Heartland

H. Blackrose wrote: ↑06 Dec 2023, 00:51 Dylan was in the band longer than That Guitarist, lol

And contributed to more songs

So reading the above, is Von gay?

GC wrote: ↑08 Dec 2023, 14:33

H. Blackrose wrote: ↑06 Dec 2023, 00:51 Dylan was in the band longer than That Guitarist, lol

And contributed to more songs

Better ones, too.

Planet Dave wrote: ↑08 Dec 2023, 16:04
Better ones, too.

Agree.

GC wrote: ↑08 Dec 2023, 14:33

H. Blackrose wrote: ↑06 Dec 2023, 00:51 Dylan was in the band longer than That Guitarist, lol

And contributed to more songs

Some might say better songs! I'll take "Here" over "Marian", and "Don't Drive on Ice" over "Rock and a Hard Place", any old day of the week

Bartek wrote: ↑27 Nov 2023, 09:32 Yet it sounds a bit nasty @Ocean Moves. But i guess you're missing how much his guitar style has changed over the time, from full guitar wanking to knowing when to use pause, letting the air play its role.

I would agree that. He's learnt to play in a way more befitting of the Sisters tunes, over time.

I think what's really behind my thought process is, I'd rather see a guitarist's native sound and talent fit in (and bring new value) the Sisters,
not someone learning to make their own sound fit in.

Ben's worked hard, and seemingly been loyal and stuck around. It's better to have a Sisters than no Sisters.

H. Blackrose wrote: ↑28 Nov 2023, 01:23

Ocean Moves wrote: ↑25 Nov 2023, 22:19 I don't want to hear two boys banging out surfing tunes - I want Irony and androgyny.

Point taken. This isn't Chris Catalyst

H. Blackrose wrote: ↑09 Dec 2023, 03:06

GC wrote: ↑08 Dec 2023, 14:33

H. Blackrose wrote: ↑06 Dec 2023, 00:51 Dylan was in the band longer than That Guitarist, lol

And contributed to more songs

Some might say better songs! I'll take "Here" over "Marian", and "Don't Drive on Ice" over "Rock and a Hard Place", any old day of the week

I think that the tunes on the Hussey side of FALAA are great... its the lyrics that are the let down (apart from Black Planet and Marian)

H. Blackrose wrote: ↑09 Dec 2023, 03:06 Some might say better songs! I'll take "Here" over "Marian", and "Don't Drive on Ice" over "Rock and a Hard Place", any old day of the week

Absolutely.

I'd be happy if I never hea Marian ever again.

Yggdrasil wrote: ↑10 Dec 2023, 23:33

H. Blackrose wrote: ↑09 Dec 2023, 03:06 Some might say better songs! I'll take "Here" over "Marian", and "Don't Drive on Ice" over "Rock and a Hard Place", any old day of the week

Absolutely.

I'd be happy if I never hea Marian ever again.

Agreed. It's just become something that's just there halfway through the set. Doesn't do much, passes a bit of time. Ho hum.

Incoming! wrote: ↑04 Dec 2023, 02:20

eastmidswhizzkid wrote: ↑03 Dec 2023, 02:36

Incoming! wrote: ↑02 Dec 2023, 18:56 I just want to say that Ben Christo deserves a lot of credit for even having the 2nd show in London go on. He gets beat up a lot on here.

Ben gets beat up a lot here ?? on HL?? when does he?? For what?? & by whom?? Utter bollocks !!!! I (We/Us/They -but definitely I) wouldnt stand for it! Similarly there is a good chance I (we/Us/Them but definitely I) wont stand for this unsubstantiated guff either..

Incoming! wrote: ↑02 Dec 2023, 18:56
And as for Dylan, the unprofessionalism of doing what he did is reprehensible and disrespectful to the band. For those who claim to love the band one should not forget what he did.

