Depeche Mode will tour, release new album: A look at the band's influence

The influential electronic group Depeche Mode will release a new album and tour during 2017. 

The group’s new work, which is titled “Spirit,” will be released this spring and Depeche Mode will then tour in Europe, starting with a performance in Stockholm in May. 

Other tour stops will include Amsterdam, Athens, Budapest, London, and Berlin. 

The tour will work toward raising money for charity:water, a nonprofit that attempts to provide as many people as possible all over the world with safe water. According to Depeche Mode guitarist Martin Gore, the band’s previous tour raised over $1 million for charity:water. 

The group’s previous album was “Delta Machine,” which was released in 2013. Other recent albums by the group include 2009’s “Sounds of the Universe” and “Playing the Angel,” which was released in 2005.

Depeche Mode was first created in 1980 and the band is often credited as having a big impact on electronic music. MTV writer Jon Vena called the group “electronica’s forefathers” when writing in 1998 about a tribute album that included “obvious Depeche Mode influencees” such as the Cure, the Smashing Pumpkins, and the Deftones, as well as “an appropriate smattering of contemporary electronic performers” such as Rabbit in the Moon and Apollo 440.

In an interview with MTV, 1500 Records founder Gary Richards said of the tribute album, “Usually when a tribute album comes out, a record company is just trying to make money off one of its capital artists. For us, granted, it is a business, but we wanted to show how good Martin Gore's songwriting is and how influential Depeche Mode has been.”

Meanwhile, Huffington Post writer Joshua Ostroff wrote in 2013 that the music seems “timeless” and that “Depeche Mode still feel[s] so current compared to their '80s new wave and synthpop brethren.” 

“We’re deemed to be sort of the grandfathers of [electronic dance music],” Depeche Mode member Andy Fletcher told the Huffington Post.