Richard Spencer and Andrew Jensen review Depeche Mode’s tenth studio album, Exciter (2001).Sound references Depeche Mod, Exciter, “Dream On”Sugar Ray, “Fly”LFO, “Freak”DM, E, “Dead at Night”DM, E, “I Am You” DM, E, “Shine” DM, Violator, “Blue Dress”DM, E, “Comatose” DM, E, “Goodnight Lovers”DM, E, “Dirt”DM, E, “Breathe”DM, Music for the Masses, “Things You Said”DM, One Night in Paris, “Free Love” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit radixjournal.substack.com/subscribe
Wondering if we're being punished a little bit through having to review this album.
I guess that's a weird thing to say for this faithful and devoted podcast that we have launched.
But we actually recorded this a week ago, and I thought our session was actually pretty good.
Particularly... With respect to the fact that we're reviewing the Exciter album.
And I think we actually were trying to find some tidbits, at least put it into context or something.
And then I recognized, as I was ending the Zoom call, that we had forgotten to record any of it.
So we were just talking.
And that was pretty frustrating.
But I've recovered.
You know, when I started talking the last time, I said that...
This album was better than I remembered, even though it is the album that I've listened to least often, by far, of anything they've ever done.
I have listened to A Broken Frame more than this album.
I've definitely listened to Speak and Spell more than this album.
And I've listened to Delta Machine, etc.
Other albums that are questionable, I have listened to a lot more.
And I guess I was kind of introducing myself to this album for the first time.
And a lot of this might have to do with my own biography a little bit.
So I was born in 1978.
And as I've mentioned a few times now, I just have this unique memory of listening to Depeche Mode.
Outside of my sister's room.
So she had closed the door.
It was, you know, 8 p.m. at night or something.
We should have been to sleep.
And I was, I don't know how old I was.
Maybe, let's say, eight.
Somewhere about that age.
Where you're, you know, you can talk, you can think, you have a certain awareness, but you're also learning about things.
Everything in the world is new.
And I remember hearing...
It was either some great reward or black celebration.
And just hearing this new sound that I'd never heard before.
And it was everything.
It was the minor key, the repetition, the tough attitude, singing about pain or, you know, God with a sixth sense of humor or black celebration.
I don't know what it was, but it was just something I'd never heard before.
And I have been...
Faithful and devoted ever since.
I mean, it's remarkable.
But when I graduated from college in 2001, I don't know whether it was a kind of snobbery of a young person where, you know, you're now, when you're eight, you're just entering kind of consciousness,
I guess.
But when you're 21, 22, you maybe are thinking a little more highly of yourself.
You're throwing away those childish things.
I don't think I ever purchased this album.
It would have been on CD at the time.
And I don't remember really listening to it.
And when I would listen to Depeche Mode as a...
You know, as a playlist or something like that.
I've heard these songs, but I just, I wouldn't really listen to them intently and I wouldn't really listen to them as background when I'm working out or going skiing or hanging out at the house or cooking or something.
They just never, they've never been a part of my life.
And in a way that I can remember where I was when I bought Violator.
In Texas.
I can, as I've said before, I remember this mid-80s Depeche Mode sound.
I don't quite know the album, but I just remember where I was standing there, listening to it.
I can remember going to their concerts.
I can remember all of these things.
And this is like a blank space.
And when I listened to the album, kind of for the first time in a way, so I got the vinyl, you know, I splurged, I don't know how many...
Dozens of dollars I spent on this reissue.
It's nice.
It's on vinyl.
It does make a difference with good speakers.
It sounds better.
I'm hearing a lot more.
But I still just don't like it.
And I just still find it utterly forgettable.
And I can't even quite put my finger on why that is.
It's a mystery, but I guess it's a mystery I don't want to solve.
It's like, it's the reverse of a whodunit.
It's the who didn't do it.
Can you feel a little love?
Dream on, dream on.
It's not interesting.
And I do like some numbers from here.
And I think I said this about Delta Machine.