What did he do?? & how was it disrespectful to the band? who are you to say it (whatever IT was) was a reprehensible act? i mean -maybe the statute boook punishment for IT (whatever the f**k IT was) was exactly the way in which Dylan was punished for IT (whatever the buggery f**k bollocks IT was) i.e. being sacked from The Sisters? if Eldritch is Judge Jury & Lord High Executioner Elect of The Sisters Of Mercy (& he definitely is) then who the f**k do you think YOU are to say Eldritch' is WRONG? I think you are massively out of your depth vomiting out ill-informed unsubstantiated arse juice like this ... HOWEVER the Road To Redemption is paved with endeavour: so WHAT exactly are YOU saying Dylan did? (*Apart from p*ss off Andrew to the point of no return? Like EVERYBODY Andrew ever works with does , sooner or later! Or vice versa. Or both Thats a fact and it doesnt matter whether the fault for said schism is the band member or Eldritch's -the effect is much the same)

Whoa! Whoa. Whoa. Jesus H. Calm yourself. The IT was Dylan playing air guitar on stage. To me that was an offense to the band. You apparently don't agree. Fine.
I'm used to being allowed an opinion on forums. You don't seem to agree with that. If I made you happy by being the focus to go off on somebody, I'm glad I did. Have a great week.

opinions are like arseholes and regardless of whether we like them or not everyone has one. fine. but saying that "Ben gets beat up a lot here" simply isnt true. if, in your opinion. Ben gets beat up a lot here , then what evidence -facts- are you basing that on? Stating an outright untruth to back up an opinion isnt how opinions work. (i hate to use the word lie because then i get accused of being inlammatory which gives you a further excuse to avoid the question).
as for Dylan being disrespectful by playing air guitar... ffs the poor blokes actual guitar wasnt working. he spent all fucking night struggling with it and he gave up for the last song. should he have mimed with his real guitar? or stood there somberley holding it but not dancing? or maybe he should have left the stage completely of his own volition before Andrew booted him? he wasnt being disrespectful to anyone. whatever Andrew sacked him for it wasnt that. maybe he told him his avocados werent fucking organic or he doesnt like short-arses -who knows or cares? And i am ALWAYS happy. "going off on somebody" is rarely the reason for it as if people weren't f**king idiots in the first place i would be -if not immeasureably happier- somewhat less idisappointed by them. i was happy at the Roundhouse too & not just because it was my birthday but because i was watching The Sisters which ALWAYS makes me happy. a real shame if anyone there was unhappy. Go figure.

Von doesn't do anything on impulse. Dylan's set up was s**t, and little effort was made to improve it, coupled with the fact Kai was in ViP suggests to me that the ex-band member who said this was planned, is probably right.

I liked Dylan, perhaps AE fell out of love.

paint it black wrote: ↑13 Dec 2023, 19:24 Von doesn't do anything on impulse. Dylan's set up was s**t, and little effort was made to improve it, coupled with the fact Kai was in ViP suggests to me that the ex-band member who said this was planned, is probably right.

I liked Dylan, perhaps AE fell out of love.

I don't buy it, because if that were true, Kai would have slotted in the next night instead of playing the next 8 or so gigs as a duo. Also some say that Von looked legitimately upset on the second night at the Roundhouse. If Von wanted Dylan gone, he could have just quietly dropped him after they got back from the US.

paint it black wrote: ↑13 Dec 2023, 19:24 Von doesn't do anything on impulse. Dylan's set up was s**t, and little effort was made to improve it, coupled with the fact Kai was in ViP suggests to me that the ex-band member who said this was planned, is probably right.

I liked Dylan, perhaps AE fell out of love.

It's so obvious now, and then the was "sick", and the "have" to cancell few gigs just to play on a compassion/mercy (sic!) note to throw us off the scent; what a mischievous guy AE is, with a cunning plan.

I really miss Dylan. I should say i advance I haven't seen the new incarnation live, and I don't want to be mean to Kai, so maybe I'm judging the situation harshly.

Also I don't know why Dylan exited - maybe there genuinely was no way forward for that lineup? (Does anyone know for sure what happened, even now?)

