Depeche Mode

Martin Gore / Dave Gahan–era electronic rock; Enjoy the Silence is the mass-entry single.

Formed 1980. Early Mute Records singles and Black Celebration built a dark synth vocabulary; Music for the Masses and the 1988 Pasadena Rose Bowl show proved the live scale. Violator (1990)—Personal Jesus, Enjoy the Silence—crossed into US rock radio without guitar-band cosplay. They belong in a rock chronicle as proof that sequenced bass and industrial percussion can carry arena dynamics.