Sisters Of Mercy

Andrew Eldritch's Sisters Of Mercy served as the true "point of no return" for British dark-wave, especially in the period stretching from 1983 (the year of the sublime run of singles that culminated in the legendary "Temple Of Love") to 1987, the year of the album "Floodland". From that point on, their trajectory would go into an unstoppable decline, with the exception of one last proud surge in 1992, when the reissue of "Temple Of Love" gave the band some fresh energy, even propelling them to the top of the charts. Right in the middle of their golden period came, above all, their first full-length, "First And Last And Always", the "manifesto" of Eldritch's intentions, at a time when he was not yet the group's absolute ruler, as he would soon become. The line-up had in fact stabilized - albeit with difficulty - into a quartet of unrepeatable quality: alongside Eldritch were the two guitarists Wayne Hussey and Gary Marx (authors of most of the music) and bassist Craig Adams. A line-up inevitably overshadowed, however, by Eldritch's messianic charisma, and one that would indeed dissolve shortly after the album's release, with Hussey and Adams going on to found the excellent Mission.

It took the band just a few years, however, to forge an absolutely unique and inimitable style, one that actually arose from pushing every stereotype of the genre to its extreme: their atmospheres were perhaps the most gloomy and diseased of the entire movement, thanks above all to Eldritch's crypt-like vocals - which nonetheless owed much to Ian Curtis - and his endless repertoire of perverse, infernal litanies; the guitar strumming, the constant rumble of the bass, the spectral hiss of the keyboards, by contrast, showed off an almost "polished" sound, of extraordinary cleanliness, which served as the perfect "sacrificial altar" on which Eldritch could intone his black masses.

But above all, Sisters Of Mercy emphasized danceability like no one else: their songs were as unsettling as few others, yet their occult aura was barely noticeable thanks to a constant alternation of powerful, driving rhythms. Their use of the drum machine remains the most unmistakable trait of their sound: indeed, a specific technical term was even coined, the "Avalanche" drum machine, to define that synthetic, "Sisters Of Mercy-style" rhythm.

"First and Last and Always", as their first full-length attempt at long-form songwriting, is a sampler of their entire aesthetic. And above all, it contains what is the absolute masterpiece of the Sisters Of Mercy's entire output, as well as unquestionably one of the greatest masterpieces of "dark" rock, if not of rock altogether: the extraordinary "Marian", their grimmest and most morbid esoteric ceremony, a ritual of eternal damnation intoned by Eldritch in a register so low and deep it becomes almost an indistinct rumble, all wedded to one of their most irresistible grooves, a driving rhythm that "Avalanche" detonates relentlessly for all six minutes of the track, while Hussey and Marx paint formidable interweaving guitar arpeggios and gusts of keyboards in the background, and Adams' bass pulses catatonically. "Marian" is the classic track that alone justifies an entire record, the quintessential "danse macabre" of dark music: an infernal whirlpool that, while inexorably dragging you toward the darkness, still lets you glimpse one last sliver of light and salvation. And thanks to the hammering cadence of "Avalanche", it also becomes an exhausting, draining rite of self-purification, a dizzying nightmare impossible to resist. Placed, not by chance, at the exact midpoint of the album, "Marian" is the peak toward which this immense ordeal moves, played out to the rhythm of a discotheque rather than a procession, and that ordeal is "First and Last and Always".

"Black Planet", the opener, is depressed, funereal (complete with liturgical choirs) and hypnotic in the best tradition of dark-punk, but the following "Walk Away" immediately raises the heart rate set by "Avalanche", launching into a frenzied, paranoid dance, indebted - perhaps a bit too much - to the best of Cure. "A Rock And A Hard Place" is a technological, futuristic version of the searing existential torments of Joy Division. Coming right after the tour de force of "Marian", the title track seems almost to want to catch its breath for a moment, even as the electronic beats grow ever heavier and more oppressive.

"Possession", on the other hand, is the track most steeped in the Ossianic atmosphere of a grim ritual of evil: slow and enveloping, it marks the beginning of the bottomless pit that is the album's final stretch. The first "circle" is "Nine While Nine", which like "Marian" launches into a frantic gallop, but this time the entire structure of the song seems held back by its own primal anguish: there is no release, only suffocating tension. "Logic" starts to lose the stability and geometric order that have characterized the songs so far: Eldritch's booming voice becomes a desperate invocation, a cry for help hurled into the desert, while around him the rhythms, keyboards and guitars all go mad and crumble into a thousand pieces.

The tormented path of the dark messiah embodied by Eldritch thus reaches its terminus with the album's other masterpiece, the lengthy "Some Kind Of Stranger", a melodrama worthy of the finest moments of "Closer" (Joy Division), that is, worthy of a place in the annals of music that makes the most harrowing despair its very reason for being. The relentless pulse of the drum machine finally eases (in tempo, certainly not in tone, which remains devastating throughout), and rather than staging frenzied, headlong rituals of releasing our basest instincts, it now offers up for our contemplation a march of the damned being led toward infernal shores. The apotheosis could not be more effective, with the splendid figures drawn by Wayne Hussey's guitar, the tragic bursts of keyboards, and above all Eldritch's vocals, which behind their solemn, pompous tone ooze tears of genuine anguish the way only the best Nick Cave can.

Carrying on the discourse essentially on his own across subsequent albums, Eldritch would carve out other memorable dances (just listen to tracks like "Dominion" and "Lucretia My Reflection" from the following album, "Floodland"), but the magic of the quartet formed with Adams, Marx and Hussey would never return: it was with this lineup that the Sisters Of Mercy established themselves as the band that managed to transcend their genre, becoming the most "total" experience of Eighties dark-rock. The tensions, fears, depressions and anxieties in which one sank alongside Ian Curtis and company finally found, with the Sisters Of Mercy, an outlet: frenzied dance. Letting yourself be swept along by their driving electro-rock odysseys, by their ritualistic, visceral fervor, letting yourself be enveloped by Eldritch's voice, and not being afraid to sink with him into vortexes of dark perversion, always breathless, dancing, unable to stop: the Sisters Of Mercy are a "physical" sensation before they are even a musical one. Listen to an unrepeatable album like "First And Last and Always" and you'll believe it.

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09/11/2006