I could imagine myself walking into a lounge or something and one of these songs is in the background and it's kind of cool and it has a certain something.
But that's probably the most I would say about it.
Last week, when we, our ill-fated session, which never went off, I did almost like it more than I thought I would because I was hearing a lot of things for the first time.
Maybe actually for the first time in some cases of certain tracks.
But I kind of had to force myself to listen to it.
I found myself going to check Twitter or playing chess on my phone or something.
I was just bored.
I don't know exactly what it is, and we can get into that.
Maybe it's the producer.
Maybe Depeche Mode was kind of suffering a certain midlife crisis of sorts.
To their credit, I think they put out their best album of the 21st century, maybe.
Definitely the best album in 10 years with playing the Angel in a couple of years, so they kind of responded to it.
Maybe they listened to the critics, or maybe they were critics themselves.
But as a piece all on its own, I just find it utterly forgettable, and I find almost every song to be dispensable.
That is, if there were some quirk of the universe...
Where this album didn't exist, Depeche Mode would be the exact same band.
They didn't grow with this album.
They definitely don't have any song on here that is like rocking, amazing, classic, anthem.
There's some songs that I like, you know, fair enough.
There's some songs that I even find kind of cute, like Goodnight Lovers and things like that.
But that's the most I can say about it, and I don't think I would say that about any other album.
You know, looking back at A Broken Frame, maybe it's because I know what's going to come after, so I'm projecting backwards onto it, but I like a lot of their songs.
It's interesting.
It's almost historically interesting.
And, you know, with CU and a couple of the songs, you really see them, like, getting into the mode, so to speak.
They're going where they need to be going.
This one, it's like they're going where they shouldn't go, actually.
And I don't know.
I guess it's kind of like the biggest insult that I could ever say about a rock album is that it's forgettable.
Yeah, I would agree that this album is forgettable.
But real quick, what were you listening to around the turn of the century?
Were you just reading Nietzsche or something?
Yeah. I was definitely getting into opera.
I was listening to a lot of Wagner and Verdi and that kind of stuff.
I was thinking more highly of myself and kind of tossing away all the stuff that I was into in high school.
I see.
Okay. Yeah, I was just curious because a lot of that stuff around the turn of the 20th to 21st century.
I'm trying to think of who was popular and it would have been, I don't know, like Sugar Ray or U2 was sort of, I mean, they were kind of entering a new phase.
They were still poppy, but yeah, I think from about 2000, maybe 1997 even, to about Well, maybe even to now, it's just kind of like the music is,
it's just boring.
I think almost all albums are, almost all albums in that time frame are pretty dispensable.
And I don't know if that's because of how digital everything is.
It just comes in, lingers for a few weeks or months, and then it's gone.
But with this album, I just have to say that I think it's a bit of a transitional album in the sense that they're maturing from, These rock stars in their early 30s, now they're in their 40s.
And I think they're at veteran status at this point.
And they can't and they won't party like they used to.
This is kind of like maybe the anti Songs of Faith and Devotion in that sense.
And I think this album is only channeling really other electronic music.
Like Martin was saying, he was listening to a lot of electronic music.
And it seems like an electronic album, like an experimental electronic album that somehow turned out pretty generic and boring.
Like, I don't find many of the songs, most of them, I don't find, there's nothing sonically interesting.
I don't think the songwriting is that good.
I think that's kind of what you need.
You at least need a good song.
I would say it's consistently mediocre, with the exception of a song.
Like Goodnight Lovers.
I actually do really like that.
It's a very classic sounding song with the chord structure, which we can get into.
But it seems like when they get to this veteran status, it's like people aren't coming to listen to this album.
This was a successful tour for them.
But that's because I think a lot of these original fans from the 80s and early 90s are looking at them now and waiting for...
The black celebration.
They're waiting for anything off of Violator, World of My Eyes, whatever it is, and join the silence.
And, you know, the final reason, I think, is because their main guy for driving their sound is gone.
