E-Werk, Cologne, Germany14th October 2019
The Sisters Of Mercy & Support: A.A. Williams
Just a few days after the show in Munich, we experienced another show of the current tour, this time in Cologne. Enough was written about both, THE SISTERS OF MERCY and the support act A. A. WILLIAMS, in the concert review about the gig in Munich. Therefore I limit myself here in the review about the gig in Cologne and only write about the performance of both bands.
A.A. Williams
The support act was a bit boring. And unfortunately there was hardly any atmosphere during the 45 minutes the band was allowed to perform. As a small copy of CHELSEA WOLFE, A. A. WILLIAMS always shone when she drifted into instrumental parts with her two comrades-in-arms. It was then that the presented Post Rock was quite pleasing. The other half of the performance, in which she stood behind the microphone and performed rather sluggish material, was quite long.
Rating
Music: 5
Performance: 5
Light: 4
Sound: 6
Total: 5 / 10
The Sisters of Mercy
The setlist of the SISTERS OF MERCY is unchanged throughout the tour. And so the band started their set in Cologne with ‘More’, maybe their biggest hit. Besides a few hands that got raised, a lot of smartphones were pulled out to record the song. But that didn’t affect the mood, so Andrew Eldritch and his companions quickly set an exclamation mark and put the audience in the mood. It should last until the encore that the SISTERS OF MERCY would set more marks with their other big hits ‘Temple Of Love’ and ‘This Corrosion’ and finally end the gig after 90 minutes. In the remaining time the British band worked their way through songs like ‘Alice’, ‘Show Me’ and ‘Flood II’. Of course the mood here wasn’t as cheerful as with the band’s well-known hits, but it wasn’t bad at all.
The sun-drenched Andrew Eldritch showed himself to be in a pretty good mood in Cologne, and from time to time he also made contact with the audience, when he was said one or two sentences in perfect German (he has/ had his residence in Hamburg). His two guitarists Ben Christo and Dylan Smith who positioned themselves to the left and right of the singer, also did their job very well. They also wore sunglasses and pilot’s glasses, so they remained somewhat remote, but often changed positions and were quite active. Ben Christo posed like a model over and over again and offered the photographers an attractive picture. Of course there was no drummer in Cologne either. As always the drum computer Doctor Avalanche did this job.
The stage itself was quite unspectacular. Both at the back of the stage and floating on the roof of the hall, large mirrors were mounted to reflect the light of incident rays of light at certain angles. What sounds exciting in theory was not really impressive visually. The light respectively the light rays, which came from the spotlights, were so intense that it is understandable that the musicians entered the stage wearing sunglasses. Again and again Andrew Eldritch, for example, stood directly in a beam of light to perform exactly there. And here eye protection was bitterly necessary. Apart from that there was relatively little fog, the stage was clearly visible most of the time and kept in dark blue tones.
As I said, after only 90 minutes the concert of the SISTERS OF MERCY was over. A few spectators were dissatisfied with the short playing time, but the majority of the audience probably went home satisfied but not excited.
Setlist
01. More
02. Ribbons
03. Crash and Burn
04. Dr Jeep - Detonation Boulevard
05. No Time to Cry
06. Alice
07. Show ME
08. Dominion
09. Marian
10. Better Reptile
11. First And Last And Always
12. Instrumental (unknown)
13. Something Fast
14. I Was Wrong
15. Flood II
---
16. Lucretia my Reflection
17. Vision Thing
18. Temple Of Love
19. This Corrosion
Rating
Music: 7
Performance: 6
Light: 5
Sound: 8
Total: 6.5 / 10
All Pictures by André Wilms
Comments powered by CComment