The Sisters Of Mercy - Wake [Live Royal Albert Hall]

Right after guitarist Gary Marx had left The Sisters of Mercy mid-tour to form Ghost Dance with Anne Marie Hurst of Skeletal Family, the remaining trio of Andrew Eldritch, Wayne Hussey, and Craig Adams performed a farewell concert on June 18th, 1985, at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Andrew Eldritch apparently was performing with a few cracked ribs, but whether his voice is pained from the injury is kind of hard to tell here. Regardless, this is one of the greatest Gothic Rock concerts of all time. This concert it's pure dark psychedelia: if you watch the filmed version, the simple yet sharp video editing adds another layer of vascularity, this piece of art has the rare gift of drowning you with blackness and restoring your soul.

A final farewell to the original iteration of the sisters amid sweat streaks, strobe lights and dense fog machine clouds, and one that benefited from watching on a friend’s decayed VHS with glowing stripes running across the screen, pulsing in sync to the mechanical rhythms and blown out, fuzzy textures. They do all the hits you would expect from the original line up (with the exception of “Black Planet”), including an otherworldly rendition of “Emma." like Siouxsie's “Nocturne” performance in the same venue from two years prior, the set culminates in a cover; Dylan’s “Knockin' On Heaven’s Door”, a fitting coda for their valediction, its western themes and dying gunslinger vantage cohering to their leather cowboy aesthetic and the nigh demise of the band at the time. An incredible document.

Ripped to MP3

1. First And Last And Always
2. Body And Soul
3. Marian
4. No Time To Cry
5. Walk Away
6. Possession
7. Emma
8. Amphetamine Logic
9. A Rock And A Hard Place
10. Floorshow
11. Alice
12. Fix
13. Knocking On Heaven’s Door