And there's really no amount of personnel that they can bring in that's going to really bring that back.
And I'm talking, of course, about Alan.
I think it's the...
Yeah, like I said, it's the first album where they can sort of coast off of previous accomplishments.
This came after they released a sequel to Catching Up With Depeche Mode, which was...
Catching Up With Depeche Mode was reissued as 1980-86, and then they had a secondary best-of album, 1986-1998, or something like that.
And I think there's probably a combination of things.
Probably some hipsters discovered them for the first time.
I would imagine also a lot of their fans were also entering their 40s and had more money and were excited to go to a concert.
And that's why the tour was successful.
I mean, that was actually mentioned in Stripped, which I reread those chapters.
Which is a biography, a chronicle of Tebesh Mode, really.
And that's great and all.
And I don't know, there's something, there is something kind of turn of the century and turn of the last century about it in the sense that it's not grunge, it's not nihilism.
It came before 9-11, so it's almost like an end of history.
Album, you could say it was actually released in May of 2001.
And it's all about love.
And yeah, to be born a lover, you're born to suffer.
But that's not really a new sentiment.
But there's no edge to it or resistance.
There's no issue or struggle that it's needing to solve.
And I think the fact that it's all about love and kind of lust or free love, I'm just going to give you love.
I want you to, you know, get off that, get out of your mediocrity.
That actually, to be fair, that actually is a really good line.
You've been hanging from a rope of mediocrity.
It's a great line.
But it's about that and just kind of experiencing pleasure.
And I think there's a...
A shallowness to all of that.
And that is a kind of sentiment that I would associate with that era.
I know this is kind of a funny comparison, but have you ever seen the James Bond movie Die Another Day?
I haven't, no.
I'm not a huge Bond fan.
That's fine.
I mean, this is kind of funny.
I'm like my two of my many fandoms.
I'm connecting here.
There's another connection, which is Martin Gore was reportedly asked to write a James Bond theme song, and he declined.
So I don't know if he would have done that for The World Is Not Enough.
They hired Garbage for that one.
Who knows?
But that would have been interesting, I have to say.
Bono and The Edge did one, so they were going to another alternative act of the 80s and 90s.
Yeah, Die Another Day, it has all the components of a James Bond movie.
It has the most heavy use of CGI of any film.
And the whole thing is just kind of fake and shallow.
And a Bond girl, you know, played by Halle Berry doesn't die.
And they're actually...
She lives and she's good and she kicks ass.
There's this fake over-fulfillment, I guess you could say, quality to it.
And I feel like that's what's going on with Exciter, where it's almost a digital, quasi-AI-generated Depeche Mode album that won't be offensive to anyone in the 2000s.
As opposed to singing about sadomasochism or God being evil or some of their other topics, it's just about love and not even love, just kind of pleasure.
And saying that there's some pain with that pleasure, everyone gets brokenhearted, is a kind of platitude or empty sentiment.
And that's how I feel of it.
It's like pumped through a computer.
And you hear that sonically as well with the album, where you can hear a little bit of them going towards Delta Machine with the blues.
This starts out, it was the Dream On is the first single.
Something like that.
And it's kind of quasi-acoustic, but it's just digital.
It might as well...
It's evoking a kind of blues thing, but then you don't really hear the instrument.
They had a number of people come on and perform instrumentally for this.
Areto Moriera on percussions.
I mean, I'm sure he's a famous musician.
Christian Eigner started a long relationship with the band, and Dave Gahan in particular.
You have a better ear for hearing instruments and et cetera than I do.
But it just sounds process to me.
It's like it doesn't matter that some clearly talented musician came in the studio and added his contribution.
There's just no real there there.
And even the blues lick doesn't really sound like a blues lick.
Yeah, I don't really care for...
And sonically, the entire thing sounds as if you took an acoustic guitar sample from GarageBand or something.
You know what I mean?
That's what that guitar opening, or rhythm rather, in Dream On reminds me of.
