I have always freely admitted that I have some glaring blind spots in my musical knowledge. And some of them are embarrassing. It’s not unusual for me to miss important artists in scenes that I follow closely—sometimes that have even toured with my favorite bands (see: Manchester Orchestra, Touché Amoré).

But what is unusual is ignoring what many regard as the best album from one of my favorite bands.

I had somehow gotten the impression that Achtung Baby was where U2 had jumped the shark. Per the joke I would repeat loudly and often, U2 fell off halfway through The Joshua Tree and never recovered. Somehow, it took until last month for someone to challenge that assertion.

And while Achtung Baby was indeed a massive shift for the band, it wasn’t downward. The group ripped up most of their playbook and radically reinvented themselves, kicking off perhaps their most forward-thinking decade of work.

After exploring Americana and roots rock on The Joshua Tree, U2 decided they weren’t quite done. Loads of ink has been spilled opining on Rattle & Hum, a double album comprised of live covers of rock classics and studio tracks that chased the bluesy honk of “Trip Through Your Wires” far beyond its Best By date. Suffice it to say, I’m not a fan. After all, the Edge was the man who took the electric guitar further from the blues than anyone before him. Going back felt like a bit of a misstep.

And for Achtung Baby, someone must have gotten U2 to realize that. And the glorious results saw one of the hardest trajectory shifts in music history. They once again enlisted Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois to produce. With the duo’s help, the group returned to the experimental mindset of The Unforgettable Fire, this time borrowing elements from electronica, industrial, hip and shoegaze and slathering them with heaps of irony—a trend they would continue through the nineties.

Most of the criticisms often aimed at U2 aren’t without a kernel of truth, but almost none of them are applicable to Achtung Baby. Is Bono just a bit too sincere? His social consciousness is disguised under a number of sardonic personas. A couple times, he’s even a bit sexy. Is the Edge’s guitar a bit too pretty and echo-y to really rock? You’re not going to confuse his playing for anyone else, but he uses much more distortion, wah, and modulation making for a more varied palette. Do Larry and Adam not really do anything special (note: this criticism has never made any sense)? The rhythm section is the core of what’s happening on this record, with samples and drum machines adding more layers to their innate grooves.

There’s also an element of darkness here that isn’t found on many other U2 records. Tracks like “Until the End of the World” (a metacriticism of Bono’s own doomsaying perhaps), “Acrobat,” “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)” and “Love is Blindness” are all an obvious shade more monochromatic than their typical sheen, but even more cheery songs like “Mysterious Ways,” “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses,” and “Zoo Station” have some more sinister undertones than their usual fare. “So Cruel” and “Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World” are subdued and low tempo, but they borrow some nighttime grooviness from trip hop and dub reggae. Only “One,” the breakthrough in the writing sessions that led to the dam finally bursting, embraces the classic U2-isms without reservation.

The legacy of the record has some unsurprising acolytes. The Smashing Pumpkins have covered “Zoo Station” at various shows. Radiohead has mentioned their unironic love of U2 countless times over the years, which is no surprise when you compare the sounds on this record to the sounds on, say, OK Computer. That Achtung Baby isn’t as highly regarded has far more to do with what U2 has done since 2000 I think. And the iPhone thing, of course.

On a more personal note though, this record is as similar a revelation as The Unforgettable Fire. Only where that record served as the missing link I needed between War’s post-punk and The Joshua Tree’s anthemic soundscaping, Achtung Baby offers a version of the band that I didn’t realize could exist. Since first listening to it in early July, I’ve probably listened to this record thirty times. I actually wrote a large chunk of this review without listening to it, because I have gotten familiar enough with it in the last two months that I didn’t need to hear it to talk about it. It is under The Unforgettable Fire in my personal rankings by a matter of decimals. And coming to that conclusion after years of dismissing it wholesale is one of the bigger lessons in humility I’ve ever learned.