01	Under the Gun						05:43
	02	Temple of Love (1992)			with Ofra Haza			08:07
	03	Vision Thing						07:34
	04	Detonation Boulevard						03:50
	05	Doctor Jeep						03:02
	06	More						08:24
	07	Lucretia My Reflection						08:44
	08	Dominion / Mother Russia						07:03
	09	This Corrosion						10:17
	10	No Time To Cry						03:57
	11	Walk Away						03:24
	12	Body & Soul						03:30

A slight case of overbombing
Merciful Release


A Slight Case of Overbombing: Greatest Hits, Vol. 1
Artist Sisters of Mercy
Date of Release 1993

A Slight Case of Overbombing gathered together material from goth merchants the Sisters of Mercy's three major label releases. That fact immediately sets the stage for complaints from longtime fans desiring their indie music. However, for the listener more familiar with the band's mid- to late-'80s college radio tracks, this is a very good collection. The lyrics are rather pointless and Andrew Eldritch's vocals lack dynamics, but his singing has personality that overcomes his limitations. It's the edgy, hard, gothic rock of the music that is their strength. There's an undeniable pull to songs like the galloping "This Corrosion" or the epic "More" (both produced by Jim Steinman). There's also a mix of "Temple of Love," featuring Ofra Haza, and an unreleased track, "Under the Gun." Not essential, but a good record for the casual fan (although more extensive liner notes would have been nice). - Tom Demalon

1. Under the Gun (Eldritch/Hughes/Hughes)
2. Temple of Love (Eldritch)
3. Vision Thing (Eldritch)
4. Detonation Boulevard (Bruhn/Eldritch)
5. Doctor Jeep (Bruhn/Eldritch)
6. More (Eldritch/Steinman)
7. Lucretia My Reflection (Eldritch)
8. Dominion/Mother Russia (Eldritch)
9. This Corrosion (Eldritch)
10. No Time to Cry (Adams/Eldritch/Hussey/Marx)
11. Walk Away (Eldritch/Hussey)
12. Body and Soul (Eldritch)

Ofra Haza - Vocals, Vocals (bckgr)
Terri Nunn - Vocals, Vocals (bckgr)
Jim Steinman - Producer
Larry Alexander - Producer
Andrew Eldritch - Producer, Mixing
Wayne Hussey - Guitar, Keyboards, Vocals (bckgr)
Ian Stanley - Producer
Andreas Bruh
Craig Adams - Guitar (Bass)
Doktor Avalanche - Drums
Seeman Hughes - Producer
Gary Marx - Guitar
Andrea White - Artwork
Dave Allen - Producer, Mixing

1993 CD Elektra 61399
CS Elektra 61399-4
CD Elektra 61399-2



Under the Gun
Composed By Andrew Eldritch/Seeman Hughes/Seeman Hughes

AMG REVIEW: After three years without any new sounds beyond a serviceable remake of the old "Temple of Love," the Sisters of Mercy resurfaced in 1993 with one fresh number on their latest hits collection - and, if "Under the Gun" was any indication of Andrew Eldritch's current way of thinking, longtime fans felt fortunate that that was all he had done.
A duet with Terri Nunn of Berlin infamy, "Under The Gun" is, at least through its first three minutes, a chest-beating power ballad, a love duet that hinges around Nunn's demand to know, "are you living for love?" Compared to the sonic slaughterhouse of past Sisters' epics, truly there was more Meatloaf than meat hook to "Under the Gun."