And I don't want to be too harsh, but even that opening line on Dream On, he goes, Can you feel a little love?
I was thinking to myself, that sounds kind of flat.
But so I took it and I sampled it and I put in my keyboard and I took my tuner out of my phone.
And sure enough, it is actually that it is it is flat.
Yeah, it's it's like in between E flat and E. And I mean, so it was either flat or sharp, depending on what key they're supposed to be in.
But. Yeah, it just, I think that was a bad way to open it.
Like, didn't they think that somebody would, you know, I don't know, maybe I'm being like too OCD about it and I don't need to just dissect it and put it under a microscope, but I kind of had to because there was something that felt a little bit off about that opening.
And yeah, the song is just, it's just okay.
And he had, Marvin had writer's block and I don't know what the cure for it.
Was necessarily, or necessarily if there was a cure, because a lot of the songs, there are some good lyrics, like you mentioned in Shine, but there are a lot of just rhymes that don't go well together,
or there are lines that don't go well together.
It's just kind of meh.
The whole album is meh.
And I don't think I would put this at the bottom, but it's definitely near the bottom.
Bottom five, for sure.
But to go back really quickly to what I was talking about, the popular artists at the time, this is how bad music was then, and maybe still is, but it was Sugar Ray who had a few one-hit wonders.
I don't know if you remember that from that time.
Put your arms around me, baby.
Put your arms around me.
I just want to fly.
Anyway, NSYNC, White Stripes.
Strokes, System of a Down, Smash Mouth, and Destiny's Child.
I think these are all highly forgettable.
All around the world, statues crumble for me.
Who knows how long I've loved you.
Everywhere I go, people stop and they say,
years old, my mother got rested so.
I just want to fly.
Put your arms around me, baby.
Put your arms around me, baby.
I just want to fly.
They were dominating the chart.
I think art just in general was just dead.
Just toss it in there.
I don't know that much about Mark Bell because he's the producer.
I actually researched him a little more and I listened to some of his music.
He sadly died not too long ago in 2014 of medical complications.
Yeah, I'd heard that.
But I had heard a little bit of what he had done with Bjork.
And I'm just, maybe I'm not the biggest Bjork fan, so I can't fully appreciate it.
Probably a bigger Sugar Cubes fan than I am of Bjork.
But it was just, yeah, I mean, it's just sterile.
A lot of his music or his production on even Bjork's songs seemed a little bit sterile.
The songs seemed a little bit thin, is the way that I would put it.
Yeah. Or sonically, rather.
I listen to some of his music.
It's LFO, Low Frequency Oscillator.
I mean, he was quite young.
I think he was 29, if I'm correct.
Yes, he was 29 when he was hired to do this.
It strikes me as turn of the century hipster electronic stuff.
This is going to make you freak.
This is going to make you freak.
It just strikes me as a bit like background music and maybe a little bit ironic.
He was interested in German minimalism, also what I read, with kind of like clicks.
Yeah. I mean, again, he certainly died too young.
He did not do another album with Depeche Mode.
I do get a certain sense that they recognized that something went wrong with this one, and they wanted to continue to make albums.
I mean, this could have been their last album, actually.
And it wasn't.
And they did come back, and I think they definitely adjusted themselves and did, to a certain degree, a kind of throwback.
You know, pain and suffering in multiple tempos with playing the angel and probably consciously just like, let's just go back.
Let's go back to a pain that I'm used to, so to speak.
And we have to have that edge.
And if we're just singing about, you know, America at the end of history and everything's good and...
We've got tech bubbles and you can consume anything and the internet's here and so on.
I think they recognize that at some point even their fans would get a little angry.
But I don't know.
In terms of songs that are worth Talking about...
I like a lot...
You know, it's funny.
I like the last quarter of the album the most.
I like the last...
The flip side of the second record, actually.
And I Am You and Goodnight Lovers might be my two favorite numbers.
I like certain parts of other songs.
I think some songs are kind of...
