By 1985, and the
rather belated release of the Sisters of Mercy debut album, First And Last And
Always, the band had already established its reputation, alongside the equally
influential likes of Bauhaus and the Jesus And Mary Chain, as forefathers of
the still fairly embryonic goth-rock genre.
The Sisters were
already a fixture on the UK independent charts thanks to a series of highly regarded
landmark singles and EPs - Alice (1983), The Reptile House (1983), Body and
Soul (1984) - and had impressed as a darker, harder, black-leather-clad alternative
to the leading bands of the (by then) mass-marketed punk and “new wave” scenes.
After making fans
wait a couple of years for a full-length album, it’s probably fair to say that First And Last And Always was a highly anticipated release.
And those early EP releases have all gone on to become highly sought after by
vinyl collectors and fans alike.
The Sisters of Mercy
would release just three (studio/non-compilation) albums; the bigger budget
follow-up, Floodland (1987), is another classic of its type, with, for better
or for worse, far more emphasis on production values, while Vision Thing (1990)
found the band losing its way a little, with main man Andrew Eldritch seemingly
content to set the band’s default option to: “bloated metallic parody of former
self”. As poorly received as it was however, even Vision Thing contained the
odd gem.
First And Last And
Always then, pretty much represents the Sisters Of Mercy in their purest, most
unaffected form, and it’s the only Sisters album to feature key original, Wayne
Hussey, who would later go on to front The Mission. This is where it all
started, and that's probably all that needs to be said.
Highlights: opener
‘Black Planet’, the epic closer, ‘Some Kind Of Stranger’, plus ‘Walk Away’, ‘No
Time To Cry’, ‘Marian’, and ‘Possession’.
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