This is the story of Here, The Sisters of Mercy’s long-awaited fourth album.

 

A record yet to be made.

 

The Sisters of Mercy have not released any music since 1993. The last whispers about new recorded material date from the tail-end of the 20th century. Instead of making and promoting records, Andrew Eldritch, The Sisters’ frontman, founder and lodestar has charted a course of his own design through the wreckage of an imploding music industry, winnowing contact with it to the bare minimum. Rather than record, release and promote songs - and hitching the band to all the machinery that entails - Eldritch has narrowed The Sisters’ theatre of operations to just this: they play gigs, sell merch and appear on the bills at festivals. And that is it. They don’t sound like one, but The Sisters are essentially a punk band, operating on the same anti-authoritarian, anti-corporate principles of the fiercely independent Leeds music scene of late ‘70s that birthed them.

 

Although Here does not exist, the songs do.

 

In live performances this album manqué comprises half of The Sisters of Mercy’s set, going toe-to-toe with actual hits, such as ‘Temple of Love’, ‘Lucretia’, ‘This Corrosion’ ‘Dominion’ and ‘Alice’. Here, an album in some modal reality, is prime Sisters, a glorious amalgam of melody, synthesised rhythm, metallic guitars and one of rock’s great lyricists on top form. It is equal to - some say it surpasses – its three classic predecessors, First and Last and Always, Floodland and Vision Thing.

 

Although Here does not exist, the band does.

 

The template of Eldritch, plus two guitar players and Doktor Avalanche - a computer containing all the non-guitar parts - and its handler, is long established. The Sisters have endured because all the late-period iterations of the band have been remarkably – although not entirely - stable and harmonious. Each of the guitarists and “Nurses” have played their part in The Sisters’ longevity. Each – including Eldritch – are living proof that making rock music can be thrilling and fulfilling but it requires courage, commitment and sacrifice; the tower of song demands its pound of flesh from its workers, even from the hardiest and the luckiest.

 

While he remains the star of the band, and no doubt more equal than the others, Eldritch is fishing in the same waters, sustaining an independent band on a fragile live circuit buffeted by Brexit, Covid and inflation, and with power and wealth increasingly concentrated into the hands of mega live entertainment conglomerates. Rather than respond to public demand or any career imperative – such as lucrative nostalgia tours, reforming so-called classic line-ups or making a new record - Eldritch has followed the contours of his own peculiar creativity and the iron laws of his sense of self.

 

There is another simple truth: The Sisters of Mercy exist because their audience has never deserted them. While there have been ebbs and flows there has always been a large core following into whom The Sisters dug their claws and never let go. Sisters’ tours bear witness to an extraordinary phenomenon: thousands upon thousands of devotees who have maintained a loving relationship with the band for decades. For them, The Sisters of Mercy offer an enduring and meaningful experience, with deep reserves of affection on which to draw on both sides of the fourth wall.

 

This is an account of how The Sisters of Mercy have refused to die, burn out or fade away. We will miss them when they are gone, but right now - against the grain, against the odds and against all reasonable expectation – they are, in all their perverse and singular glory, still very much alive.

 

“Here” is the successor – rather than sequel - to Mark Andrews’ Paint my Name in Black and Gold, the definitive account of the early years of The Sisters of Mercy.