IF NOTHING else, Depeche Mode has defied the odds. While most of the hyper-serious techno-pop groups of the early '80s have faded, Depeche Mode has taken the slow and steady approach - gaining new fans with every release.
It is a matter of giving the audience what it wants. Since 1981, the group has offered up industrial dance pop and searching, pseudo-intellectual lyrics - a perfect mix for generation after generation of university students.
And, like other veteran British groups such as The Cure and XTC, Depeche owes much of its popularity to the embrace of college radio stations in the United States.
To understand this appeal, look at the lyrics of the group's 1984 hit, Blasphemous Rumours : ''I don't want to start any blasphemous rumours/ But I think that God has a sick sense of humour/ And when I die, I expect to find him laughing. '' As an idea, this is either terribly clever, totally moronic or a bit of both - and as such, a sure-fire way to excite an earnest undergraduate's mind.
Happily, though, Depeche Mode's first album in three years, Songs of Faith and Devotion, is a more subtle effort - perhaps a coming of age.
The first single, I Feel You, for instance, is an optimistic love song: ''I feel you/ Your heart it sings/ I feel you/ The joy it brings/ Where heaven waits. '' And another song, Get Right With Me, lightens Dave Gahan's typically sombre voice with gospel back-up vocals.