NEWARK, N.J. — Geologists predict the man and woman on the cover of My Chemical Romance’s landmark 2004 album “Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge” will finally make contact in a kiss in the year 2049, sources who can’t believe that album is almost 20 years old report.
“While it may not be obvious visually, the couple’s faces are moving closer and closer together at a speed of approximately 1.3 millimeters per year,” indicated researcher and former emo kid Dr. Julia Alexander. “This falls in line with our understanding of macro emo phenomena. But the observation stands in stark opposition to quantum emo studies, which attempts to explain the infinitesimally small length of time Reggie & the Full Effect’s James Dewees was a member of My Chem.”
Fans of My Chemical Romance relate to the intense patience and excruciating yearning exhibited by the two ponderous lovers.
“I totally understand their hesitation. When you’ve been imagining something like a kiss for so long, you shouldn’t rush into it. What if the reality is disappointing?” posited 38-year-old diehard MCR fan Lydia Patrick, who reportedly destroys no fewer than four pillows per year due to kissing practice. “One day, I will find my own blood-soaked lover into whose eyes I will gaze lovingly. And, after a few decades of straining my neck upwards, we will finally meet lips. And it will be electric. Now excuse me, I need to get back to outlining several Frank Iero/Sonic the Hedgehog crossover fanfic novels.”
Members of My Chemical Romance admit that they haven’t kept in touch with any of the subjects of their album artwork.
“I thought they would’ve been married, had kids, and gotten divorced by now, like the two from Cursive’s ‘Domestica,’” stated Gerard Way, founder of My Chemical Romance who was recently given an honorary key to the Hot Topic stockroom by the company’s CEO. “That reminds me, I’ve been meaning to text the drum major from the Black Parade album to see how his sobriety journey has been going. But don’t get me started on the spider from Danger Days—that motherfucker is a lunatic and still owes me $40.”
Experts predict that the next great natural emo event will occur in 2079, when climate change will force Rivers Cuomo to dry up into Creek Cuomo.
Depeche Mode has often been dismissed as a cultural lightweight, alternatingly for producing mindless pop music or for melodramatically gloomy dirges. It’s pretty weird that the band decided to hit back against that image a full fourteen albums in, producing the politically strident, musically soporific “Spirit.” It’s as if this collection of millionaire goth rock stars were trying to outdo U2 in terms of earnest, Marxist-lite songs about climate change and the Arab Spring, only to somehow wind up even more embarrassing. We’re not saying Depeche Mode needs to stick to songs about weird sexual power dynamics, but if they wanted to get political, the time to do so was a long time before this.
By the 2000s, Depeche Mode’s new album release strategy had become pretty rote: the new collection of songs would be described as the most lyrically personal ever, while returning to their seductively dark analog roots. However, that doesn’t mean that said songs can’t be boring as fuck, like in the case of “Delta Machine,” an album saddled with a title that should rightfully belong to a knockoff Robert Ludlum novel. The band’s thirteenth album is pretty much the definition of resting on one’s laurels, with even the best tracks little but distant reminder of what heights DM can rise to when they’re bothered to.
It’s difficult not to read the shocking death of Andy Fletcher into “Memento Mori,” the album released after the longtime member (and reported peacemaker of the band) passed away due to a heart condition. But Depeche Mode has always been inclined to an absurd level of morbid introspection (or navel-gazing, depending on who you ask), so who’s to say how much that truly affected the album? At the very least, the addition of the Psychedelic Furs’ Richard Butler as a co-songwriter added some much-needed fresh blood to the mix, resulting in some of the band’s most energetic music in years.
Sometimes it’s easy to tell when a band is ready to cash in on accumulated fan appreciation and just try to recycle the hits. For Depeche Mode, that’s 2001’s “Exciter,” a tired-sounding album that saw the group semi-reusing title ideas like “Freelove” (see: “Strangelove”) and “The Sweetest Condition” (i.e., “The Sweetest Perfection Part 2”). This is a consummately professional album, in that its production sounds about as good as the band ever has and has very little under the hood.
While it’s not going to break the top ten list of any sane Depeche Mode fan, “Playing the Angel” at least sounds like Gore and Gahan weren’t actively falling asleep in the studio. After “Exciter,” we’d take anything we can get, which made the unexpectedly harsh noise blast of opener “A Pain I’m Used To” that much more exciting. Some of that likely has to do with Gahan being allowed to contribute songs for the first time, presumably having years of work stocked up for the day Gore stopped shoving him in a locker after vocals were recorded.
