Black Celebration

The band began at Westside Studios in London in the first week of November 1985. Miller, frustrated that he could not get the band to work in different ways, asked them to be in the studio every day to live the album, an idea taken from the way Werner Herzog worked on his films. The result was about 120 tense days in the studio, working 14 hours a day. Miller and the label worried that Gore's slow, morbid demos lacked a single, Gore pushed back, and after a standoff the label let the band make the record they wanted. The band ended up back at Hansa in West Berlin. Wilder later said the claustrophobic feel probably came from the tension.

Stripped includes the sound of Gahan's idling Porsche 911 and a bottle rocket recorded on Guy Fawkes Night. The title track opens with Miller's distorted voice saying a brief period of rejoicing, taken from a Churchill speech of 8 May 1945. Gore sang four songs, the most on any Depeche Mode album to that point. Gore said the title described the daily boredom of a dreary life, not the occult.

Release and reception

Stripped came out on 10 February 1986 and the album on 17 March, followed by A Question of Lust and A Question of Time. In the US, But Not Tonight was issued as a single instead of Stripped. The album peaked at number 90 in the US and became their best-selling album up to that point. The Black Celebration Tour ran five months across Europe, North America and Japan.

British reviews at the time were mixed. Years later, Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield called it an instant classic for the band's fans that everyone else ignored, and Spin ranked it 15th on its 1989 list of the greatest albums of all time. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails said the record took his love for the band to a new level and helped inspire Pretty Hate Machine.