The Sisters Of Mercy – Docks, Hamburg

While I tend to go and see the same bands over and over again (and again and again…), it’s nice to try something entirely different every now and then. So as it happened, I joined two friends for the show of The Sisters Of Mercy at the Docks in Hamburg. I had casually listened to their music, but mostly just went there with an open mind not knowing too much about what to expect.

The last Sisters album is almost as old as me, and the singer Andrew Eldritch is the only remaining member from that time. But if you expected the concert to be a one man show, you’d be more than wrong. Besides Eldritch’s rather stoic presence, there were two quite active guitarists, Ben Christo and Chris Catalyst, who delivered a passionate performance, just as – ehm – Ravey Davey, who operated the synths and drums on some laptops in the background (in the world of The Sisters of Mercy, apparently laptops have a name: Doktor Avalanche, secretly the most important member of the band). Additionally, there were lots and lots of colourful lights, so our eyes were treated to a very cool show. Our ears were treated as well, because the whole band sounded great! That said – if I was responsible for the sound, I’d turn the guitars up a bit and Doktor Avalanche down a bit, because the guitars were pretty much lost in the mix except for Ben’s solos. (One might even dare to think that the talent of these two guitarists is slightly wasted in this band…) On the other hand, this is not my sound – this is how the music of the Sisters should sound and it’s merely a matter of taste, so who am I to judge.

Just as you would expect, the average age of the audience matched the age of the band – there were few people around the age of me and my friends and certainly none that were younger than us. That might have been the reason why the crowd seemed a bit reserved, especially in the beginning of the show. But the songs of the Sisters have so many catchy hooklines that you just have to sing along to, so slowly the people woke up, and in the end there was even a moshpit for Vision Thing!

Let me conclude this little report with the words of a young woman I spoke to after the gig: “I had an orgasm during the show! A proper vaginal orgasm, just like real sex!“
Way to go, Sisters…

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