The Sisters of Mercy Tonight

“Be advised that the Sisters are going on tour again. We will behave very badly. We will wear some very loud shirts. We will wear some very wrong trousers. We will perform some very legendary rock music. It’s what we do.”

Take these words as a warning – 30 years after The Sisters of Mercy premiered their dense soundscapes in their spiritual home of Leeds, the band is finally coming to New Zealand, playing one show only on Wednesday 22nd February 2012.

The Sisters of Mercy’s first show at the Riley Smith Hall of the Leeds University Union building introduced their haunted industrial grooves alongside an audacious selection of rewired classics from the likes of The Velvet Underground and Leonard Cohen. This time The Sisters of Mercy will perform new material and reworked covers,  while exploring the depths of a 30-year career filled with equal parts melody and menace.

The Sisters of Mercy have undergone line-up changes since their inception, but at the core of a synthetic sound powered by their resident drum machine Doktor Avalanche, there is the brooding baritone of front man Andrew Eldritch. Both Eldritch and the good Doktor will play The Powerstation, with Chris Catalyst and Ben Christo grafting hypnotic riffs onto their mechanoid foundations.

For three decades The Sisters of Mercy have operated according to a self-written manual, unbeholden to record company demands or narrow genre descriptions – don’t miss the band make history when they play their very first New Zealand show in February.