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I've been a fan since the very beginning; I still remember listening to my tiny transistor radio to the BBC program "Top of the Pops" in the early 80s when the first synth strains for the debut single "New Life" came on and was blown away. I was hooked and bought all their albums and kept every one up to "Violator" which I feel to be their magnum opus although virtually every album of theirs prior I also consider to be masterpieces. Albums after that though felt like a big step down and while "Delta Machine" and "Spirit" were vast improvements I wish I could say the same for this release.

Albums up to "Violator" were truly albums in the sense that every track was intended to bring something to the table so that the album itself becomes greater than the sum of its tracks. I guess I'm still very much an album guy and will listen to entire albums instead of what we have today where people just listen to tracks which I find to be quite sad. It's this reason perhaps we get a disjointed album here with some tracks standing tall and could be counted among the band's best ever such as "Ghosts Again" and "Caroline's Monkey" but sadly they are also surrounded by too many pretty mediocre tracks such as "Soul With Me" and so makes this not one of Depeche Mode's stronger releases.

That said given the "quality" of albums out there today and for too many years before this album still ranks highly by today's standards however from the very high standards set by the band itself this one didn't do it for me. At least I can still go back to my cds from "Speak and Spell" to "Violator" whenever I want to remind myself just how great this band was and it is still good to know that after all these years they are still making decent music that is still head and shoulders better than their contemporaries while sadly not as good as they own formidable previous album releases. Overall an okay album but certainly not among their better ones.