So much for the first three minutes. Persevere a little longer, however, and matters take on a very different complexion, as Eldritch launches into a lengthy deconstruction of all that Nunn is howling about, a bitter rant that makes even greater sense if you can lay your hands on one of the television appearances the band made to promote the "Under the Gun" single. Even at the outset of the song, the distance between the singers is disconcerting; by the time Eldritch hits his monolog, he may as well be absolutely alone. Which, to all intents and purposes, he is. - Dave Thompson



Temple of Love
Composed By Andrew Eldritch

AMG REVIEW: An undisguised stab at commerciality, "Temple of Love" was released in fall 1983, a driving number that was itself guaranteed to drive a serious wedge through the Sisters of Mercy's hitherto loyal support.
Crystal-clear guitar, a twistingly haunting vocal, and a triumphant, yelping chorus ensured that "Temple of Love" emerged genuinely catchy and easily enjoyable, the sound of the group making a concerted leap out of cultdom - too concerted for guitarist Ben Gunn, who promptly accused his bandmates of "taking things too seriously" and of "selling out," then quit the band. Gunn's reservations appear to have been the minority opinion, however, as "Temple of Love" did everything Eldritch expected it to, with only the seemingly eternal success of New Order's "Blue Monday" holding it off the top of the indie chart. Nine years later, a re-recorded version drove even further, peaking at number three nationally and becoming the Sisters of Mercy's biggest hit yet. - Dave Thompson


Vision Thing
Composed By Andrew Eldritch

AMG REVIEW: Panzer guitar riffs and blitzkrieg bass usher in this vicious, vitriolic examination of President Bush's America - the first President Bush, that is, with his "million points of light" and, indeed, the "vision thing" that he mentioned in one of his speeches, to the howling delight of commentators and satirists everywhere. The then-imminent Gulf War, too, fired Eldritch's rage, mocking the presidential belief that the only solution to any problem was to send the army in to solve it. It was with some irony, one imagines, that an MTV video jock asked Eldritch whether he had any hopes of scoring an American hit with the song - and some relish with which Eldritch replied that, if that had been his intention, it would've been an instrumental. - Dave Thompson


Detonation Boulevard
Composed By Andreas Bruh/Andrew Eldritch

AMG REVIEW: "Detonation Boulevard" opens with the sound of a lonely, Stones-ey guitar twanging its neo-country death rattle, a jarring, but utterly fitting, prelude to a monstrous study of the stinking hell that man has made of the planet, in his bid to make it a fine place to live - "through the dust and the gasoline, through the cruelty of strangers, to the neon dream." The guitars and drums, of course, echo the disgust - the core riff could cut through steel, distortion drenched in volume, while even Eldritch's lyrics are powerless to resist the pull of the percussion. "Bang bang," it slams at the end of each verse, and the singer answers in kind. Play it LOUD! - Dave Thompson


Doctor Jeep
Composed By Andreas Bruh/Andrew Eldritch

AMG REVIEW: A lot of people have attacked American television in song, but few have nailed the beast with the bitter vitriol of "Doctor Jeep," a full-on assault on late-night cable that opens with the observation "everybody shouts on I Love Lucy," before delving headlong into a convoluted (but not so far-fetched) world where half-hour infomercials and five-minute news flashes are all but indistinguishable. "Here come the golden oldies, here come the Hizbollah, businessmen from south Miami humming AOR."
Dynamically, the song revolves around a trip-hammer, drum, and wave upon wave of distorted guitars, while former Mike Oldfield chanteuse Maggie Riley adds some scintillating backing vocals. Eldritch himself welcomed her contributions, explaining, "her parts add a certain bit of gleefulness...When you get a bunch of guys together, there's a way of making it too gung-ho and gonzoid. It's nice to add that certain bit of sweetness to it." - Dave Thompson


Lucretia My Reflection
Composed By Andrew Eldritch

AMG REVIEW: Described by Andrew Eldritch as his "welcome aboard" song for new bandmate Patricia Morrison, the tumultuous "Lucretia, My Reflection" has been described as the singer's tribute to Renaissance-era murderess Lucretia Borgia - possibly because she is the only person named Lucretia that most people have ever heard of. In fact, the song is set solidly in the modern age, a nightmare-ridden essay of war and empire-building in the modern age, with Ms. Borgia's role in all of this restricted to the fact that she, like today's society, liked to poison her victims.
One of the most dramatic songs on the Floodland album, and the third single to be culled from that set in 1988, the full effect of "Lucretia, My Reflection" is best felt on video - filmed in a Bombay cotton factory, the grainy, gritty images combine with the gleefully bombastic soundtrack to all but blueprint the industrial music revolution of the next five years. - Dave Thompson


