By Aline Mahrud

WORTH A LOOK?: ****

WHEN?: 27 January 2024, tour runs through 8 April 2024

SETLIST: My Cosmos Is Mine; Wagging Tongue; Walking In My Shoes; It’s No Good; Policy Of Truth; In Your Room; Everything Counts; Precious; Before We Drown; Home; Somebody; Ghosts Again; I Feel You; A Pain that I’m Used To; Behind The Wheel; Black Celebration; Stripped; John The Revelator; Enjoy The Silence; Waiting For The Night; Just Can’t Get Enough; Never Let Me Down Again; Personal Jesus

This is our 1st time seeing Depeche Mode since 1986’s Black Celebration and 1988’s Music For The Masses tours at the old Wembley Arena.

• Read on for reasons including which new song made its live debut at this gig

We were at the new Wembley Arena in May 2022 watching a gig by Years and Years when we learned that original member Andy Fletcher had died at home aged 60.

Just Dave Gahan and Martin Gore remain from the original Mode line-up and last year single Ghosts Again was a song of the month for us from new album Memento Mori.

A Humdrum Mum last reviewed them for us at the London Stadium in 2017 and this was 1 of 2 nights at London’s The 02 as part of a world tour that began last year and continues through April 2024.

Even the upper tier at this enormous venue is full and we are standing on the arena floor for a gig which takes a while to get going and lacks audience interaction from the band.

Our favourite moment was the tenderness of the Gore-sung Somebody which is performed live here for the 1st time since 2018.

We love how the set has been tweaked throughout the tour and tonight includes the live debut of Before We Drown from the new album and Behind The Wheel for the first time since 2014.

With such a strong back catalogue now spanning 5 decades inevitably they don’t play some classics that we would love to hear including Master And Servant and Shake The Disease.

But they finish with such strong crowdpleasers, including Never Let Me Down Again from HBO’s terrific The Last Of Us, that are especially rapturously received that this gig inevitably ends on a real high.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy Depeche Mode
• Have you seen Depeche Mode before and are what did you think of this show? Tickets
• Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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