The Sisters of Mercy are scheduled to play a pair of rare U.S. shows this spring — a festival in Las Vegas and a headlining date in Los Angeles — as the lone album from Andrew Eldritch’s mid-’80s side project The Sisterhood finally sees a reissue several years after it was announced.
Eldritch, Doktor Avalanche and the rest of the current iteration of the Sisters are slated to play the Sick New World Festival in Las Vegas on May 13 with Ministry, Skinny Puppy, KMFDM, Killing Joke, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult and headliners System of a Down, Korn, Deftones and Incubus.
Then, on May 23, they’ll play a just-announced headlining date at the Hollywood Palladium. Tickets are on sale.
It’s not known whether there will be more U.S. shows. The Sisters haven’t played U.S. dates since 2008. The band’s only other announced shows for 2023 include a trio of concerts in Mexico and South America in June.
See those dates below.
Meanwhile, the reissue of the long-out-of-print album by The Sisterhood — the project born out of Eldritch’s feud with ex-Sisters of Mercy bandmates Wayne Hussey and Craig Adams — is finally here, more than three years after it was first announced by London-based Cadiz Music.
The five-track album is now streaming, and the CD reissues can be ordered from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. The label itself is already shipping the CD reissue and is selling cassette and clear vinyl versions as well. Though it contains no bonus tracks, the version of album closer “Rain From Heaven” is more than a minute longer on the new reissue than on the original 1986 release.
The Sisterhood dates back to failed attempts in late 1985 to record a second Sisters of Mercy album. When Hussey and Adams left the Sisters, they set out to tour on their own, playing music written for the second Sisters LP that Eldritch had rejected. They christened themselves The Sisterhood, immediately drawing Eldritch’s ire. “There was nothing I could do but be the Sisterhood before them — the only way to kill that name was to use it, then kill it,” Eldritch told the NME.
Eldritch raced to record a new single under the Sisterhood name, releasing “Giving Ground”– with James Ray on vocals, since Eldritch couldn’t contractually appear — on his Merciful Release label on the very same day that Hussey and Adams played their first gig.
By March, Hussey and Adams had changed their name to The Mission, but Eldritch continued plans to record an album by The Sisterhood, eventually releasing it in July 1986. Along the way, he’d considered recording “This Corrosion” as The Sisterhood, but decided to save the track for the second incarnation of The Sisters of Mercy he envisioned with Patricia Morrison on bass.
The Gift album was issued on CD for the first time in 1989 then reissued in 1994, but has been out of print on all formats — aside from bootleg repressings — since then, and had yet to debut digitally.
The Sisters of Mercy tour dates
May 13: Sick New World Festival, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
May 23: Hollywood Palladium, Hollywood, CA, USA
June 13: Circo Volador, Mexico City, Mexico
June 16: Club Chocolate, Santiago, Chile
June 18: Tokio Marine Hall, Sao Paulo, Brazil