The album is probably the best OMD ever made, even though they were too pretentious to acknowledge their success. It is seen as one of the best in electropop, and made it into the book 1001 albums you must hear before you die.
Andy McClusky of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the dark wanted to give more expression to religious themes. A long time atheist, he found inspiration in religious music. The title of the resulting third album refers to a book called almost the same, but maybe more to the balance between the human and the machine within the band.