The path is ready

The band Sisters of Mercy performed at the B1 Maximum club

I only saw this in the movie Play Out about the group The Cure: crowds of people with black lips, piercings, multi-colored mohawks. Homemade outfits made from some kind of mesh - I was sure that homemade informal outfits remained from my Soviet childhood. Not at all! And thank God.

Connoisseurs of gothic rock went to the concert of their favorite band Sisters of Mercy, which had performed in our country only once before - in December 2006. Then the concert of the “Sisters” (it is still unclear why the group is called that; either in honor of the real sisters of mercy, or after the Leonard Cohen song, but who cares - it’s still beautiful) caused a stir among music lovers, reaching the point of fainting. Everyone wanted to go to the concert. Over the past time, the passion has not diminished at all. Familiar goths (that is, gothic rock lovers, informals, whom they now consider it necessary to fight almost at the level of the State Duma) spoke of the concert as a “second coming”, nothing less. Heading to the club, these guys and girls tried to depict universal sorrow with their black lips and eyeliner, but genuine joy shone from under the tangled bangs and whitewash on their cheeks.

No wonder: led by vocalist and songwriter Andrew Eldritch, the British band Sisters of Mercy is one of the main ones in its genre. Although Eldritch himself strongly disavows any mention of Gothic or Gothic, and the journalist who asked such an incorrect question will be scolded and reprimanded for “a penchant for clichés and cliches.” It's hard to explain this stubbornness, but it seems that Eldritch, the original vocalist and melodist, simply doesn't want to have any image at all. He once had long hair, like his gothic metal counterparts The Mission and The Cult. Then the mohawk. Now he has a shaved head. At the concert, Eldritch, as usual, was almost invisible due to the smoke and backlight. A stocky man with a cigarette, wearing dark glasses, smoking - well, what do the Goths have to do with it?

At the beginning of the concert the sound was terrible, only slightly improving towards the middle. On some compositions the guitarist could not be heard, at other moments even Eldritch’s hypnotic vocals disappeared. The bass and drum machine merged into a hum. But it was still clear that the songs had become much heavier.

The songs are mostly quite famous. Very quickly the musicians moved on to the textbook numbers: Alice, Detonation Boulevard, Vision Thing... On the very old First and Last and Always (from the first album, 1985) and performed closer to the middle of Dominion/Mother Russia, the audience screamed and sang like crazy. We especially like Dominion/Mother Russia - a song that is, generally speaking, suspicious: some kind of GDR, some kind of lighthouse in Prussia and the completely out-of-the-way “White House on Red Square” (GUM was repainted or something ?). Well, to hell with the content. The atmosphere is important. And the main hit of the early 90s, Temple of Love, was saved for the finale. Very bright.

Alexander BELYAEV