I went to see the Sisters of Mercy in the Olympia Theatre. Because I am useless, I left it really late to get tickets and ended up sitting in the gods. I was however not quite so useless as some of my former Goth friends, one of whom bought tickets but then forgot what day the concert was on, another of whom intended getting tickets but then forgot about it and arranged some inescapable family horror on the evening in question. This made me feel really brainy and together by comparison – result.
The Sisters of Mercy battled dreadful sound, the perennial Olympia problem. So it was that I thought they were incredibly daring, opening with an unrecognisable new song, until the chorus of "First and Last and Always!" came out through the undifferentiated sludgy sound. Fortunately things picked up a bit as the night went on, to such an extent that tracks became recognisable and started to sound somewhat appealing to the ear (for songs by Sisters of Mercy).
The concert maybe worked best as visual spectacle. Some artists like flashy stage shows and gaudy costumes, others go the high-tech route and play in front of screens showing all kinds of amazing images. The Sisters, on the other hand, simply filled the stage with dry ice, so that most of the time you could barely see the band. This was quite funny.
Pandas of Mercy
An inuit panda production
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