“Sounds of the Universe” picks up on the resurgent energy of “Playing the Angel” and takes it a step further, right down to the opening wave of discordant synth noise on the lead track “In Chains.” Pound for pound, it’s the strongest of Depeche Mode’s latter-day albums, with Gore and Gahan seeming like equals in the studios for perhaps the first time. In particular, the singer sounds in great form, even if someone should have told him that shouting “WRONG” over and over doesn’t constitute a catchy chorus.
Legendarily, when original bandleader Vince Clarke decided to piss off and start Yaz, the rest of Depeche Mode essentially shrugged and figured they didn’t really need the guy who wrote all the songs anyway. For a band of teenagers unexpectedly having to throw together a sophomore album on their lonesomes, “A Broken Frame” is shockingly strong. The darkness that would eventually become caricature seeps in here, but it’s also the work of a band not quite sure exactly what they’ll be yet.
“Ultra” came after Depeche Mode’s titanic commercial successes of the early 1990s, when they transformed from a popular but critically derided synth group to one of the biggest bands in the world. It also came after the departure of Alan Wilder and Gahan’s near-fatal heroin overdose, so it’s safe to say that these were some tumultuous times. It can’t be denied that the eerie groove of “It’s Not Good” is one of the best the band has ever produced, while “Home” sees one of Gore’s finest-ever vocal performances. The band might have been fucked up at the time, but they could still bring it in 1997.
By 1983, Depeche Mode was solidifying into the gloomy, infectiously dance behemoth it would become, and “Construction Time Again” is the proof. Alan Wilder joined the band, bringing in a new level of musical sophistication with his arrangments, while Gore’s songwriting leveled up significantly, particularly on the ridiculously catchy opener “Love, in Itself” and the anthemic “Everything Counts.” After the departure of Clarke, DM was getting weird with some of its experimental sounds, which would eventually lead to even greater gains, but not quite yet.
This standalone single is debatably their greatest and most representative work of the period, a perfect suspnesion of post-disco rhythm, Gore’s knack for synth hooks, and Gahan’s increasingly layered, seductive vocals. In other words, it fucking rocks.
“Songs of Faith and Devotion” is the sound of a band at the absolute peak of its powers, beginning to lose the plot. Despite Gahan’s increasing descent into addiction, the band’s sense of alienation from each other, and the risk of emerging alternative rock turning their synth-heavy sound passé, the songs on this album are some of the most powerful they’ve ever produced, from the gloomy balladry of “In Your Room” to the gospel-inflected “Condemnation” to the chilly hooks of “Walking in My Shoes.” They have pretty much never been quite this good again, but at least we got this before things got really bad for a while.
The only album to feature original Depeche Mode mastermind Vince Clarke (also the guy behind Yaz, Erasure, the Assembly, and that one song that goes duh-duh-duh-duh that you can’t get out of your head), “Speak & Spell” is a bit different from the rest. While the irrepressibly effervescent, immortal bop “Just Can’t Get Enough” essentially defines the sound of the original Depeche Mode, there’s enough edge to tracks like “Boys Say Go!” and “Nodisco” that the sharp turn into darkness ahead is not out of nowhere. C’mon, they already had a song called “I Sometimes Wish I Was Dead,” is it all that shocking they went goth?
We’ll admit this first, just to get it out of the way: the lyrics to “People Are People” are pretty fucking stupid; even Martin Gore says so. However, the music is as leanly muscular and undeniably catchy as anything the 1980s produced, as is the rest of the album. Try listening to the robotic call-and-response intro of “Master and Servant” and not be astounded by the sheer weirdness of the band at the time. Then sit back and enjoy, perv.
Okay, this is where Depeche Mode stopped fucking around and dived fully into the guilt-sex-drenched psychodrama that has defined the band ever since. “Black Celebration” is 11 tracks of unceasingly gripping melancholia and festering shame, but y’know, in a cool way. Songs like the chugging creep of “Stripped” and “Fly on the Windscreen – Final” are high points for the band, not just an album, while Gore took lead vocals on nearly half the tracks, including the heartbreaking insecurity ballad “A Question of Lust.” The band would make far bigger (both in terms of sales and in sheer sonic grandeur) albums, but never a better one.
