Q Magazine Review

THE place for your Sisters-related comments, questions and snippets of Sisters information. For those who do not know, The Sisters of Mercy are a rock'n'roll band. And a pop band. And an industrial groove machine. Or so they say. They make records. Lots of records, apparently. But not in your galaxy. They play concerts. Lots of concerts, actually. But you still cannot see them. So what's it all about, Alfie? This is one of the few tightly-moderated forums on Heartland, so please keep on-topic. All off-topic posts will either be moved or deleted. Chairman Bux is the editor and the editor's decision is final. Danke.
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mh
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I suppose at this stage I can only blame myself for expecting anything different, but anyway...

Q Magazine has wrapped it's slimy tentacles around the reissues, with the usual ill-informed, badly researched and prejudicial results.

It starts so well, with identifying Von as one of the 80's great unrecognised icons, then plummets into a mess. Overly focussing on the fact that each LP had a different line-up, the dreaded g--- work making a few appearances, apparently not even bothering to check out the tracklistings (seems Floodland has acquired "a few live tracks"), then identifying This Corrosion as the main standout track. I suppose it was the only one the reviewer ever bothered to listen to.

To cap it all, the "if you like this also listen to..." bit is - wait for it - Gods Own Medicine.

I'll spare you the horror of the full thing (mainly because I don't have it), but here's a sample:
Andrew Eldritch’s dark lords get the full reissue treatment this month. This towering 1987 epic remains theirs – and goth’s – finest 10-and-a-half minutes.
If I told them once, I told them a hundred times to put 'Spinal Tap' first and 'Puppet Show' last.
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Scottish One
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boo! that is very stupid! :?
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Ozpat
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I hate those f*ckers. There are a lot of them around... :evil:
"as we walk on the floodland"
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dinky daisy
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Wasn't Q the magazine that loves Arse sick Monkeys and Nowaysis?

Written for Paul Weller lurking idiots in brown leather jackets that smell of lager and tobacco?

Imagine what you would feel if these guys would appear on your next Sisters concert because Q rated their discography as 'fantastic'. The horror!
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Rafster
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dinky daisy wrote:Wasn't Q the magazine that loves Arse sick Monkeys and Nowaysis?

Written for Paul Weller lurking idiots in brown leather jackets that smell of lager and tobacco?

Imagine what you would feel if these guys would appear on your next Sisters concert because Q rated their discography as 'fantastic'. The horror!
who cares? so Q doesn't like SOM. not many people do. and Q represent many people. and many people really like REM, U2 and coldplay. thats the way the world works, baby.
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radiojamaica
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In the new Record Collector the 3 reissues are reviewed too. I don't have a copy of it, but I read it quickly in the shop :wink:

They say Floodland is the masterpiece and give it 4 stars (out of 5), Falaa gets 3 stars and they find the added B-sides a bit tinny and Vision Things gets 2 stars and a not essential tag...

Not really mindblowing this.
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bismarck
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radiojamaica wrote:In the new Record Collector the 3 reissues are reviewed too. I don't have a copy of it, but I read it quickly in the shop :wink:

They say Floodland is the masterpiece and give it 4 stars (out of 5), Falaa gets 3 stars and they find the added B-sides a bit tinny and Vision Things gets 2 stars and a not essential tag...

Not really mindblowing this.
I read this review too, and found it amusing since the extra tracks on FALAA are the only ones that DON'T sound tinny. The remaster is great, and the orginal UK/USA vinyl mixes are superior, but they don't hide the production flaws of the album - flaws which are absent only on the included B-Sides Blood $, Bury Me Deep, and On The Wire (produced by Andy alone). Gotta agree with VT 2 stars though. Album pretty much sucks.
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Rafster
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bismarck wrote:
radiojamaica wrote:In the new Record Collector the 3 reissues are reviewed too. I don't have a copy of it, but I read it quickly in the shop :wink:

They say Floodland is the masterpiece and give it 4 stars (out of 5), Falaa gets 3 stars and they find the added B-sides a bit tinny and Vision Things gets 2 stars and a not essential tag...

