Next month, The Mission will embark on its first North American tour in 11 years, previewing its forthcoming new album The Brightest Light and no doubt treating fans to a sizable dose of goth-rock classics. It’s a short tour — just 10 dates — but we’ve got a pair of tickets to the Sept. 5 concert at New York’s Irving Plaza to award one lucky Slicing Up Eyeballs reader.
TO ENTER: Drop a comment at the bottom of this post naming your favorite song by The Mission (or The Mission UK, as they’re technically known on these shores) — and offer a few words as to why you think it’s so great. Oh, and if you’re viewing this on the Slicing Up Eyeballs app, you may e-mail your entry to info@slicingupeyeballs.com.
RULES: We’ll take entries until 5 p.m. EDT Friday, Aug. 23. After that point, we’ll select a winner at random and contact him/her via e-mail (so please use a legit address). One entry per person.
Tickets to the Irving Plaza show are on sale now.
And The Dance Goes On…..the guitar riff is awesome, and it makes a great show opener.
Wasteland – Nothing can beat those opening lines as shredded copies of that fanzine “House of Dolls” were thrown in the air during the halcyon days of Expedition One back in ’86
Tower of Strength.
Very majestic to me. Love the long ending fade out with the guitar.
Wasteland
Garden Of Delight (Hereafter) – The stringed instruments are magical…the voice is passionnate…they leed us to the garden of delight…
Hungry as the Hunter, I love the guitar line, the driving beat and the lyrics.
“Don’t speak to me of dignity, don’t speak to me of love
Don’t talk to me of sanctity, don’t talk to me of love
She’s hungry as the hunter and she’s shooting for the thrill”
Severina – just because.
I was there the night Wayne Hussey cried out he wanted to give birth at the Ritz NYC 1986. My favorite song is Love me to death from the 1st album. The song’s lyrics are very sincere and honest. Touching….
Tower of Strength (Live version from Lighting the Candles DVD)
Starting with a looped sample of Lisa Gerrard’s vocals from a Dead Can Dance song, this version of TOS epitomises the musical strength and emotional power of The Mission. The song launches into a hypnotic tribal drum pattern before the main riff kicks in, and suddenly the essence of The Mission is completely laid out. The New Age/Pagan leanings of much of their 80’s output joined with one of Wayne’s gretest love songs. At nearly 10 minutes in length, this performance comes closest to the band’s Zeppelin-esque aspirations.
Love me to Death – THE best UK song. The lyrics are both erotic and powerful at the same time. Very dual meaning lyrics.
Making me choose, I’ll have to go with The Crystal Ocean and, more specifically, the extended version of tCO. I wanted to choose a latter day song, just to shake things up, but tCO is the song that finally sold me on The Mission as their own entity, not just the bitter remains of tSoM. And yes, I even liked Blue and Masque.
I’ll have to go with “Tower of Strength.” It blew my mind when I first heard it, and cemented their musical style as being different from the Sisters of Mercy.
‘naked and savage’
– it’s dark, sexy and passionate, like many a good mission song.
“Drag.” Just kidding.
The first song that came into my mind was “Afterglow,” so I will stick with that one. I love the original single and the version on Neverland, which is greatly underrated as an album. “Afterglow” is ripe with space, tension, passion and mystery. I love the atmosphere of the song.
I also am quite fond of all of the albums from Masque through Aura. They don’t get mentioned by the fans, unfortunately. A close second would probably by “Never Again.” That song and some of the material on Masque were Hussey’s most honest, lyrically, where he was writing about veritable heartbreak, and effectively too, not Lord of the Rings characters.
P.S. Don’t pick me. Although, I would love to go, I don’t have the means to travel to New York and will be seeing the band in Seattle.
wasteland. If you know the song, you know why…
Severina – she’s the girl I’ve been looking for since about 1985 – still looking
Serpents kiss – absolute showstopper, every time I’ve seen them live!
Wasteland.
It’s not responsible for the deaths of any marmots.
Deliverance. BUT, it sounds like from other comments that my opinion may change after hearing some of the other tracks live!
Stay With Me. The first songs I hear are always my favorites.
Blood Brother
because it´s a song with heart´s blood (as we say in Germany.. ;o) ) – with much heart, blood and tears ! It strengthens and because of the way, wayne sings that emotionally, you know:
that are not just empty words…
that is TRUE and we will be blood brothers for the rest of our lives!!
all that soulbreaking.. soul-flying.. atmospheres in that Song(s!) (also Island in a Stream and all the other Children und Beyond the Pale – Songs..) – that emotionally pulled me in totally addiction to The Mission the late 80ies! The beautiful voice of Wayne, …
I was SO moonstruck and was in nights with full moon out there with my bicycle and listened to their music! I sung (sang?) all the songs out loud “at the light of the moon” – and I wrote full moon poems to the song (s), I danced and was totally crazy about it.
Till today, I love their music absolutely.
I was so very glad to see him and The Mission a few years ago in Bamberg, Franconia, Bavaria, Germany – were I live and work – at Liveclub in the Sandstraße, were now at this moment in late August the “Sandkerwa” is celebrated.. –
sorry for bad english grammatically writing, I love that language, but it´s not my mother tongue..
best,
Lisa
ah yaa… I can´t afford flying to that concert, so please choose some one other ;o) – I only had so exuberant& bombastic feelings, when I saw that homepage and so on.. !!! ;o)
best wishes, good speed,
Lisa
All right, thank you all for entering. The contest is now closed and the winner will be notified via email.
Deliverance!!!