I do know this however - that incarnation of the band with Dylan produced a tonne of great songs, and Dylan's rhythm guitar was absolutely rock solid. His chugging was relentless, in time and on the beat, and he added a lot rhythmically to the songs. When he was in the band, at every gig, there was also chance a new song would debut - you just didn't know. (She's a Monster, anyone?)

That's no longer the case. The setlists have solidified and there's far less variety, probably because they're playing it safe with a new-ish guitarist.

But here it is: Kai (Sorry, if you're reading this! I'm sure you're a great guy, this isn't personal) is all over the place as a performer.

Most of the time he's just not very audible and you'd struggle to hear his guitar in the mix, other than in a few songs where he's at the front - Ribbons with the 12 string, Here with the acoustic guitar solo (when he gets it right!). But over all, the rhythm playing of each song now appears to be semi-random, and entirely changed from the way Dylan played them, and that's not an improvement. They're missing a lot of the accents that really worked and it seems like he just doesn't know the songs well enough, or isn't an experienced enough/disciplined enoughy player to get the whole less-is-more Sisters aesthetic.

The late 2023/2024 versions of the new songs still sound good, and it's great that Kai has enabled the band to keep going, but he just seems like an entirely disposable and unremarkable element to me. I also get that people seem to like him as a person, and I can even accept that he may bring a working dynamic that might be easier for the others and hence make it more likely that they'll continue to tour etc. But it doesn't sound as good. At least to me.

I love that since Dylan left/went, Von has continued working on the new songs. I think they sound more and more polished and even the older songs have had a spring cleaning for the better. The live arrangements are sounding great . . . but the whiff of sulpher is gone. The sense of the van careening off the road is gone. It's all just a bit more dull.

Am I being unfair? Let me have it with both barrels.

Todashi wrote: ↑24 Jan 2024, 11:17 I really miss Dylan. I should say i advance I haven't seen the new incarnation live, and I don't want to be mean to Kai, so maybe I'm judging the situation harshly.

Also I don't know why Dylan exited - maybe there genuinely was no way forward for that lineup? (Does anyone know for sure what happened, even now?)

I do know this however - that incarnation of the band with Dylan produced a tonne of great songs, and Dylan's rhythm guitar was absolutely rock solid. His chugging was relentless, in time and on the beat, and he added a lot rhythmically to the songs. When he was in the band, at every gig, there was also chance a new song would debut - you just didn't know. (She's a Monster, anyone?)

That's no longer the case. The setlists have solidified and there's far less variety, probably because they're playing it safe with a new-ish guitarist.

But here it is: Kai (Sorry, if you're reading this! I'm sure you're a great guy, this isn't personal) is all over the place as a performer.

Most of the time he's just not very audible and you'd struggle to hear his guitar in the mix, other than in a few songs where he's at the front - Ribbons with the 12 string, Here with the acoustic guitar solo (when he gets it right!). But over all, the rhythm playing of each song now appears to be semi-random, and entirely changed from the way Dylan played them, and that's not an improvement. They're missing a lot of the accents that really worked and it seems like he just doesn't know the songs well enough, or isn't an experienced enough/disciplined enoughy player to get the whole less-is-more Sisters aesthetic.

The late 2023/2024 versions of the new songs still sound good, and it's great that Kai has enabled the band to keep going, but he just seems like an entirely disposable and unremarkable element to me. I also get that people seem to like him as a person, and I can even accept that he may bring a working dynamic that might be easier for the others and hence make it more likely that they'll continue to tour etc. But it doesn't sound as good. At least to me.

I love that since Dylan left/went, Von has continued working on the new songs. I think they sound more and more polished and even the older songs have had a spring cleaning for the better. The live arrangements are sounding great . . . but the whiff of sulpher is gone. The sense of the van careening off the road is gone. It's all just a bit more dull.

Am I being unfair? Let me have it with both barrels.

Word on the street is that Dylan didn't quit, Von canned him.