At least interesting conceptually, The Dead of Night, it has a lot of, I don't even know if that's like dubstep or whatever, like this kind of bent note.
It's also ironic.
They're almost singing.
They're singing about people they hate.
Maybe they're even singing about some of their own fans.
But we're at the dead of night.
We're in the zombie room.
We're Twilight's parasites.
It's a good line.
With self-inflicted wounds.
Heavenly oversights.
Eating from silver spoon.
There's a kind of ironic type of crooning that Dave gets into as well.
With our decadent minds and our innocent lines.
We're the horniest boys, we're the corniest boys.
We take the easiest girls to our sleaziest worlds.
With our lecherous plans in our treacherous hands.
You'll be wasting your time, saying no it's a crime.
All that we live for you'll regret.
All that we live for you'll regret.
All you remember we'll forget.
We are the dead of night.
We're in the zombie room.
We're twilight's parasites.
We're self-inflicted wounds.
We are the dead of night.
We're in the zombie room.
Heavenly oversight.
Eating from silver spoons.
Our lecherous.
We're in the zombie room.
You know, is it a great song?
No. Kind of interesting conceptually.
I'll give it that.
I Am You and You Are Me is more romantic.
But again, it's that word that I've chosen, like over-fulfillment.
There's this way where there's no more tension.
Because... I am you and you are me.
I am you or you are me.
There's no turning back.
We're in this trap.
No denying the facts.
No, no.
No excuses to give.
I'm the one you're with.
We've no alternative.
No, no.
It's this total connection.
Now, you could say, you know, Dave is still recovering.
I mean, he almost died or I think was dead, in fact, for maybe a minute or two.
And we'll get into that when we talk about...
Songs of Faith and Devotion and Ultra.
So he's recovering.
He finds a new wife, Jennifer.
She's an American from Arizona.
And he actually said and he said to a reporter, he said the author's trip that she didn't even care about Tepeche Mode.
You know, she probably liked the money, to be fair, but she didn't care about the band.
She cared about him.
He achieved a certain love and Suburban happiness, maybe, and certainly stability, which was completely necessary at that time.
And that's great.
But I just find it...
And he didn't write this song, Martin Gore did, but I just find it limiting when there's no resistance or tension.
It's just, at the end of the day, like...
We're together.
There's no alternative.
I am you and you are me.
It's a nice sentiment.
But when I just see this happening throughout the whole album, there's no darkness.
There's no edge.
There's no irony.
I just become very disappointed in it all.
I just become very disappointed
in it.
I just become very disappointed
in it.
I just become very disappointed
in it.
Similarly,
Similarly with Shine, which, again, is a good song.
I mean, I like it.
It has some good lines.
It's almost singing about, you know, what is it?
A Hundred Shades of Grey?
What was that about?
What was the name of that book again?
Ninety Shades of Grey?
Fifty Shades of Grey?
Fifty Shades, okay.
I was going to get it at one point.
Are there only 50?
Why is that number significant?
I don't know.
It's put your blindfold on and a dress that's tight and come with me on a mystery night.
Open your eyes.
It's singing about S&M, but it's almost like lame S&M or something.
It's like a couple in their suburban home burning candles and pouring wax on themselves or something.
Artisan candles, pumpkin spice candles that they're pouring.
Ooh.
Put on your blindfold and a dress that's tied And come with me on a mystery night Open your eyes
Follow by stars under a painted sky But leave the world behind, we're learning to fly We used
to get by Forget the pictures on your
TV screen We're still the visions that you keep for your dreams You can turn me on I was
blind and I saw the light My angel coming in a brilliant white eye Shine for
me You've been hanging from our own mediocrity
Strung up by your insecurities You can shine for me
Somebody has to shine for me It's difficult not to shine for me I'm not a mystery
It's just kind of lame.
And if you compare it to a song like Blue Dress, put it on, you know, put it on.
It's so much simpler.
It's less complicated.
It's less, it's kind of less refined, but thus better.
Bolder to you.
