Music review: Depeche Mode, Hydro, Glasgow

Depeche Mode were overwrought and loving it for this Glasgow show, writes Fiona Shepherd

Depeche Mode, Hydro, Glasgow ****

The last time Depeche Mode hit Glasgow they ruled the relatively intimate Barrowland ballroom, with frontman Dave Gahan overtly channelling Freddie Mercury in his stomping flamboyance. Since then, the band have lost founder member Andy Fletcher, who passed away in 2022, adding a pathos to their current Memento Mori tour. The best celebration of Fletcher, however, is to once more shake the arenas of the world to their foundations.

There is an inevitable expectation that comes with such an ardently adored band. At the Hydro, this was met with the tolling drums, piston pound industrial clanking, epic synth sounds and almost desperate monastic chant of My Cosmos Is Mine. Depeche Mode were overwrought and loving it. Wagging Tongue, also from the Memento Mori album, was a lighter proposition musically but was followed up with the thundering industrial rock anthem Walking in My Shoes.

Gahan is your man for shamanic, strutting choreography but he can't really do subtle, so deferred to Martin Gore for the vulnerable vocal nuances of In Your Room. Gore’s leavening tenor rang out on the chorus of a splendid Everything Counts, its blunt force lyrics on capitalistic greed of perennial relevance but his solo spot on Strangelove and Somebody was weirdly MOR for a rock star in guyliner and bondage trousers.

Save for Gahan and Gore’s touching harmony duet on Waiting For the Night, the rest of the set was all might, meat and murk, including a hefty I Feel You and a gothic Stripped lit in diabolic red.

Gahan was positively satyr-like on a sublime Enjoy the Silence with its techno elements amplified. In the encore, he camped up Just Can't Get Enough to a pantomime degree before reverting to his taut and wiry best for Never Let Me Down Again and closing anthem Personal Jesus.