Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Christgau's Consumer Guide	C−
Entertainment Weekly	B−
The Guardian
NME	8/10
Pitchfork	7.9/10
Q
Rolling Stone
The Rolling Stone Album Guide
Spin

Violator is the seventh studio album by English electronic music band Depeche Mode, released on 19 March 1990 by Mute Records.

Preceded by the hit singles "Personal Jesus" and "Enjoy the Silence" (a top-10 hit in both the UK and US), Violator propelled the band into international stardom. The album yielded two further hit singles, "Policy of Truth" and "World in My Eyes". Violator is the band's first album to reach the top 10 on the Billboard 200, peaking at number seven. It was supported by the World Violation Tour.

Compared to previous efforts, the band decided to try a new approach to recording. Alan Wilder said, "Usually we begin the making of a record by having extensive pre-production meetings where we decide what the record will actually sound like, then go into a programming studio. This time we decided to keep all pre-production work to a minimum. We were beginning to have a problem with boredom in that we felt we'd reached a certain level of achievement in doing things a certain way." Martin Gore elaborated, "Over the last five years I think we'd perfected a formula; my demos, a month in a programming studio, etc. etc. We decided that our first record of the '90s ought to be different."

With co-producer Mark "Flood" Ellis, Wilder began a complementary working relationship, with Flood able to provide the technical know-how and Wilder working on the arrangements and song textures. "That's how we made the group work at that time", clarified Wilder, "by accepting that we all had different roles and not actually all trying to do the same thing. So we ended up with this unwritten agreement in the band, where we'd all throw together a few ideas at the beginning of a track. Then Fletch and Mart would go away, and they'd come back after we'd worked on it for a while to give an opinion."

There was also a notable change in Gore's demos. After the rigid, limiting effects of almost-finished demos for Music for the Masses, Gore, heeding to Wilder's request, kept them less complete this time around. Several of the basic recordings consisted of vocals over simple guitar or organ part, with the odd percussion loop but less sequenced material. The sparse demos allowed the band to take creative liberties with the songs. For instance, "Enjoy the Silence" started out as a slow ballad, but at Wilder's suggestion became a pulsating, up-tempo track.

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