10 Darkest Rock Music Albums Of The 80s

In the grand history of rock and roll, making a dark album isn't necessarily the best idea for artists looking for a long career. If you look at any of those unflattering rockumentaries from back in the day, the dark album is usually where things start to go off the rails and the band begins to break up. In the case of Depeche Mode though, they actually managed to get more and more popular the darker they got.

As much as the days of Just Can't Get Enough may have been fun at the dawn of MTV, everything was pushing further towards darker territory, with Violator being their crowning achievement as they worked their way into the '90s. Just before that smash though, Some Great Reward was the point where Depeche Mode never looked back, going all in on the sterile sounds of synthesizers and Dave Gahan sounding more and more foreboding on songs like Blasphemous Rumours or People Are People.

From day one though, this was never meant to be some edgy take on rock and roll or anything. Hell, Martin Gore always stood by the fact that Depeche Mode were a pop band, and this was the darkest conclusion that that description could have made. Inspiring more sinister acts like Nine Inch Nails later down the line, Depeche Mode really deserves a place next to the Cure in terms of darkness in rock. Robert Smith could turn it off, but Dave Gahan had the darkness in his soul all along.