Pure is the latest Gary Numan album. Here are just some of the amazing reviews this album has had.

ROCK SOUND: This record is as important as all those albums that are name checked as influential! Yep, it's that good......In between the high pitched screams and troubadour whispers that permeates the richness of soulless electronics, this is Manson on sedatives or the feeling that God is brainstorming. The fallen rise of Numan begins here in earnest and it's as close to distracted perfection as you can get. (Ian Abraham)

Q MAGAZINE: 'Pure' is a heavyweight, goth rock death trip, awash with mangled guitars and horror-film atmospherics. The title track alone is worth a dozen Filters. A muscular detour for the former synth-popper, but one that could finally see him welcomed back from the critical hinterland. (Danny Scott)

Pure is Gary Numan's richest, most powerful and most aggressive work in years. Across a range of tempos, the relentlessly dark assault of the music is perfectly complemented by a bleak and often angry lyrical vision. Most of the tracks have a deep layer of menace to them. This derives from varied combinations of grinding guitars, pounding beats, metallic noise, throbbing bass, and uncharacteristically forceful vocals, all of which tend to explode into the choruses. But while the foreboding feel of songs like "Pure" is generated by that combined sonic onslaught, at times, the threatening ambience is rooted in Numan's voice alone. On "Rip" and "I Can't Breathe" for instance, an air of disquiet emanates from predominantly whispered vocals. 

Numan's vocals are indeed a crucial ingredient in the success of Pure. Most people probably remember him from the late '70s as a detached, expressionless automaton with a brilliantly thin, affectless voice to match. On Pure, the once android-like Numan shows that he's very much made of flesh and blood. 

Nevertheless, the emotive reach of his vocals isn't limited simply to articulations of aggression and menace, the feelings that tend to characterize the industrial idiom. There's also a more measured side to Numan's delivery that evokes melancholy and pain without recourse to abrasive histrionics. This is most successful on the arrangements that complement his affecting vocal performances with subtle melodic components such as haunting piano lines and drifting keyboard textures. 

Two striking examples of this can be heard on "A Prayer for the Unborn" (not about abortion) its a haunting tale of Numans anguish over the death of his unborn baby.  "Little InVitro", the most intensely personal songs on the album. These tracks neatly encapsulate the achievements of Pure as a whole, showing that Numan is not simply appropriating a genre, but that he's adding his own dimension to it. Whereas much of the industrial music that informed the writing and recording of Pure pays scant attention to vocal and instrumental melody, Numan combines them to great effect. "My only talent musically is as an arranger of noises," the modest Gary Numan once said. Pure confirms that there's a lot more to his music than that.