Are Depeche Mode Metal’s Biggest Secret Influence?
But while headbangers were singing about the same things and filling midsize venues with sweaty mosh-pit warriors, Depeche Mode were packing arenas and stadiums with screaming teenage girls singing their hits (even “Blasphemous Rumours”). Moreover, a reported 20,000 fans, many of whom had been waiting for days, showed up for a Depeche Mode record signing in Los Angeles when Violator came out, and the roar of the fans captured on the band’s 1989 live album and video 101 is still echoing around the Pasadena Rose Bowl.
Their impact stretched far and wide during the lead-up to Violator’s release, and it was around that time that it settled into the psyches of hard-rock and metal bands. The first notable hard rocker to sing their praises was Axl Rose, who in 1989, reportedly attempted to curry the band’s favor by reciting the lyrics to their tender, hopeful love ballad “Somebody” to them at the 101 Hollywood premiere. Later that night, he brought them to the L.A. metal club the Cathouse but he soon lost their friendship. After the party, the Guns N’ Roses singer reportedly attended a Beverly Hills barbecue where he allegedly shot a pig. Depeche Mode then released a statement to the U.K. press that, as vegetarians, they were “appalled” with him and did not want to be associated with him.
It was also around that time that people who would come to define metal over the next couple of decades became fans of the synth-pop group. Marilyn Manson fondly recalls seeing Depeche Mode in L.A. on their World Violation Tour, and Deftones’ Moreno proudly says that that was the first concert he ever saw. “I fought my way to the front to be against the barricade,” he tells Rolling Stone. “I have a feeling it’s what launched me into wanting to make music, just by seeing the energy. It was just something else, one of my fondest and greatest memories of coming of age.”
“Dave Gahan’s voice was always attractive to me,” says Burton Bell, who peppers industro-metal growls with full-throated, Depeche-y singing when fronting Fear Factory and identifies himself as a Mode fan from even before Violator. “He did not have a ‘whiny’ voice, which was popular for that genre of music during that time. He has a voice that resonated deep emotion and commitment. It’s not really about what he was singing, but more about how he was singing it, that really made me a fan.”
“It was different from anything that was going on at that time, and that’s what drew me in,” offers Ville Valo, frontman of the brooding Finnish “love-metal” group HIM, which once covered “Enjoy the Silence.” “The uniqueness of Depeche Mode was similar to Black Sabbath. They gave us hope that you don’t have to do exactly what the rest of the people are doing. They reinvented the wheel.”