People still just can’t get enough of Depeche Mode

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An old New Wave rock band that's never released a No. 1 song in the United States is selling more concert tickets than the biggest pop stars in the world.

Depeche Mode, the British synth-pop group formed in 1980, is having one of the most remarkable tours in modern music and its most-successful concert run ever. The band sold 1.27 million tickets through the first nine months of 2017, more than Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber or Bruno Mars - much younger pop acts at the peak of their fame.

In October, the band became the first act to sell out four consecutive shows at the Hollywood Bowl, an open-air theatre in the hills of Los Angeles that's hosted everyone from the Beatles to Luciano Pavarotti.

Depeche Mode's success speaks to the enduring power of old rock groups, which accounted for a big chunk of the US$7.3 billion (S$9.83 billion) North American concert industry last year. The best-selling festival of 2016 was Desert Trip, a bacchanal in California's Coachella Valley featuring acts that came to prominence half a century ago. According to researcher Pollstar, the top tours of 2017 are Guns N' Roses and U2, which released their best-selling albums 30 years ago.

Yet Depeche Mode's late-career surge is also a tribute to a band that has carefully nurtured and expanded a loyal army of fans known as the Black Swarm (or Devotees) who follow it all over the world. The mania for the group's dance pop is strongest in Germany, where the last seven albums have topped the charts, but it reaches every corner of the globe.

The group has never stopped touring, even during a drug-addled era that manager Jonathan Kessler dubs "the experimental years." Lead singer Dave Gahan, whose distinctive baritone is one of the band's signatures, has grown more confident as a performer with each tour, strutting across the stage like a man possessed. Where the band once struggled to sell more than a couple thousands tickets in Nashville, Tennessee, it now plays before crowds more than triple that size in the cradle of country music.

While other groups have reunited after years apart for a big payday, Depeche Mode has released a new record about every four years since the mid-1980s and devotes much of its current set to music from its latest album, Spirit, the band's 14th.

"They weren't appreciated before," said Kessler. "People didn't get who they were or why they mattered musically. It's one of the first electronic bands."

Well duh. Depeche Mode are the best. Also pun/reference in title? (even though I hate that particular song.)