Yeah. And I just, the comparison does no favors to their more, quote, mature work.
����
Put it on and down and say a word Put it on, the one that I prefer Put it on and
stand I would
say with a song like Dead of Night, one of the things about it is that opening siren sound, they just repeat on A Pain That I'm Used To.
But I think they actually do it better on A Pain That I'm Used To, on playing the angel.
But, I mean, some of the...
That's probably a good song live.
They definitely didn't play it when I saw them.
I didn't play anything off this album when I saw them.
But yeah, I don't know.
It's like rocky and it's got a little Viper Room feel to it.
But again, like most of these songs, it's just forgettable.
I think the worst song, without a doubt, is Comatose.
I hate whatever like over-filtered kind of...
Like bass noise that they've sampled or what it's just awful.
I think that's the worst.
I don't like the vocal melody.
I think that should have just entirely been scrapped.
And I mean, maybe it's about like overdose of, you know, comatose almost, but whatever.
It's not particularly interesting.
There are other songs he's written about dying that are much, much better.
Comatose, almost.
You've got me dreaming.
This isn't about dying.
This is like being about being bored to death.
Yeah, okay.
By the sound.
Sure, yeah.
But I would agree with you about the last half or the last quarter of the album with songs like Breathe I Am You and Good Night Lovers.
I think those are the best songs on there.
But like I had mentioned before, there's this kind of...
The use that Dave has on his voice in IMU, it's like a radio effect or whatever.
It almost sounds like his hand is over his mouth, you know, that he would have had on New Dress, you know, with the princess die is wearing, that same effect is on there, which you would have heard around that turn of the century.
You would have heard that a lot in that, I don't know what effect, I guess it's like a radio effect or something.
You would have heard that on a lot of people's vocals at the time.
But I think easily, Goodnight Lovers is the best song on the album.
It's very straightforward.
I think maybe that's what this album is missing.
It's not very straightforward with the exception of Goodnight Lovers.
The chords are pretty straightforward with the E to A and then the A going down to A minor, which is just...
Classic move to go, you know, from the major four to the minor four.
It kind of...
I love, though, in that song, the backing vocals that Martin does.
It's almost like a doo-wop song, but it's this perfect, like, soft Depeche Mode ballad.
And I think it is actually one of their best songs.
Here Somewhere in the heart of me There is still a
part of me That cares And I'll
I'll still take the best you've got Even though I'm sure Yeah,
to give...
Mark Bell, a little bit of credit.
He suggested that Dave sing that like he was singing a lullaby to his new child.
You know, he has a new wife and child.
He's settling down.
You actually, at the end of the song, the end of the album, I guess it's like, shh.
Yeah. That's nice.
Yeah, but I think we're almost grasping for things here.
So sisters and so brothers.
Shhh. Shhh.
Shhh.
You had mentioned the S&M, but it sounds like in Shine, a wife talking to their husband like, now if you're good, I'm going to put on the blindfold.
You know what I mean?
That's what it feels like.
Exactly. And I actually think the best song on here is, or I'm sorry, the second best song, or third, whatever, is Dirt, which is like a B-side, which I don't know if you heard it, but it's got this like...
Heavy kind of drum sound and it just sounds like nasty and kind of reminiscent actually of Ultra in the way that they're just kind of sampling these live drums and playing over them and kind of layering them.
It's got an edge to it.
I think that song does have an edge.
dead. And I don't care.
I've been dead.
And I don't care.
Because I'm...
But, I mean, when the body speed...
There's no edge to that.
No. It's kind of an interesting sentiment.
It's not about your mind, really.
It's like the body's closer to your soul in Martin's imagination.
It's an interesting sentiment, but it doesn't really go anywhere.
Breathe has some It has kind of an interesting Catch to it.
He's singing about, you know, I heard it on Monday and I laughed a while.
I heard it on Tuesday.
I managed to smile.
So they're doing that bluesy thing.
And then he flips over to, I heard it from Peter.
