Goth-rock survivors The Sisters of Mercy have announced a short run of shows this August, including the band’s only U.K. performance of 2010 and festival dates in Belgium, Germany and Romania. Still backed by fabled drum machine Doktor Avalanche, enigmatic frontman Andrew Eldritch continues to tour the Sisters’ evolving lineup somewhat regularly — most recently hitting the U.S. in fall 2008 and spending part of 2009 in Europe and the Middle East — despite not having released an album since 1990’s Vision Thing.
See the Sisters of Mercy’s tour dates after the jump…
The Sisters of Mercy tour dates:
Aug. 3: The Assembly, Leamington Spa, UK
Aug. 5: Lokerse Festival, Lokeren, Belgium
Aug. 7: M’era Luna Festival, Hildesheim, Germany
Aug. 13: ArtMania Festival, Sibiu, Romania
they sucked so bad on the last tour. they should stop.
Love the Sisters, but I saw them for the first time ever in Los Angeles on their last tour and was sorely disappointed!
Got a free ticket to see them in Seattle in 2008(?)…They sucked so hard. The only thing that wasn’t tracked was the vocals. Mr. Eldritch, if you’re reading this you ought to use the money you ripped of from your fans, and use it to pay off Pamela, and any of the other musicians who refuse to work with you any longer. And in the future, hang it up. You’re done. I’m supremely blessed that I didn’t pay the $35 for the ticket I received. To everyone else, as much of a fan as you may be, STAY AWAY FROM THAT CHARLATAN! I’m content to stay home and listen to my old goth vinyl, myself.
Hate to add fuel to the fire, I do like Sisters, but I had the same bad experience at a show in Phoenix a couple of years ago. They filled the entire theatre with smoke, so much that you couldn’t see the band. The music was nowhere near loud enough for a typical gig (sounded like listening to a CD in a large room), and it just didn’t feel like I was watching a live band. I remember enjoying them back in 1991 on the actual Vision Thing tour, but even that set was cut short by Andrew (something to do with security in front). Seems to me he’s just paying the bills. I don’t believe we’ll ever see a new Sisters album, but that’s not much of a bold statement these days.
I had the same impression about their last gig in Brazil…
I agree with all the above comments….I saw the Vision Thing tour in ’91 and remember it being great, but the last two tours were dreadful. TONS of smoke, sound was shit, and tix cost $50! Thank god I didn’t pay for either!
I agree. I love The Sisters of Mercy up until about 1991. I saw them in Seattle a few years back and I was extremely excited, which was too bad because it was one of the worst shows that I have ever seen. They had no bass player, sounded horrible, and played virtually nothing that was recorded before 1990. Their early EPs and First and Last and Always are incredible. If they toured with a real band and played those songs, I would attend every time. But this…it’s sad to see them reduced to this state of playing lame quasi-heavy metal.
They put on a pretty shit gig here in the UK too.
Eldritch singing like he’s shit scared of the mic, and how the dude managed to kill his own song (First and Last and Always) is just beyond me.
Saying that, he also killed, Comfortably numb and Some Kind of Stranger too.
Sadly, it seems like the good old days of The Sister’s are well and truly over. Their stage presence is shit, their live sound is shit, and basically the entire gig, well, shit!
Oh, and when you finally get the meet the guy, don’t get your hopes up. He told me to, “fuck off and go home”.
And the final insult. They were selling tickets for an aftershow in Camden Town, North London. What they didn’t tell you was, there were two aftershow events. One for the band, and one for the people they sold tickets to and ripped off. Wankers at the aftershow told us the band was arriving, so we all spent loads of money at the bar, then they announce, after 2 hours, the band is a no show.
Asked for a refund, ha, I had more chance of shitting out a gold bar than getting my money back.
Eldritch maybe a lyrical genius, but he is also a king sized prick to his fans.
I just discovered this web site today and it’s truly a great one, thank god whoever thought it up is keeping it going, and “actual good music” as well. Well, I’m one of the biggest Sisters fanatics ever and it’s disheartening, as ever, to keep reading comments like the above that the band seems to be in a long, long decline, at least as far as a live act is concerned. I hate to say I fully agree: I saw them at the Ritz in 1990 for the Vision Thing tour and that was a fantastic, bracing show–then later in 1998 at the Philadelphia goth festival or whatever, I was less enamored by everything: as you guys state, crap sound, no energy, vocals awful or dropping out, smoke was ok but venue was huge (Electric Factory) and left fairly disappointed although it was fun seeing all those fans in one place, had traveled from all over the place, too. And to think I once spent hours posting to the Dominion Sisters web list: what a waste of time. I find it insulting that Andy thinks so little of his fans to just play the games he’s been playing for years now, no new record deal, no new album, nothing except mainly mediocre new material live, that’s if you can “hear” it over the usual sonic sludge of a latter-day Sisters gig! It’s kind of a pathetic state of affairs.
As for Andy being rude to fans, that’s part of his whole entire schtick, guys, do not EVER expect him to be nice/straight with you, he likely will not be. He’s not exactly Mr. Rogers, and self-admittedly so for ages now. I don’t know why they can’t deliver a good live show though–maybe his standards have slipped so badly, or it’s a calculated move to just “pay the rent” (as above) and tell everyone to f-off or whatever, either way, it gives me great pause to consider buying a concert ticket even IF the Sisters toured America again soon, which they probably won’t anyway, since there are plenty of other cracking good shows to be seen–I saw Big Star live in 2009 before Alex Chilton died and it was one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen–now that’s a band that delivers the goods, every single goddamned time. I bought all the Sisters reissues, love ’em all, play ’em incessantly, but I fear this is a band way past its prime and probably it’s time to give it a rest, as much as it pains me to say it. Yeah Andy’s great, great writer and music maker, but what kind of legacy is he going to leave going out this way? A couple of great albums and then….35 years of jacking off his audience. It’s ok, I recently saw the Golden Palominos live in NYC and asked Anton Fier for an autograph which he refused for personal reasons….a lot of these people are tempermental at best, psychotic at worst, or just have a tremendous ego and it often ends up destroying them or getting in the way of accomplishing the real heights that they’re capable of. add potential drug and alcohol abuse issues as well, and you can see why we often end up with the has-beens we do. Anyway, Andy’s made a career of “beautiful cruelty” so anybody that’s surprised at his nasty public persona hasn’t been paying much attention! cheers, Scott Briggs (LI NY)
I DONT KNOW WHAT YOU PEOPLE EXPECT. ARTISTS SHARE THEIR CREATIONS WITH YOU,IF YOU ENJOY THEIR ART WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?
Gotta agree with all comments on here. On Cd they are great…but no record since 1991…Eldritch is just taking the piss. I for one will never pay money to see them again. There are much better live bands more worthy of my money…
Well, until he’s looking at empty halls, losses, he’s going to keep this up. Not even an attempt to be less than crap. I saw the real band around Anaconda through to First & Last. What he’s touring now is sad least effort gone to seed hack rock on the cheap. If people want to pay to be insulted, a tubby guy in a sweatshirt will happily mumble at them through the dry ice for an hour while his ‘band’ play bad cover versions of old Sisters songs behind him. Some of the live stuff on You Tube is hilarious. Has he not actually heard these songs before?