The Sisters Of Mercy
First And Last And Always

"First And Last And Always", what to say about this Album if not... turbulent, unsettling, gloomy, infernal, black.

Andrew Eldritch in the '80s, in the melting pot with The Cure, Siouxsie and The Banshees, Joy Division, and Bauhaus, etc., etc., managed, through ups and downs, to temporarily stabilize the band with Wayne Hussey, Gary Marx (future Mission), and Craig Adams, and to give their best with the release of the Album, "First And Last And Always". Their unmistakable style, Eldritch's deep catacombal voice creates an atmosphere of haunting and ghostly movement, yet clean and charged with "intention" as if it were a celebration of black masses. A succession of compelling rhythms heightens this mystery with danceability. "Black Planet" hypnotizes with the perfect sound of dark-punk. As it happens for many other singers, it reflects their personality and has been defined as the masterpiece of dark rock, as for the track "Marian", a song that describes hell, and that magnetized attraction towards the fiery bottom culminating in a light of reconciliation with good. "Possession" is a description of a ritual, slow and continuous. In "Walk Away" there is a more evident emphasis on paranoid beats. "A Rock And A Hard Place" starts off strangely more technological and existential but inevitably ends with heaviness and oppression. "Logic" goes beyond their parameters; there are screams, shrieks, and mad rushes that shattered explosively. Listening to this album, and the amazing "First And Last and Always" means letting yourself go in a tempestuous and mysterious outburst of perverse horror, physical and danced... not to be missed.

An Album that, seemingly without limits, has given a figure to the "Sisters of Mercy" as ambiguous ambassadors of the dark side on a course toward the afterlife. But above all, they also left their mark on the '80s.