Not really mindblowing this.
I read this review too, and found it amusing since the extra tracks on FALAA are the only ones that DON'T sound tinny. The remaster is great, and the orginal UK/USA vinyl mixes are superior, but they don't hide the production flaws of the album - flaws which are absent only on the included B-Sides Blood $, Bury Me Deep, and On The Wire (produced by Andy alone). Gotta agree with VT 2 stars though. Album pretty much sucks.
i used to think VT sucked a*se but i've learnt to love it, like it was my own (?). just the titles of some of the songs still make me smile "i was wrong", "when you don't see me", "you could be the one" at first hand make you think of romance - then the lyrics totally blow that out the water and AE is just being a c*nt of a rocker! genius
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Had to snigger at the "morrissey for the snakebite-and-black sect" comment
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canon docre
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Rafster wrote:
dinky daisy wrote:Wasn't Q the magazine that loves Arse sick Monkeys and Nowaysis?

Written for Paul Weller lurking idiots in brown leather jackets that smell of lager and tobacco?

Imagine what you would feel if these guys would appear on your next Sisters concert because Q rated their discography as 'fantastic'. The horror!
who cares? so Q doesn't like SOM. not many people do. and Q represent many people. and many people really like REM, U2 and coldplay. thats the way the world works, baby.
So right.

The last time I complained that other people I personally found daft and unstylish showed up at the concerts of my favourite bands I was in my teens.

TSOM got mainstream since FALAA and they love it. Get over it.
Put their heads on f*cking pikes in front of the venue for all I care.
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Stoat Grinder
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Strange really..... If I remember correctly the Q review of the original VT release was really positive.

I think the strap line was something like "If Riffs Could Kill"
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weebleswobble
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Stoat Grinder wrote:Strange really..... If I remember correctly the Q review of the original VT release was really positive.

I think the strap line was something like "If Riffs Could Kill"
Yes but now it's just not cool enough-fookin' wangers :evil:
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mh
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Uncut have just had their turn. Written by Steve Sutherland, who many may recognise from some of the barmiest Sisters interviews ever back in the day.

This one isn't quite so bad at all.

FALAA ****
Floodland *****
VT ****

They make the top 10 LPs of the month too.

It's too long to type out (for someone with my typing skills) but I may scan it in work tomorrow. In a nutshell, it plots the Sisters LPs like a reverse account of the apocalypse, with VT being the present day political situation, Floodland being the event itself, and FALAA being the aftermath. A lot of guff about the current inactive situation (Von is shot on drugs and has run out of things to say), and very little in the way of G-word relations.
If I told them once, I told them a hundred times to put 'Spinal Tap' first and 'Puppet Show' last.
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Drenchrom
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Probably the best review so far. At least Sutherland has got a good grasp of what The Sisters are/were about. Not sure if he says that Von has run out of things to say, more like that he's said everything that needs to be said.

Another review can be found in Plan B, which again lauds Floodland but not so the other two.

Matt..
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spot778
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Uncut review from their website
First And Last And Always R1984 (4)
Floodland R1987(5)
Vision Thing R1990(4)

You can’t say we weren’t warned. Way back in the 1980s, when we were all partying like it was 1999, he loitered in the shadows, a bag of bones lit only by his cigarette, barking at us until he was hoarse that we were all damned to hell.

So now the world is coming to an end - the oil’s all gone, the seas are rising, the nukes are loaded and the Middle East is about to ignite the daddy of all bonfires - the very least we can do is listen. Come and meet Andrew Eldritch. It won’t take long. He was a fine man, a wise man… and he only made three albums with The Sisters Of Mercy.

We used to say that was because he was a speed freak who just couldn’t recreate the horror playing in his head. But now the scenario looks a lot more scary. Now it looks like he stopped because he’d said everything there was to say. When you shake hands with Eldritch, you shake hands with Armageddon. But we have to find him first.

