It's a cold winter's evening,and the queue loops around the entire venue, ready to enter the goff rock time machine. It's like the last 20 years never happened, and bearing that in mind, it still sold out five months ago, mainly down to two things: It’s the firsttime the original line up (save a medically retired drummer) have played England in 20 years, and the incredibly strong supports of the Fields Of the Nephilim and Gene Loves Jezebel.

Gene Loves Jezebel get half an hour in a venue where most of the crowd are still queuing up outside. With a rather disheartening mostly empty venue, and equipped with the now obligatory standard issue indie band replacement bassist whose gone bald and started wearing sunglasses indoors, complete with cavernous walls of guitar noise, and medium sized chart hits. Its like watching a more melodic, less noisy Jesus And Mary Chain With choruses that aren’t drenched in feedback. With a warm reception and a short set, Gene loves Jezebel don't outstay their welcome to those unfamiliar to them, and yet songs like "Desire" are greeted by a quickly swelling crowd like old friends. Which they are.

The Fields Of The Nephilim are greeted like long lost conquering heroes. To all intents and purposes they are - having headlined this venue many times in the past. With the length of the set and the stage set, it's effectively a headline set anyway. Which is good - because tonight, The Fields Of The Nephilim, whilst not everyone's cup of tea, are solid, tight, impressive, epic and rapturously received. Even if some people hate them, they play a set well worthy of headlining, and one that threatens to eclipse the main attraction.

If there's one thing I've learned from watching The Fields Of The Nephilim, it's that if you can see the band through the smoke, there's something wrong. If there's two things I've learned, the second is that someone is finally making an unholy wall of noise that matches the sounds I've been hearing in my head, but never heard on record. Fact is, with a set mixed halfway between classics and newer material, even the records don't sound as good as this. Songs like "Shroud" and "Straight For the Light" are the unholy bastard child of Philip Glass and Motorhead; acres of riffage and angst, drenched in epic soundscapes. For all the acres of smoke and lights, the Nephilim sound awesome. And for most, they don’t even see the band, just silhouettes of fans making pyramids in a vain attempt at human architecture.

Now, I've never seen the Nephilim before. There's so much dry ice and smoke - the stage set looks like someone's set off a thousand marine distress flares in front of a strobe machine you just can’t switch off no matter what happens ; so much so, I'm almost - but only almost - tempted to say I still haven't seen them, come to think of it. Which leaves just the sound.

This is not the Nephilim you might know. Certainly not if you last saw them twenty years ago, headlining this very venue for two nights. This is a different beast. This is a band who appear to be an endlessly rotating set of gothic sleeper blokes behind the man in the hat, Carl ("I am The Nephilim!") McCoy. A man who once spent three days searching for the right sort of bees to provide just the right type of buzzing in the background. But that’s not important right now. Whats important that - even if fronted by the Axl Rose of Gothic Rock - it’s a damn fine, supertuned, live behemoth.

It starts heavy, and gets heavier. Eschewing much of their early gothic realm and heading into the later years of rifftastic goth-metal, it may be impenetratble to some but to me, it makes me realise just how unique they are. From the mammoth, ten minute psychedlic gothic epic of "Pyschonaut" - all organs, delayed bass looping lines and atmosphere - to the crushing heaviness and death metal brutality and blast beats of "Penetration" - which sounds like a fist fight in a moshpit between Slayer and Carcass - it’s a set of vast contrasts. Mostly within the same song. The band may look disparate in image - the bass player appears to be on loan from Shed Seven, the guitarist on loan from punkers English Dogs with blond spikes - but sound incredibly cohesive....but that’s only when you can see them, as they spend most of the gig as mere silhouettes shrouded in strobbing fog, like a innkeeper stranded on a lighthouse in the middle of a storm.

Itis 66 minutes long, and feels like they should be headlining. Given the large number of Nephilim fans present, they might as well be. Its atmospheric, its heavy, its spooky. It's also a stunning revelation. Coming to this fresh, not knowing much of the Nephilim save four or five of the hits (I've always found the records rather dry and dense), It’s a powerful concise, focused set that - perhaps surprisingly, given how many people I know loathe The Nephilim - outshines the headliners. The closing duo of "Psychonaut" and traditional maudlin finale "Last Exit For the Lost" are both epic, atmospheric, and brooding.

They sound like nothing else. I came with an open mind, and they turned out to be one of the best support bands I've ever, ever seen, by a long way. You could lament the lack of songs like "Blue Water" and "Phobia", but with a set this strong, they aren't needed. If they'd have headlined, by this point I wouldn't have felt cheated, but gone home a happy, satisifed customer. They're so good that the fact that The Mission are yet to play feels like the icing, rather than the cake.

Which brings us to The Mission. I've seen a few Mission gigs in my time, and the last time I saw The Mission was one of the worst gigs I've ever ever seen ; at the time I described it as being like "a shadow of their own past". Tonight is a thousand times better than that shambles of a performance. Unfortunately, The Mission are a band who have an habit of playing their "final ever" gigs every few years, so tonight has an air of somewhat resigned inevitability. Like a junkie who just can't stay quit. After all, they split in 1996, came back 3 years later, split in 2008, came back 3 years later....do I spot a pattern informing? At this rate, they'll split again in 2019, and reform for a fourth time in 2022. Probably, judging by Wayne's pronouncements from the stage of more gigs next year, which takes the shine off the temporary nature of some one off anniversary shows. It somehow seems less of an event when you know its going to keep on going. I hope that, in 8 years time, they'll won't be playing to three hundred people again in a half filled pub like inevitably seems to happen.

