Silence is yet another gothy-pop piece though a bit more dancey than the rest of the material on this album so far. The vocals also take center for the second time this album as the lyrics and 4/4 drum pattern seem to pulse throughout the song. There is also this guitar lead that plays a nice melody using some slides. The keys while very simple make for a nice backdrop for the rest of it. The song as we know it fades and we're treated with some spacey sounding synths and some nice guitar playing as this song comes to a climax. Probably the weakest song so far.

Policy Of Truth is more guitar driven and less keyboard heavy. Not unlike Personal Jesus, but more groove oriented like World In My Eyes. The vocals here are very melodic and fitting here and truly carry this song. Not really much else to note. Though I just realized how manly this dude's voice sounds for being in a synth pop band. He probably wrestles grizzly bears.

Blue Dress is a slower track with more spacey keyboards as the backdrop. The vocals here are more sung than in the other tracks, in a classical sense that is. There is a piano that kicks in around the second verse thats very beautiful actually. For some reason I want to whip out my Sega Genesis and play some Phantasy Star. Alys' death was one of the most gut wrenching moments in video game history. Back to the song though. This rules and is probably one of the best pop songs ever. Though again repeating the same fade out the song as we know it and start playing some epic spacey which is tiresome. This melody is very good though and again brings me back to Phantasy Star. WTF with the weird evil laughter though?

Clean brings us some bouncy synth sounds and what I think is a vocoded "ahhhh" sound but I'm not sure. The vocals and drums kick in and it sounds like some badass space battle is about to go down. ZERG RUSH! I'm not sure what he's singing about though. Although if I had to take a guess based on the lyrics this song is about personal change I'd still like to believe it to be about a space battle simply because of how epic it sounds. With all the layered synths and the war-esque sounding drum pattern we get a complete change from the pop nature of the rest of the album, and close on a rather grandiose track.

9/10

lucifer_sam

Good review. I don't have much tolerance anymore for Depeche Mode, although this album was among the few I listened to as a kid.

I'm looking forward to seeing some avant-garde jazz in the future.

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