Sisters Of Mercy founder and vocalist Andrew Eldritch has persistently dismissed the ‘goth’ tag for his band, whose sound is rooted in the bleak nihilism of Suicide and the Velvet Underground at their most opiated, combined with Stooges rawness and Doors psychedelic flamboyance. Instead, he sees them as an evolution of pioneering late-60s/early-70s classic rock.
On First And Last And Always, the Cold War-era paranoia of opener Black Planet conjures a desolate post-apocalyptic dystopia, the 60s hippie flower-power utopia now a demilitarised zone littered with destruction – a theme to which Eldritch would later return on the opener of 1987’s Floodland, Dominion/Mother Russia: ‘Run around in the radiation/Tune in, turn on, burn out in the acid rain'. The artillery of Oberheim DMX drum machine Doktor Avalanche announces Walk Away, one of guitarist Wayne Hussey’s compositional highlights, along with his sombre Marian, featuring Eldritch’s sinister Teutonic tones.
Founding guitarist Gary Marx’s Byron-via-Cormac McCarthy Nine While Nine remains the most affecting goth love song ever recorded. With Craig Adams’ shuddering bass line, Amphetamine Logic’s stabbing refrain ‘Nothing but the knife to live for’ epitomises the psychological trauma of a speed comedown, and the wretched romance of Some Kind Of Stranger is a howl of unrequited love.
First And Last And Always is a classic that deserves better treatment. This 40th-anniversary reissue is almost the same as that released a decade ago for its 30th anniversary, the sole difference being the gimmicky ‘marble’ effect black/red vinyl. The four vinyl LPs set purports to include “three EPs”, but apart from 1984’s Body And Soul EP, earlier classic Sisters EPs Alice and The Reptile House are absent in favour of the album’s two lead-off singles – Walk Away and No Time To Cry – and their B-sides.