Coming on stage @ 9.42 (12 minutes late), The Mission are sadly somewhere between inspired and insipid, often within the same song. From the opening of the Dambusters theme, to the closing Sisters Of Mercy cover of 1969, it's the best gig I've seen them do. Mind you, everytime I've seen them before, they have been disappointing. Not tonight. Tonight is everything a Mission gig ever promised to be - a boisterous crowd, a drunken frontman in fighting mood swigging Blue Nun on stage, and a set chocka full of classics. Wayne can best be described as "happy"(translation:sozzled) - or at worst "Beligerant" (translation:sozzled), with an ingracious dig at The Sisters of Mercy later on. Given that you can buy tonight on CD from the merch stall 15 minutes after they come off stage and immortalised forever, that’s a thoughtless move.

If you've ever seen The Mission before, you know what to expect, but better. Simon Hinkler, a man who appears to be being eaten by a black trenchcoat and hat which happens to play guitar - barely moves, but this is less down to icy cool as much as a heroic dose of numbing prescription painkillers. You couldn't tell from his playing - efficient, economical, precise, the best example of which is the solo in "Butterfly On A Wheel" ; it may only have two notes, but what notes. It's melody and solo at the same moment. I've seen a lot of shredders in my time who assume that playing 600 notes a minute equals talent, but one well aimed precise solo shows them up for the chancers they are. It's quite possibly the most underrated guitar solo in the world - it's as if David Gilmour have been ported into the room for a brief, thirty second stint.

In the leather jacket, shaven head and Gibson thunderbird on stage right, lies human roadhog Craig Adams. He'll rock anytime, anyplace, anywhhere. Have amp, will rock. A man who's probably been in more bands than anyone else in the world - ever! - but here, he's back in his rightful place, where he always should have been. Not even singing a snippet of "Vigilante Man" can stop him. The bass propels forward, wide and low, a rumble of purpose. If there was one man whose undiminished love for his trade is clearly evident, this is he - and he looks to be loving every last second of it.

At the back is new drummer Mike Kelly - whose enthusiasm seems to outweigh his skill. The drums are muffled and splashy, drenched in cymbals - and on loan from another goth band. Might be Theatre Of Hate, Spear Of Destiny, might be Clan of Xymox, I'm not sure who. Comapred to the original drummer of Mick Adams, Mike is chalk and cheese by comparison ; it's all splash and flash, rather than precision and power. Trying too hard to impress, and with a terrible sound, its fortunate than come a week later.

"Beyond the Pale" is raptourously received, but never was one of their best songs - "Hands Across The Ocean" definitely their most insubstantial, being proto-guitar pop five years ahead of its time. However, "Serpent's Kiss" - in an expected palce - transcends familarity and predictability into being the highpoint of the night. And it's rough down the front, it really is. Grown men and women in a ruck, with good intentions but playing court to themselves and their friends as if this is the one night of a year they actually can pretend to be 18 again, bear bellies and bald heads aside. It’s a Dantean version of hell with a better light show. After all, 1986 never looked so good. And 1986 is where most of these songs come from - from the scratchy old B-sides of 7" singles, stored in teenage bedrooms. There's 8 songs in a row which (with only one exception in "Butterfly") come from that year - and it's telling that the backdrop, recreating the God's Own Medicine tour set of rigging and flags, evokes that era of 25 years ago.

Guitars drenched in reverb and echo, Hellbent on Mission and Revenge, The Indie goth time machine powers up and takes you back twenty five years......and that’s just what people bought tickets for. You'd be disappointed to hear the phrase "here's a song from our new album", wouldn't you? Its not what you want to hear. Most of us are here to relive our glory days, and they were - I must confess - bloody glorious.

Come the closing of the set, it's "Wasteland". Literary allusions to T.S Eliot aside, (and later reused by the Mission themselves as "Into The Blue", just with the chords reversed) it’s the moment most people outside the goth niche began to hear The Mission. It is, quite rightly, a classic. It's also leading into the final straight, which is a superlative, never bettered "Crystal Ocean". Propulsive, and drenched in organ, it’s The Mission's finest 7 minutes 35 seconds. It also breaks every goth cliche in the book - blame that exquistie organ sound. Only with a quarter of an hour long version of "Deliverance", complete with an over-extended singalonga-Wayne outro remains before encore time.

But it's when Mark Gemini-Thwaite - guitarist from 1993 - joins them onstage, it cranks up a notch. Singlehandedly raising their game tenfold, it's as if the Stooges and Iggy just joined on stage and its adrenalized, amphetapunk versions to go. Seriously, they should just get him in all the time if these ten minutes are anything to go by. Better than the rest of the night combined, its the best ten minutes I've seen on stage all year. And I thought they were good before hand...

Coming on stage late and coming off late means a lot of people have to miss this, which they have paid for. The crowd noticeably thins out because people have to get the last tube home, and thats totally avoidable - why should people have to miss out on something because of a rock star's tardiness? Seriously? No reason at all. It's simple, and simply annoying. But the band charge through the last strait like it's the last songs they'll ever play.

It's the sort of Mission gig I've always wanted to see, as opposed to the half-hearted, perfunctgory sloppy experiences of the past. Instead you get a band on form, a superb support in the form of the magnificent Fields Of The Nephilim - who by rights stole the night with a stupendous performance - and a bill the likes of which fans have fantasized about for years, in one of the best venues in this or any other town.

The Mission: Damnbusters into / Beyond The Pale / Hands Across The Ocean / Serpents Kiss / Naked And Savage /Garden of Delight / Severina / Butterfly On A Wheel / Stay With Me / Wake / Wasteland / Crystal Ocean / Deliverance Encores: - Like A Child Again / Like A Hurricane / Tower Of Strength / Blood Brothers / 1969

Fields Of The Nephilim: Shroud/ Straight To The Light / Preacher Man / From the Fire / Watchman / Moonchild / Penetration /Zoon / Psychonaut / Last Exit for The Lost

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