Well... What exactly are The Sisters Of Mercy? A band, sometimes. A farce? sometimes. Nostalgic? Not often enough.

For a band that has released one original song in the past ten year, its surprising exactly how many people still remember them for their biggest UK tour in fifteen years, and that one only comprises of five or six dates in four cities. Sometimes it seems as if ver Sissies are the bands very own rent machine, trotted out as a hobby whenever he can drag himself away from whichever version of Quake or Doom he is currently glued to.

And whilst he appears to be fighting a losing battle with his ex-record label, primarily because he hasn't got a new one, Eldritch is seemingly unaware of his diminishing currency. All power to him, for refusing to kowtow to the sheep and playing a set exclusively of decade-old songs, performing cover versions of himself moaning how bad the good old times were. The problem lies in the fact that without any new material to promote, the fact he plays so many new songs backfires to the uncoverted, for whom half the set is either unreleased, or in the case of "Giving Ground" and "On The Wire", largely unknown. And for a band that 10 years ago headlined Wembley Arena and sold half-a-million albums, time is not a great healer. The longer it is between albums, the lower the chance of a new one, or being signed for that matter. Gone forever, it seems, are the cavernous videos of More. Perhaps that's why they are filming tonight on a handheld camera from the mixing desk - to compile the video what whatever single they may eventually release in 2005. If they can be bothered.

The band haven't lost their bite. Adam, who appears in a spangled orange and yellow skintight cycling jersey, has been with the Sisters longer than any other member (about seven and a half years), and has yet to release a note of self-penned material with the band. Oddly enough, he's probably far more Sisters in spirit than the grumpy Eldritch is, who spends most of the set invisible in the shadows, berating the audience, hiding behind his blond perm, inch thick sunglasses, white leather jacket, and doesn't even bother singing most of Vision Thing, letting Adam take the centre stage. And Chris? Well. he's got a Public Enemy T-shirt on. And Nurse? Well. Watching this largely hidden super-bearded Fat Controller ubergod play air drums to Flood when he thinks he's obscured by smoke is bloody funny. However, as a unit, they are tighter than impressions give you. Adam, Andrew and Chris all seem to instinctively know what to do by the slightest subtle glance at each other. When the smoke clears long enough for you to see them.

After ten minutes of techno noodlings from Eldritches multitude of obscure ambient albums (have these actually been released?), they commence, without fanfare, into Anaconda. 18 years old, and it still sounds OK. But compared to the mastery of Body Electric, piss-poor, and weak. It's not a great start to the set. It sounds as if they are still feeling their way into the song. Next up is the compelling, gutsy Train-Detonation Boulevard medley. It still makes me sad the first thing Eldo didn't do after the VT tour was book his band into the studio and refuse to feed them unless they finished a new album. As does the delicious, barbed Ribbons

Onto Dominion-Mother Russia. Neat touch, once the EC smoke mountain clears, is that the lights turn regulation communist Red when the song switches to Mother Russia, raining down its acid rain and nuclear fallout from Cherynobl on all of us. And so, to the strait which Eldo uses and baits us with comments. "We're very disappointing" apparently and should "Stop bickering." Well. More people would be enjoying themselves if they knew any of the next eight songs. For the internetted hardcore down the front, for whom Summer is ancient history, the new songs present no sighnificant problem. In the same vein, the one with the german title I can't remember, and the funeral paced We Are The Same Suzanne all sound like solid album tracks. Even if Romeo Down does sound oddly like Confide In Me. Though, all the newer songs do seem to be written in exactly the same BPM and key. Not necessarily a good sign.

Crash N Burn though. It's a shithot fire of a song. It sounds like Motorhead gangraping Kraftwerk in a back alley whilst J G Ballard takes notes. It goes faster, louder, and more aggressively than a tribe of Hell's Angels looking for a toilet in a desert.Definite first single. Absofcukinglute classic.

War On Drugs is another classic, though it's over three years old, and not necessarily that good by dint of its age. I wish I could make out the words.

And so to the final strait. Alice gets us berated for being Traditionalists, and Temple Of Love, are both despatched with the respect 20 year old songs deserve. They are thoroughly abused and come out stronger and harder as a result.

And so to the encore. Something Fast still shows that there's a certain tenderness in the way you twist the knife, and Flood II is largely enjoyable for Nurse's air drumming when he thinks no one is looking. Next up is Snub Nose, a tight, taut sleek bomber of a song with all manner of twists, turns, and dips. It's the perfect example of the man-machine that Kraftwerk go on about. And so to Vision Thing. The most concis precis of US politics commited to vinyl, the light show still makes it clear that The Sisters could've had Wembley Stadium if they really really wanted. All flashing lights (one million points of light indeed), smoke, and motherfuckers in motorcades. The light show, red, white, blue is too large for anywhere other than small planets with a epidemic of epilectic lights fighting with each other as the song relentlessly hammers the point home like a porn star with anasthetic in his genitals.

At the end, I dodge the bootleg shirt sellers, with their garish Purple on lime green shirts (pukes), and find one decent bootleg which borrows all its graphics from the web page. Inside, the t-shirt stall is comprehensively stocked, with GBP 13 new shirts, including the groovy "trip the light fantastic" shirt, and the "utterly bastard groovy" classic. Bargain of the night? Old shirts from 93 for a fiver, and back copies of Underneath The Rock and the Vision Thing tour for a quid. Oh yeah, and fake photo/backstage passes for GBP 3. Good old "Underneath The Rock" meanwhile is chock full of stuff that by rights ought to be on a web page stuff, somewhere , including the most disparaging review of a mailing list committed to any forum ever.

And I can wait a long long time before I hear another love song...

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