Songs of Faith and Devotion

Gahan, influenced by the scene in Los Angeles, wanted a harder record, and Gore's demos for I Feel You and Condemnation were bluesier than he had expected. Flood, who had just worked with U2 on Achtung Baby, suggested the band live and work together, as U2 had, in a rented villa about thirty miles from Madrid. Recording began in February 1992. Without the usual pre-production, early sessions turned into jam sessions, and Flood later called the lack of pre-production a big mistake. The mood was strained, and the first six-week block was largely unusable.

In August the band moved to Château du Pape Studio in Hamburg, where the mood improved, and Wilder said they recorded eight tracks in six weeks there compared with two or three in Madrid. The album was finished at Olympic Studios in London in late 1992, where a 28-piece string section arranged by Wil Malone recorded One Caress in a day, with Gore singing live. The final mix was completed in December 1992 by Wilder, Flood and Mark Spike Stent. Wilder played live drums that were sampled and looped, and it was the first album on which the band hired outside musicians, including Steafan Hannigan on uilleann pipes on Judas and gospel singers on Get Right with Me.

Release and reception

It came out on 22 March 1993 in the UK and a day later in the US, and was the first Depeche Mode album to debut at number one in both countries. A fan posted the entire album online a few months before release, one of the early music leaks. Sales are put at more than five million worldwide. Gore said he wanted a title with religious overtones and a hint of ambiguity: faith in what, devotion to what?

The singles were I Feel You, Walking in My Shoes, Condemnation and a Butch Vig remix of In Your Room. The Devotional Tour ran fourteen months and 159 shows, and the concert film Devotional, directed by Anton Corbijn, earned the band their first Grammy nomination in 1995. Wilder has said the sessions made him decide he would eventually leave, and in June 1995 he announced his departure. It was the last Depeche Mode album recorded as a quartet.