He’s gone to ground, only occasionally resurfacing to tour what’s left of civilisation. And when he does, he’s laughing. He always did. Laughter was the thing that elevated him above the faddish Goth hordes with their adolescent crush on the dark stuff. He laughed because laughter is the only intelligent response to an atrocity you can see but can’t do anything about.

Eldritch was a literary fellow. So I wonder if it’s accidental that, listening to the Sisters on the eve of the apocalypse, it makes most sense to play the catalogue in reverse order. Just as Martin Amis rewound the holocaust in his book Time’s Arrow, the smoke from the gas chambers ceding to clear blue skies, so the Sisters’ output plays out the final story back to front.

1990’s Vison Thing - ironically named after President Bush Sr’s infamous statement that he lacked the “vision thing� when it came to foreign policy – is the uncannily accurate soundtrack to today’s abomination; a rat’s nest of corrupt, self-serving ‘politicians’ living high on the hog in plush hotels on Desolation Boulevard, with their “25 whores in the room next door�. These are arms dealers, drug dealers, dealers in human traffic, cranking out the AOR in their armour-plated Hummers. They couldn’t give a f**k for your Fair Trade or your Fundamentalism – show me the money!

1987’s bombastic Floodland is when it all comes down. The geographical location may have shifted from Eldritch’s “Mother Russia� raining down on the earth, but “This Corrosion� – orchestrated by Wagnerian maestro Jim Steinman with a pomp that My Chemical Romance must surely envy – is the sonic backdrop to the dividends of sins callously sown. And finally there’s his debut, First And Last And Always, the remainder of the species left on a Black Planet to shelter from the acid rain and – oh, the irony of the human condition - still obsessed with the suspicion that she’s f**king that guy behind your back even when there’s no air left to breathe.
To paraphrase what they used to say about another pop revolutionary: it’s Eldritch’s world, we just die in it.


STEVE SUTHERLAND
End of line.
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Dark
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That's not a bad review, actually. A little overdone, I guess, but not bad.
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I actually like it quite much. :)
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spot778 wrote:Uncut review from their website
First And Last And Always R1984 (4)

STEVE SUTHERLAND
1984? :urff:
I like these calm little moments before the storm. It reminds me of Beethoven. Can you hear it? It's like when you put your head to the grass and you can hear the growin' and you can hear the insects.
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mh
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kazamel wrote:
spot778 wrote:Uncut review from their website
First And Last And Always R1984 (4)

STEVE SUTHERLAND
1984? :urff:
Catalog number?
If I told them once, I told them a hundred times to put 'Spinal Tap' first and 'Puppet Show' last.
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czuczu
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There's a reason I lost any respect I had for Steve Sutherland but can't remember what it was :urff:
...and any review that mention Wagnerian when describing This Corrosion deserves a kick up it's cliched arse :roll:

(Ted Mico, where are you now?! :notworthy: )
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dinky daisy
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I think it is a very nice piece. Totally right.
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czuczu wrote:...and any review that mention Wagnerian when describing This Corrosion deserves a kick up it's cliched arse :roll:
he was describing Steinman, Stu and I thought for a short review it was pretty neat, we never found out what he thought of the music tho :|
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mh
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James Blast wrote:
czuczu wrote:...and any review that mention Wagnerian when describing This Corrosion deserves a kick up it's cliched arse :roll:
he was describing Steinman, Stu and I thought for a short review it was pretty neat, we never found out what he thought of the music tho :|
The Music????

Are ye mad, man? It's a review in a rock monthly - what's the music got to do with anything?
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czuczu
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James Blast wrote:
czuczu wrote:...and any review that mention Wagnerian when describing This Corrosion deserves a kick up it's cliched arse :roll:
he was describing Steinman, Stu and I thought for a short review it was pretty neat, we never found out what he thought of the music tho :|


It's alright but there's not actually anything about the albums in there - he probably couldn't hear them, what with his head so far up his own arse ;)

Still can't remember why I dislike him so much! :?
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