10 Perfect Rock Albums That Are Incredibly Sad

One of the biggest red flags that can come from an up and coming band is to pivot and make a dark album for their next big statement. For anyone who has ever watched a Behind the Music episode in their day, the dark album is normally where things start going wrong and the band eventually breaks up because of all the tension. And when Depeche Mode tried their hand at getting a little bit darker, they wound up making one of the greatest albums of their career.

Having one leg trailing back into the world of synth pop, Violator is the perfect bridge between what rock music could sound like going from the '80s to the '90s. While there are still more than a few synthesizers at play here, the attitude behind these songs is much closer to the bone, dealing with feelings of yearning that Dave Gahan doesn't know will ever be reciprocated, like the seductive nature of Sweetest Perfection or the jilted lover that spends his time feeling numb on Enjoy the Silence.

Though there are definitely some pop songs at the core here, you can also hear bits and pieces of industrial music creeping into the mix, like the Halloween-esque sounds of Waiting for the Night or the weird noise on the back half of songs like Clean. Depeche Mode always claimed that they were a pop band though, and this is what happens when pop music enters its most gothic phase.