CD: CDXSTUMM13
RELEASED: 2007
LABEL: Mute

01. Love, In Itself
02. More Than A Party
03. Pipeline
04. Everything Counts
05. Two Minute Warning
06. Shame
07. The Landscape Is Changing
08. Told You So
09. And Then...
10. Everything Counts

This is the first of Depeche Mode's industrially-influenced albums, but more significantly, it's the point where they started to come of age following the departure of Vince Clarke some years ago. 'Everything Counts' sums up everything that makes Depeche Mode so great, a nursery-rhyme melody matched to some very serious social commentary, whilst 'Love In Itself' began Martin Gore's habit of perverting the traditional concept of a 'love song'. Construction Time Again moved the band's sound onwards with the frisson of new industrial sounds. The addition of Alan Wilder's technical skills and the influence of mechanical noises made for thicker and more constructed musical backdrops to Gore's increasingly strong songs. The cover shot uses what could be a Communist worker image once again juxtaposing man with tool against nature; this time building / smashing instead of harvesting / cutting back. The vast blue skies and the towering mountain range ahead make for a more positive calming image than the music itself does. Construction Time Again exposes a mature outlook, dropping the simplistic pop tunes for a more intellectual, challenging approach.

Influences / Similar Artists:
Simple Minds, New Order, Tubeway Army, Cabaret Voltaire