Depeche Mode have begun teasing the approaching launch of latest music – seemingly the primary single from their upcoming fifteenth album, ‘Memento Mori’ – with a cryptic countdown printed on their web site.
Plugged with a put up on their official Instagram account (which, on the time of writing, is the solely put up they’ve reside on the web page), the ominous countdown – which you’ll view right here – began at seven days, and is ticking down, second by second, till 10pm BST subsequent Saturday (February 4).
So reads a caption shared with the Instagram put up: “Time is fleeting, see what it brings.”
Clicking by way of to the band’s web site, the precise countdown is accompanied by a kind asking followers to fill out their identify and residential tackle. If you do, you’ll be met a message thanking you for “signing up”, in addition to hyperlinks to pre-save music on streaming platforms. Depeche Mode themselves haven’t but confirmed whether or not this will likely be a single, ‘Memento Mori’ itself, or one thing else fully.
The aforementioned album is due out on March 17 by way of Columbia and Mute. It would be the band’s first album in six years, following up on 2017’s ‘Spirit’, in addition to the primary launch to comply with the loss of life of founding member Andy Fletcher; the keyboardist died final May on the age of 60.
‘Memento Mori’ was announced final October alongside particulars of a sprawling world tour. Its title makes a direct reference to the lack of Fletcher – a “memento mori” is an object saved as a reminder of the inevitability of loss of life (akin to a cranium) – nonetheless based on keyboardist/guitarist/songwriter Martin Gore, it was chosen earlier than his late bandmate’s passing.
“It sounds very morbid, but I think you can look at it very positively as well,” Gore stated in a press release, “in that [you should] live each day to the max. I think that’s how we like to interpret it too… After Fletch’s passing, we decided to continue as we’re sure this is what he would have wanted, and that has really given the project an extra level of meaning.”
Upon the album’s announcement, frontman Dave Gahan opened up about it in an interview with NME, revealing that he was initially hesitant about making a fifteenth Depeche Mode document: “It wasn’t something I dived into, I have got to say. At first I put up quite a bit of resistance. I would say, ‘I don’t know if I still want to do this’; all the usual kind of stuff, but there was a bit more of that than usual.”
Elsewhere within the chat, Gahan famous that though work on ‘Memento Mori’ began earlier than Fletcher’s loss of life, the latter didn’t document any materials for it. He defined: “He never got to hear any of it, which is really sad to me because there are songs on this record where I know he’d be like, ‘This is the best thing we’ve had in years.’ I can hear his voice. I can also hear him saying, ‘Does every song have to be about death?!’”
Despite its morose themes, Gahan assured us that ‘Memento Mori’ is in the end rooted in positivity, being an escape for him and Gore. “The one thing I can do is make music with Martin,” he stated, “then we can go do our thing and hopefully that brings people together,” he stated. “It’s simply all an excessive amount of [in the world and the news right now].
“You should discover a place for your self one way or the other. This is what it’s for us proper now: making one other document, and we’re going to exit and carry out on these phases.