A dark masterpiece in a long career

A hard-working like cliché is that, brings the musician who suffers really the best songs. Surely no one would like to wish the drug hell by Dave Gahan has gone apparently, but if so an album comes out as "Ultra", then just a little is good for something.
Depeche Mode, which, similar to TalkTalk getting enough breaks in Schniegel Popper Image had to stay interesting, have actually increased from album to album. After the first masterpieces "Black Celebration" and "Music for the masses" they have struck out in the nineties, the next big hit - as it no longer were many other bands eighties.
"Ultra" is the great triumph of the nineties. Gloomy, electronically, of almost religious gravity and with wonderfully voluptuous melodies, captivating to the album from the first note. Many of the new impetus are producer Tim Simenon owes who has a sound sprout pad, somewhere poised between "Nine Inch Nails" and "tricky".
The opener "Barrel of a Gun" fascinated with heavy beat and sawing guitars; "Home" sets a melancholic strings carpet under the pleading line, "It's no good" is a driving Popohrwurm. But quiet songs like the evocative "Sister of Night" play their part in the atmosphere.
At the center of all the songs is the voice of Dave Gahan, who brings with almost religious fervor every facet of his ordeal to be heard, sometimes strong and rebellious, sometimes broken and weak. The production takes back the smooth synthetic clay previous albums in favor of an opulent widescreen production, the lovingly detailed Soundsperenzien are a Wall-of-sound subsided, the whole relies on grand gestures with heavy guitars, massive drums and bratzigen analog synths and prepared the ground for the mysthisch encrypted texts.
This is certainly one of the most complex works of a great band. As so often they break through usual hearing patterns, reinvent itself, and expand the horizons of the listener - the best compliment what you can do to a disk.