Who heard it from Paul?
Who heard it from someone?
I don't know it all.
And so he's naming biblical names who swore in the Bible that it wasn't the truth or something like that.
It's good.
It's catchy.
It's clever.
I heard it from Peter Who heard it from Paul Who heard it from someone I don't know at all I heard it from Mary Who heard it from Ruth Who swore on the Bible She's telling the truth Fiction.
That all was gone So I need to know Your alibis I need to hear
that you love me Before you say goodbye Before you say goodbye Thank
you.
I was thinking about this, that the song Breathe is a more refined, mature, complicated, you could say, version of I heard it from my friends about the things you said.
And that from Music for the Masses.
And I heard it from my friends about the things you said.
That's like a sentiment out of high school, you could say.
You know, a gossip, rumor, etc.
The way that it stripped down the bass line, Martin himself singing it, just everything about it is cool and interesting and great.
And I think that's an indispensable song in their body of work, actually.
It's classic.
And it gets at something.
It's highly memorable.
I've listened to it a thousand times.
And it evokes something even if the sentiment is rather juvenile.
I heard it from my friends
about the things you said.
And they know me better than that.
And they know me better than that.
Breathe! It's more refined and complicated and clever and somehow less interesting.
Yeah. Because it's just doing too much.
His wheelhouse are those simple chords.
But then the one or maybe two of them in the progression are just so off-sounding.
So they give you a jolt to surprise you, especially, like I said, with those chromatic medians that he's using.
But this song, he uses this E-augmented or something.
It's just not okay.
I don't know.
I think when it's simple and bold, that's the best Depeche Mode.
Yeah. And dark, obviously.
Yeah, simple, bold, dark, you know, one or two surprises, but you don't need it to be overproduced or overrefined.
And it is almost like a 40-year-old going back to a song he wrote when he was 26 or something and kind of rewriting it.
But again, it's just not better.
And I think that's kind of remarkable.
You've got to move forward.
You've got to go somewhere.
This almost makes me appreciate Delta Machine, to be honest.
Because at least they were trying.
Still hard to appreciate it.
They were trying something interesting, which is Americana Blues.
That is more interesting than digital soft rock from the year 2001.
Yes, I would agree.
Yeah, that kind of like industrial blues synth, whatever.
Versus, yeah.
Yeah, this album is just boring and just forgettable, but...
It's not exciting.
That's the title.
There's some things in here, like Comatose is like an ironic title.
It's almost cringe, like it's making you comatose.
Exciter, they're evoking Violator.
No doubt.
You know, it's like, let's redo Violator for the 21st century.
And they produced this.
Violator is an incredible album.
The title itself is pretty badass.
I mean, they were, as they said explicitly, they wanted it to be a heavy metal album and violation.
It sounds like rape.
Or something bad.
It's great.
Exciter is kind of lame.
It's not exciting.
It's their least exciting album.
Why didn't they not realize that?
Maybe even ballads of love and suburban bliss or something, like a tape on Songs of Faith and Devotion, would have been better.
It would have just been more honest.
Overheard at a mall.
Ball music.
Something that would always be better and more authentic than calling this exciter when it's not that exciting.
Yeah, and just the name exciter sounds pretty, like, gay.
Like, it's just, it's not, oh, this is exciting.
Like, I don't know, it's just, yeah.
I don't really think anything about this as exciting.
And, as I mentioned before, Easily, in my opinion, the worst cover that at least Anton has done.
It looks like a botany textbook cover.
Correct. I could see it's 9th edition whatever.
It's the textbook company.
Whatever. Scholastic or whatever.
I guess the idea was they wanted to get away from so many black album covers.
That's fair.
There's still a black background on this Agave plan or whatever it is.
It's just not...
Fletch says it looks phallic or that was the point, but this doesn't look sexy at all.
Okay. If the music was good, I think this album cover could be interesting.
I don't think it's the worst.
I totally agree with what you're saying.
It is like a textbook, but I think that's what it's going for.