“Music for the Masses” took everything Depeche Mode had done up to that point and cranked it up to 11, then said fuck it, and cranked it up even higher. The band’s sixth album is a massive step up in pretty much every way imaginable, which is especially impressive coming immediately after the triumph of “Black Celebration.” The darkness, the incredible pop hooks, the blend of guitar rock, industrial noise, and synth-pop; all hit a new peak on this album, with all the corresponding fame and success that comes along. Most importantly, Gore finally nailed how to write an anthem that would make a packed stadium sing along, the key part of any world-demolishing group of rock gods.
Very few bands get to make a completely perfect statement. For Depeche Mode, it’s “Violator,” the album they will forever (and correctly) known for. There’s really no way to describe the album other than the moment of every element of the band hitting full capacity at the same moment, and achieving a sound unlike anyone else. Nobody else was making something like the bizarre obsessive blues riff and electronic beat of “Personal Jesus” or the ineffable delicacy of “Waiting for the Night.” Nobody else created the insanely compelling intensity of “Halo” or “Policy of Truth,” let alone made their bruised, over-the-top emotionality somehow feel right and true. You think any other band could have made “Enjoy the Silence?” Don’t be silly.
Neckbeard-y hot take incoming: This is the least Cave In sounding Cave In album. How many times have you seen this story? Band known for a certain sound gets signed to major label, releases a too-polished, overly-produced album that does not appeal to wider middle America audience while simultaneously alienating their core fans. “But… but… isn’t this their most popular album?” Yes, and “The Phantom Menace” was the highest-grossing movie of all time until “Avatar” came out and those are both terrible.
This is a mixed bag of unfinished demos that possibly never got to be refined due to the sudden death of bassist Caleb Scofield. There are still great moments here though, some with an understandably somber tone. On “Shake My Blood” the band’s love of Failure is put on full display. Given time this could’ve been one of their best releases.
Ok, let’s start with the good news. Cave In are still active and put out an album in 2022, Nate Newton from Converge, Jesuit, and Doomriders amongst others is now playing bass and doing the screaming vocals, the first two songs are absolute ragers. Things start to get a little hit-or-miss afterward though. It’s tough to put on our finger on it but something just feels off in some of these songs. You know like when the cast of an old TV show does some hamfisted reunion and you can just tell everyone is just tired and maybe a little strung out? It’s kinda like that.
After their brief stint on major label RCA, Cave In spent a year or so licking their wounds from the experience and returned to their home on Hydra Head and to a sound closer to what many fans remembered. They rediscovered the heavier metalcore sound mixed with the spacey operatic elements while dialing up the experimental weirdness a bit. Most bands after their big-time record deal falls apart typically break off to do self-indulgent solo projects or even worse, form a “supergroup.” Luckily they were able to course-correct here though and avoid the cringey burnout phase.
Not included in the ranking since it isn’t a studio album but a collection of their first hardcore-era 7”s and various songs from compilations with a revolving door of vocalists. Most of these songs were written while the band was still in high school which is astonishing when you think about how most high school bands sound like the inside of a Guitar Center on some kind of “play all of our instruments at once” day.
For many die-hard followers of Cave In, this was their least favorite release on first listen. But just like how George Costanza was able to get a woman to be interested in him by repeatedly dropping a little earworm “Cuh-STAN-za,” this started to grow on people also. (Seinfeld references are still relevant, right?) They went to a weirdo realm on this but kept that shit heavy. Stephen Brodsky takes a bit of a backseat on vocals here and lets Scofield’s screams do the heavy (pun intended) lifting.
A year prior to “Jupiter” Cave In released the “Creative Eclipses” EP which teased out a new direction the band was heading in musically. “Jupiter” picks up right where “Eclipses” left off and yes, the mosh parts and the screaming were gone but what was left was something entirely new. And much like its namesake Jupiter, the album feels like a massive presence with weight that draws you into its orbit of celestial violence and beauty. (Dear reader, please submit the last line of this blurb to the fine folks who hand out the Pulitzer Prize, they are going to shit themselves.)
We’re ending this ranking with their first album which probably seems like we’re just being lazy in our writing but (need joke here). After burning through a few frontmen, the group became a four-piece and Brodsky took over vocal duties on both singing and screaming for the first and only time. Not many in the mathy metalcore genre of the time could’ve pulled off an ambitious 8-minute epic space odyssey like “The End of Our Rope is a Noose” without it being a catastro-fucking-phe but Cave In sure did it.