Some Great Reward

The band began recording around Christmas 1983 while still on tour, planning to record in London and mix at Hansa in West Berlin. When their month at Music Works in London ran out, they moved to Hansa and made most of the album there. Gareth Jones, who had been the engineer on the previous album, was by now a producer too. Sampling was heavy. The band tried sampling a live drummer with few usable results, and had more success with industrial sounds such as a hammer striking concrete.

Gore, living in Berlin, wrote about taboo subjects, including the S&M-themed Master and Servant and the religious Blasphemous Rumours, which stirred mild controversy as singles. Somebody was recorded live with just Gore on vocals and Wilder on piano, which Wilder called the first acoustic-performed track the band had recorded. The title is a partial lyric from Lie to Me. People Are People was started in London and finished at Hansa.

Release and reception

The album came out on 24 September 1984 and peaked at number 5 in the UK, selling more than 80,000 copies in its first two weeks there. It was the first Depeche Mode album to enter the US charts. The cover photograph by Brian Griffin was taken at Round Oak Steelworks near Stourbridge. The Some Great Reward Tour ran from September 1984 to July 1985, and the band played Budapest on 23 July 1985 and Warsaw on 30 July 1985, behind the Iron Curtain.

Melody Maker's Barry McIlheney wrote that the album demanded you sit up and take notice. NME's David Quantick felt it suffered from too many missed grips on good ideas. The DJ Paul van Dyk has named it his all-time favorite album.