Sisters of Mercy - Olympia November

I've been a fan for a long time, and have traveled to see them a few times. It will be a treat to have them play here in Dublin - the last time was 15 years ago in the Red Box.

The sisters are a labour of love from the fan's point of view - the last album came out in 1991 and when you see them live, a good 40 to 50 per cent of the set is made up of songs that have never been released. They also are rarely just okay in concert - they tend to be either dire, or absolutely awesome - and not much in between.

The impressive thing is that they have toured pretty much continuously for the last 20 years without a record to promote and they play lots of original material which is really good and quite popular with the fans who have only heard it through the net. They don't release anything officially anymore and have no record contract.

If you go to the gig looking for a nostalgic 80's goth show, then you will be disappointed. The sisters don't take themselves too seriously. What you will get is an enormous amount of dry ice, a **** hot lights show and lots of loud crunchy guitars playing slightly faster updated versions of the classics - Temple of Love, Lucretia my Reflection, First and Last and Always, This Corrosion, More, Dominion etc - a couple of covers that are usually good fun - most recently they've been playing some bowie numbers - John I'm only Dancing for example.

Here's a recent video that's pretty good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU6Bho68yu4&fmt=18

The sound is quite different to the old days, and the band is best thought of as a different beast altogether. The current line up is Andrew Eldritch, two younger guitarists who have been playing with them for around six or seven years, a drum machine called Doctor Avalanche and a guy who operates the drum machine.

Personally, I can't wait to see them in Dublin and I hope they do a good show - it would be great if Irish audiences were into the sisters as we'd see them here more often.

As much as I hate saying it, they were awfull.
Elderitch was flanked by 2 clowns pretending to play guitar and one zombie standing behind 3 laptops.
The sound was so fabricated, it was like Eldritch singing karaoke to his own songs. Yes, he sounds the part, but why didn't he just come onstage himself rather than acompanied by 2 guys who obviously weren't playing,
Jesus, I dispair, I really do.

f®eak s©enery wrote: »

The lack of a live drummer, for this kind of band, astounds me. Considering the drums samples they actually use... sound like normal drums.

Everyone loves Doktor Avalanche!

Morlar, I am a fan and have seen them before. However the previous time the guitars were plugged in. Last nights show was Eldritch singing to backing tracks.

This was not worth a four hour bus journey. Very disappointed! Eldritch put in very little effort. I could hardly hear him and at the times I did, he sounded like Cookie Monster. Woeful gig! To top off a wonderful night, some lout spat in my face outside a bar and then moved on to another girl.

Then I drank some Captain Morgan and had a wee dance and all was well. But seriously, disappointed! I wasn't around for their heyday- I can only assume that was the time to see them.

Thanks to those lovely folks at the Olympia for creating such a pleasant view of the stage from Circle balcony. Here's what I was looking at from my front row seat.

How on earth do they get away with defiling a beautiful building like the Olympia with bloody scaffolding on the inside?

I wasn't at this gig, but I've seen them loads of times and listened to lots of bootlegs. The bass, synths and drums are run from a laptop, but the rythym and lead guitars are played live. The guy you can see drinking the bottle of water isn't playing the riff you can hear. The other guitarist is.

(I've stood four feet from this guy in the front row of a gig and watched him play and I play myself. He's exceptionally skilled.)

If you listen to the rest of the song, you can hear bottle-guy playing the lead riffs over the other guitar line quite clearly. Check it out around the 2:40 mark.

The Sisters aren't everyone's cup of tea, and that's fine. However, none of the vocals or guitars are prerecorded. There's far too much variety from one gig to the next, and both the guys playing there also play in other bands - they are exceptionally tight gigging musicians.

The Sisters have always used a drum machine and pumped silly amounts of dry ice onto the stage - that's what you get at a Sisters show.

This gig seems to have really divided opinion - lots of people say it was excellent and lots of people seem to have hated it. At the very least, it seems to have been interesting.

Turthrower, the 2nd guitarist was playing bass. Therefore the aforementioned riff was prerecorded. The lead guitarist may have played sporadically over the backing track but it's hardly a live band.
Believe me I love these guys, I'm not a hater but as an experienced gig goer, this show left me underwhelmed.