Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19063 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-09-20
• Rating: Exempt
• Number of discs: 2
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, German, Italian, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 81 minutes

Synopsis
DEVOTIONAL - A PERFORMANCE FILMED BY ANTON CORBJIN
Disc One
Tracklisting:
1. Higher Love
2. World In My Eyes
3. Walking In My SHoes
4. Behind The Wheel
5. Stripped
6. Condemnation
7. Judas
8. Mercy In You
9. I Feel You
10. Never Let Me Down AGain
11. Rush
12. In Your Room
13. Personal Jesus
14. Enjoy The SIlence
15. Fly On The Windscreen
16. Everything Counts
Bonus Tracks
1. Halo
2. Policy Of Truth
Disk Two
DEVOTIONAL LIVE PROJECTIONS
1. Walking In My Shoes
2. Sripped
3. Condemnation
4. Judas
5. I Feel You
6. Never Let Me Down Again
7. In Your Room
8. Enjoy The Silence
PROMOTIONAL VIDEOS
1. I Feel You
2. Walking In My Shoes
3. Condemnation (Paris Mix)
4. In Your Room
5. One Caress (US Video)
6. Condemnation (Live)
MTV Documentary
"Depeche Mode Rockumentary"
Monologue - by Anton Corbjin.

DVD Description
Depeche Mode: Devotional presents an early live performance by the passionate British rock band acclaimed for their stage presence and intensity. Twelve songs make up the video: "Higher Love," "World in My Eyes," "Walking in My Shoes," "Stripped," "Condemnation," "Judas," "I Feel You," "Never Let Me Down Again," "Rush," "In Your Room," "Personal Jesus," and "Enjoy the Silence." --Sarah Sloboda, All Movie Guide

Customer Reviews

Unimprovable
Depeche Mode's Devotional has to be one of (if not THE) finest live music concerts ever released. But it’s a slow burner – much like the classic Talking Heads movie “Stop Making Sense”, you have to give it the room it needs to come alive. Dipping in for a song here and there simply doesn’t do the business; you have to set aside an evening, switch off the lights, turn up the volume, and just let it flow over you.

And flow it will. From the concert’s eerie opening track Higher Love, performed largely as silhouettes behind a gigantic curtain, it sets the mood perfectly. This is a band at their creative peak, touring their strongest (and hardest) album yet, but with a back catalogue of rich material to play with. And yet they choose to start slow rather than with a great fanfare. A slow, solid delivery. A downbeat track with a mellow sound to it. But when Dave Gahan finally steps out from behind that curtain, two thirds into the song, the crowd just explodes with delight. How’s that: 5 minutes into the show and already he has the audience in the palm of his hand. Masterful showmanship.

If one were to listen to this DVD with eyes closed, it could be said that the music alone is simply outstanding. It represents the Mode at the very zenith of their creativity: a blend of lush keyboards mixed with hard rock, set against a mixture of sequenced beats and rollicking live kick-drums. But open up your eyes again and the visuals are a delight. The use of back projections is electrifying – for such a simplistic set design they really turn it to their full advantage. Life-sized deformed creatures pace across the stage in slow motion during “Walking in My Shoes”; massive images of faces and stark, bare light bulbs punctuate “In Your Room”; while cruciform silhouettes of Dave himself are the backdrop for “I Feel You”.

But it’s Dave himself who holds your attention throughout. A split-level stage has the rest of the band elevated and isolated, almost as a backdrop, anchored behind their keyboards like so many plasticeine figures, while Dave occupies centre stage, and stage left, and stage right, dancing, singing, gyrating, inciting the crowd to his every whim – even stage diving later on – with an energy that never abates. With a single gesture he whips up the crowd to a frenzy: truly, this man commands legions. What we see here, of course, is a Dave Gahan with a serious heroin addiction, whose drug-addled antics throughout the tour eventually led to the inevitable overdose, leaving him clinically dead for some minutes before he was revived and, finally, rehabilitated. Witness those final days of oblivion on this souvenir of the Devotional tour: a man possessed with the very essence of his on-stage persona, skidding headlong towards the inevitable car crash.

