There’s a line of demarcation in Dante Alighieri’s Inferno where our protagonist author, guided by the Roman poet Virgil, stands on the shores of Hell. “Abandon all hope,” the gate cautions, “ye who enter here.”
You might as well have hung that same warning sign on The Met’s metal detectors for The Sisters of Mercy gig on Sept. 18 in Philadelphia. This message was a shot across the bow at the Acheron river, and a great many bodies and souls opted to turn tail this time around. However, those who walked into wishful got a top night out as the industrial light and groovy magic rock ‘n roll show made its second visit to this city in as many years. Lead singer Andrew Eldritch – not known for his niceties, but a controversy-free character nonetheless – limited audience banter to two acknowledgments of our presence and went on a rampage in-between.
The pre-tour chatter was admittedly not promising despite the exciting news of a sudden state-side return. Ho-hum ticket sales, last-minute venue changes and too many from 2023 who expected the same show they saw in 1993. American audiences, getting their first visit from the girls in 15 years, seemingly (and, on occasion, rightfully) said crap sound mixing created too unpredictable an experience for another financial outlay. Their loss this time; driftwood and naysayers be damned.
Davey Havok, lead singer of AFI and opener Blaqk Audio, has long been a believer. One needn’t look further than a late-1990s publicity shot of the band, Havok in a Sisters tee and long Misfits-style “devilock” dangling in front of his face. AFI’s caslon antique font-adorned Black Sails in the Sunset, their first full-length album after the East Bay hardcore days gave way to the “dark” era, is just one piece of proof before a regrettable radio rock trajectory diminished the despair faction. Anywho, Havok said it himself mid-way through the electronic-driven, flair-for-the-dramatic set that it was a surreal honor to open for a band he’s name-checked all along and was also encouraged to see the next generation of baby Batcavers up-front. Shout-out to the kid in a white John Wayne-lookin’ cowboy hat that, as best I could tell, was not the least bit related to other classic gothic rock cowboy hats of yore.
So it’s on with the fourth show in this 26-date tour and the half-capacity venue looks encouraging enough with the house lights down and fog machines up. All the Eldritch-isms lodged deep in the mind of his midnight madness are here: the vocal delivery firing faster than the quivering jaw to get the synapse of forthcoming lyrics out, the head cocked to prime the next beat, the contorted shoulder and five fingers at the end of his limb counting down innumerable beats per minute. The wiry waif’s evening ensemble complimented the recent rock-god-on-stage claim: sleeveless black t-shirt, black boots, black slim jeans, a metallic tassel dangling about and behind that pair of sunglasses stapled to his head, a 1,000-yard stare that has seen it all before.
While I have a hard time picturing 65-year-old grim-up-north Von going about his business in Texas or Minnesota later in this tour, the man respects his audience and the rhythm section are more accessible than any other still-touring new wave act I’ve ever seen. “We have an extra bounce in our step. We’re in a good place right now,” he recently told Louder magazine in a wide-ranging interview that also hit on last year’s erm… personnel difficulties. The Sisters mk.VIII-ish these days still carry everything that should satisfy the demand of any Elder Goth ™. You’ve got the amenable axe men of Ben Christo and newcomer Kai from progressive metal band Esprit D’Air for the wind-up; they are as much leather-and-shades “Sisters” material as so many others in their wake. Standing interlocked and three abreast with former longtime guitarist Chris Catalyst nursing the drum machine from above, the camaraderie is always nice to see given a long line of feuds and firings inside the sisterhood.
What probably kept some ’23 attendees home this year was doubled down on. Twenty songs: Eight recent and unrecorded stonking tracks, five from the Vision Thing era, three from the late 1980s, a mere two from the early ’80s and the wildcards that were “We are the same, Susanne” and the personally pleasant surprise of “Giving Ground.” It’s this long walk down four decades of development where one would imagine some aspect is going to eventually get phoned in. The lighting and stage design, which Eldritch fantastically compares to the Do Lung bridge’s flare drops and machine gun tracer fire in Apocalypse Now, is the perfect complement to cobalt blue, sunset yellow and some other colors I ain’t seen before. I would encourage the unfaithful to spring for a pit ticket and enter the heart of darkness. My attention, as ever and always, was fixed to center stage and as the smokescreen wafted by, I couldn’t help but think about what biographer and Waiting for Another War author Trevor Ristow told me for an earlier magazine piece: Eldritch crafted “that atmosphere very deliberately to create a powerful new experience for people, and it did. It worked.”
The bodies and the black and the smoke and the flash spilled out post-show onto north Broad Street like inseparable Inferno artist Gustave Doré had always shown us. They stoked some hellfire and came out the other side of Hades in good company. Bumping into a guy from Switzerland who had a 2017 tour t-shirt on, it turned out we both attended the same Paradiso gig in the Netherlands that year and had now swapped continents to see an RAF night bombing run set to music. Honest to God, the shadowy figure stalking about looked to be enjoying himself some 40 years into the stint. So then, this stunner of a show begs the question: same time next year, albeit in a smaller venue? The reply from on high of whether this was “goodnight” or “goodbye” is, like all quasi-religious notions, up to Him.
Greg Adomaitis 