Depeche Mode: Delta Machine – review

This 13th Depeche Mode outing arrives in the wake of last year's VCMG album, a digital reunion between Depeche's Martin Gore and original Moder Vince Clarke (Erasure). Tellingly, Delta Machine's guitars are way down in the mix; the machines, meanwhile, are up front, on edge and often arresting. The standout, My Little Universe, finds Dave Gahan crooning over nothing but a pair of minimalist rhythm lines for much of the track. Elsewhere a kind of blood-red synthetic blues bubbles to the fore; it blows hot and cold. While the intriguing Angel recalls Nick Cave browsing in a rubber shop, the single, Heaven, apes Portishead too much. Gahan's lyrical concerns are, by now, over-familiar – sin, sleaze, salvation: repeat till fade.