At key points in the show, Martin Gore joins Gahan on the main stage, as do backing gospel singers, and the whole thing is paced beautifully. A thumping “I Feel You” flows into a taut “Never Let Me Down Again” then a frenetic “Rush”; by the end of this gig you’ll be a sweaty heap on the floor. The package is lovingly crafted too: this being a reissue of an old VHS they’ve taken the opportunity to really enhance it, adding in promo videos, documentaries and extra tracks. The sound quality is excellent and the picture quality is cleaned up (though still a little grainy in places – which just adds to the authenticity of the performance, I’d say). All in all then, it’s a DVD that all discerning music lovers should own.

Devotional: Seminal. Obsessional. Unimprovable.

definitive
1993 and Depeche Mode were a mess. Whilst musically, the band were at the height of their powers, personally they were falling apart in a mess of drugs, panic attacks, gall stones, rehab clinics, enforced `holidays' caused by nervous exhaustion, and a 150 date Tour Too Far that saw them on the road for 18 months.

"Devotional" is a brief moment on that tour. Musically and visually the band have never looked or sounded better. This is not just the definitive Depeche Mode concert film, but one of the best concert recordings of all time. It's no "James Brown At The Apollo", but neither is "James Brown At The Apollo". Filmed at the start of their epic trek, the band are - already - falling apart at the seams, grafting odd stadium rock gestures onto their brand of introspective techno-rock, and already bloated by backing singers and parodic staging.

Davfid Gahan, a man who looks not so much like a rock star as a crock star, wobbles athletically around the stage, a mess of tattoos, bad rock beards, and hand-wavy gestures, interpeting Martin L Gore's songs in an undoubtedly sincere impersonation of a Metal Gawd. But it doesn't quite work : the guy can't help himself. He wants to be in Depeche'N'Roses. At the depths of "Walking In My Shoes", a bleeding-edge confessional of redemption and self-loathing, he manages to break the edge by informing Lieven "Let's see your hands!" and running a mexican wave over the throng.

The rest of the show, rock star gestures aside, is a tight, and definitive presentation of Depeche Mode. No film has ever captured the and in concert as succintly or elegently. The music - already immaculately mixed by the band's then-musical guru Alan Wilder - is given a thrilling acrobatic workout in a remastered 5:1 mix, and the print has been restored a glory that VHS could never hope to reach. As a record of a band in concert, "Devotional" is pretty much a definitive document.

The extras on the DVD meanwhile, pretty much warrant a purchase in their own right. Two songs previously excised from all previous releases are restored to the disc, newly edited (and whilst the cutting & editing style is noticably different to the original film, these two songs remain true to the source). On the second disc, the band present a second concert film, containing 8 songs and 50 minutes of back projections and short films shot for the tour that stands alone as a document worthy of repeated viewing. In addition to this, an archival documentary presenting interviews of the band mid-tour is certainly one of the more revealing pieces of promotional fluff I've ever seen, ditching the tradition This-is-the-best-album-ever-we're-all-really-good-mates of your usual documentary, as well as six remastered promo videos from the period, and an interview with the bands visual director Anton Corbjin, who also directed the concert movie, detailing in some depth the film, the tour, and the visual sensibilities of the band.

Ultimately, "Devotional" is the definitive Depeche Mode concert document, being both musically and visually entertaining whilst also managing to capture that most elusive of dynamics : the drama of a band at the height of it's powers.

One of the best live DVD's ever!
What can one say about Devotional? If you are a DM fan, it probably already ranks as one of the band's best live efforts - the only serious contender is 101 - and if you are just a casual acquaintance to DM's catalogue, then this is the one to get.
There is so much good stuff about Devotional it's hard to even begin! First, there's the wondrous stage design from Anton Corbjin - a huge arena populated by 3 enormous screens filled with Corbjin's haunting projections - then, there is the lightning, which is all blues and reds, creating a very dreamlike vibe. And to top it all off, there is the larger than life performance from singer Dave Gahan, in his Songs of Faith and Devotion tattooed, long-haired, rock-star, ah..., mode.
Of course all of this wouldn't matter if DM weren't supporting one of their best albums, and the organic rock industrial textures that characterized Songs managed to seep in to the older stuff, creating a great, coherent, set-list.
You just have to buy this and experience it - and then weep for not having been present at what has to be the best Mode tour of all time.