I think Kai is an amazing guitar player, but the band played safe with him, like too-safe -- ofc in their defense Kai joined mid-tour --, as in, on Kai's first gigs, rhythm guitars were absurdly low on the mix, sections with syncopation and/or straigh 8th notes in a row, were replaced by open chords on beats, essentially replacing the 'mean machine' aspect of their rhythm section for a more 'jazz big band' kinda thing.

In more recent dates, Kai is pretty audible in the mix, but he's often playing the acoustic guitar or clean section, I think those are good additions, but I do miss our chugs, in an ideal world we could have both, and it would work great.

Kai re-added the clean strings to Corrosion, which was cool, and wrote a new second-voice for I Will Call you, the latter serves as proof that Kai is contributing to the band's songbook.

Dylan's major contribution to the band was making Von work, and ofc his amazing composition skills, playing wise I'd say I prefer Chris.

Doesn't sound as good? Well, your ears are yours and yours alone good Sir, fair play to your assessment, but to me they sounded better last November than they have in aeons. That did seem to be a majority opinion, not that that counts for anything. The ins and outs of who does what and how and where when and why are irrelevent, to me, it just needs to sound good. The UK gigs sounded great. If, for whatever reason, Kai's presence is a contributing factor in that, then he can stay forever so far as I'm concerned.

The Dylan thing was a strange one.

At the Roundhouse, those feedback issues definitely hampered his playing. But oftentimes, he also appeared confused to be on stage in the first place. It was as if he'd taken the wrong pre-show meds and they were kicking in, the wrong way. In this (possibly) altered state, he got more irate as the show progressed and starting flinging the bird at the guitar tech.

Von's done many a show drunk or on speed, so Dylan could've probably gotten a free pass, had he just marched on. The air guitar may have been just an icing on the cake, with Von perhaps seeing it as Dylan shedding all personal responsibility and dignity and unloading his frustrations at the crew. Another day, they could've laughed the technical issues off afterwards, but Von had clearly decided that a line had been crossed.

It's tempting to think that the reception of the new songs was part and parcel of Dylan's downfall. Maybe people around the band had started telling him he's the one who'll goad Von to release another album. So maybe Dylan got off the idea and started courting Von to get serious. Von would've pushed back, with tension now developing between them.

So Dylan may have been despondent pre-show (tour) already, as some realities around the band would've become apparent to him by then. The feedback issues then exacerbated his inner turmoil and the kettle finally boiled over. Maybe.

It seems to me as well that something happened with Dylan after the US dates but before the Roundhouse shows. I didn't see the US dates but by all accounts he was brilliant there. I did see the Roundhouse shows and it was very clear on the night that there was something more going on beyond mere technical problems. Every band gets technical problems, and that's not how you deal with them.

That's as far as I'm willing to go with this.

Kai brought something to the band that I didn't know I was missing until I saw him. The chugging was fun but it was overbearing too, and sometimes songs were all chug and not much else. Kai brought back a sense of contrast, of light and shade, and suddenly the melodies were ringing out again. He also brought a lot of onstage energy and personality.

I don't know how much of that comes across on YouTube videos or recordings vs actually seeing them with him in person. I got to see the 4 stages of the band on this tour: Dylan's last stand, Ben carrying it on his own, Kai settling in, and Kai in full flow. The latter was by far the best and many people were remarking the band were the best they'd been since 20 years/the 90s/the 80s even.

I caveated my comments above with the fact that I haven't seen the band live in recent years. That means I'm basing my comments off of (many) Youtube clips, and I'm TOTALLY aware that the experience in the room can be dramatically different to a small and mean window on a computer screen.

(Which is why they should release a f**king record, but anyway . . . let's not go there.)

I also think the last two years of post-Covid Sisters has easily been the most interesting and most consistently good live experience from the band in two decades. Even now, when I’m ‘complaining’ about Kai, I’m aware it’s in videos where I can actually hear Von singing, they’re playing new songs that are GREAT and appear to be aging really well, and Ben has arrived as a performer. He’s done his 10,000 hours and then some.

