The last time Depeche Mode were together as a trio, they were gathered in 2020 on Zoom, remotely accepting their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. As Andrew Fletcher and Martin Gore beamed, Dave Gahan thanked the fans, managers and ‘promoters across the world, who took a chance on outsider eyeliner-wearing weirdos from Essex’. It was an overdue accolade for these early adopters of synthesiser technology who were true innovators through the 1980s and 90s.

Two years later, Gahan and Gore were in the studio writing new music when they received news that Fletcher had passed away after suffering an aortic dissection. Fletcher was due to join his bandmates and offer feedback on the songs they had written. In the end, he never heard any of them. Yet his presence can still be felt throughout Depeche Mode’s forthcoming album, Memento Mori, their first in five years, where Gahan and Gore come to terms with personal grief and life in a post-pandemic world.

Their first single, ‘Ghosts Again’, is a sparkling, melancholic number that references the fleetingness of life and how we make the best of it; a theme that crops up repeatedly. ‘Remember that you must die, so what you do here today . . . you’ve got to embrace it,’ Gahan told NME in an interview. ‘Coming out of the pandemic I was going “what do I even want to do with my life?” That’s the existential question that a lot of people have been asking themselves. I certainly have a lot over the last few years. But here I am again. I dived in.’ 

Memento Mori is released by Columbia Records on Friday 24 March.