As an added sweetener, we even have Sisters-alumnus Chris C back on stage – something that gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling in my tummy, because he’s a good egg and nice things should happen to good people.

As a thought experiment, I rewound the clock and asked myself would I still be interested in seeing the tour-every-two-years of the 2010+ Sisters, with only a reworked Sisterhood track, a cheesy cover and a new guitar instrumental as the only possible changes over previous years?

We’d be back to discussing endlessly will they play 'Black Planet' or 'Driven by the Snow', because those would really be the only questions to ask? Yeah, that’s nowhere NEAR as compelling as what we have now. So I’m grateful for that – I really do LOVE the new tracks.

But . . . the Sisters of Mercy should have some swagger and a sense of danger. I believe someone once described them as an ‘industrial groove machine’ and for me, the chugging was a key balance point to the melody. One without the other just isn’t as interesting.

There’s also an art form to chugging on top of a drum machine. It’s demanding as f**k. You need to have stupidly good sense of time. That’s the point.

Dylan was mostly great on stage, and as others have noted, sacking him because of one blow-up on stage –whatever the reason really - is completely disproportionate. Which heavily implies to me that this wasn’t the reason, or at least the full reason.

Maybe the guy made himself impossible to be around for the 22 hours a day when they weren’t on stage while on tour? You’d have to think there’s a lot of time on buses, in cafes, standing around airports etc. So even if someone is a superb musician, I can easily imagine it might just not be worth it for the others.

And don’t get me wrong – The Sisters are performing great shows. I’d buy a ticket in a heartbeat.

I don’t know. Maybe I should just shut up. I just think we got a glimpse of something truly great, and then the tide went back out a bit. It might be unavoidable – Von and the guys have to be able to work functionally, a band that’s not quite as good but where everyone gets along is better than a great band that isn’t sustainable and kills people’s passion for performing.

I suppose my opinion isn’t really the most important factor here. Particularly as I haven’t bought a ticket lately, so yeah, basically I’m an internet freeloader complaining about the free s**t I didn’t pay for not being exactly what I want! Goddamit.

Dylan was mostly great on stage, and as others have noted, sacking him because of one blow-up on stage –whatever the reason really - is completely disproportionate. Which heavily implies to me that this wasn’t the reason, or at least the full reason.

My take on it is that Von has always been very responsible on the business side - the show must go on etc and not cancelling shows unless there is absolutely no choice as he has people he has to pay etc, so in my view he wouldn't have seen the sacking (if that was what happened) as "disproportionate" if he thought what happened on stage with Dylan might put the business side of things in jeopardy.

But as you say, this is all guesswork as none of us knows what the full picture is on this.

mh wrote: ↑25 Jan 2024, 04:32 Kai brought something to the band that I didn't know I was missing until I saw him. The chugging was fun but it was overbearing too, and sometimes songs were all chug and not much else. Kai brought back a sense of contrast, of light and shade, and suddenly the melodies were ringing out again. He also brought a lot of onstage energy and personality.

Maybe what Kai brings is a bit of H*ssey energy. Pretty guitar lines + pretty guitarist

H. Blackrose wrote: ↑26 Jan 2024, 00:26

mh wrote: ↑25 Jan 2024, 04:32 Kai brought something to the band that I didn't know I was missing until I saw him. The chugging was fun but it was overbearing too, and sometimes songs were all chug and not much else. Kai brought back a sense of contrast, of light and shade, and suddenly the melodies were ringing out again. He also brought a lot of onstage energy and personality.

Maybe what Kai brings is a bit of H*ssey energy. Pretty guitar lines + pretty guitarist

well that just goes to show eh? beauty is subjective innit. of all the love i have for the Gargoyle him having anything other than a face for radio aint in there.

They bring an awful lot of handclaps, and ultimately energy.

Von and Kai seem to be having a love in, leaving Ben devoid of Von affection.

Anyone mentioned AE affection to Japanese culture, thus Kai fits this fastination?