Dominion/Mother Russia
Composed By Andrew Eldritch

AMG REVIEW: Andrew Eldritch's partnership with producer Jim Steinman, brought to blazing fruition on 1990's Vision Thing album, was originally ignited across a pair of songs on the preceding Floodland - the Wagnerian "This Corrosion" and the similarly vast "Dominion/Mother Russia," a seven-minute opus constructed around crashing drums, operatic chorales, stentorian vocals, and a rhythm that could run a marathon. On album (an edited version was issued as a U.K. single), it is an astonishingly powerful piece, a 12-minute piece that Eldritch confessed disguised an anti-American diatribe flavored by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
For the accompanying video, Eldritch and Morrison traveled to the ancient city of Petra to film amid the ruins, but in an interview with Melody Maker, Eldritch painted the portrait that he truly intended, America "huddled in their mobile homes while Mother Russia rained down on them. They deserve it." Among the song's most pointedly effective lyrics, the Dylan paraphrase "stuck inside of Memphis with the mobile home, sing" has few peers. - Dave Thompson


This Corrosion
Composed By Andrew Eldritch

AMG REVIEW: "This Corrosion" was originally announced as a 1986 single by the Sisterhood, a follow-up to the independent chart-topping "Giving Ground." In fact, it would be another year before the song was finally released, by which time it, and the band, had undergone a major revision.
Reverting to the Sisters of Mercy name, Andrew Eldritch was now paired with bassist Patricia Morrison and producer Jim Steinman, and "This Corrosion" emerged as grand as such ingredients demand. Summed up by Eldritch as a tale of "power in the face of misery," "This Corrosion" was released in September 1987, sailing in on the waves of a vast operatic chorale (the 40-piece New York Chorale Society) and defying even the sourest listener not to feel a slight fission of excitement and awe. The lyric, aimed at the former bandmembers who had split to form the Mission, is one of Eldritch's most pointed, but there was so much more to "This Corrosion" than simply another bout of superstar sniping. There was its "glorious stupidity," as Eldritch smirked, and a gleeful sense of "bombast" that rendered it one of the most impressive-sounding records of the age. - Dave Thompson


Walk Away
Composed By Andrew Eldritch/Wayne Hussey

AMG REVIEW: One of the songs composed immediately following the arrival of Wayne Hussey in the band's ranks, in late 1983, "Walk Away" was the Sisters of Mercy's ninth U.K. single and their second for major-label Warner Brothers.
Compared with its predecessors, it is a very simple song - Hussey introduced a definite commercial (read "catchily radio friendly") twist to the band's hitherto foreboding sonics, and it must be confessed that Eldritch himself sounds a trifle uncomfortable with the song's over-reliance on the constant repetition of its title. Indeed, as the song approaches its conclusion, his "lead" vocal has faded to an all but inaudible mumble, drowned beneath the enthusiastic backing vocals that carry the chorus. - Dave Thompson





The Sisters of Mercy
Formed 1980 in Leeds, England
Disbanded 1990
Group Members Tim Bricheno Andrew Eldritch Wayne Hussey Tony James Andreas Bruh Craig Adams Doktor Avalanche Gary Marx Ben Gunn Patricia Morrison James Ray

by Steve Huey

One of England's leading "goth" bands of the 1980s, the Sisters of Mercy play a slow, gloomy, ponderous hybrid of metal and psychedelia, often incorporating dance beats; the one constant in the band's career has been deep-voiced singer Andrew Eldritch. (There is some disagreement as to whether the group took its name from an order of Catholic nuns or from the Leonard Cohen song of the same name.) Eldritch originally formed the band in 1980 with guitarist Gary Marx and recorded its first single with a drum machine dubbed Doktor Avalanche. Guitarist Ben Gunn and bassist Craig Adams were added to make live gigs feasible, and the Sisters built a reputation through several singles and EPs. Gunn left the band in 1983 and was replaced by Wayne Hussey. The Sisters of Mercy recorded their first full-length album, First and Last and Always, in 1985, but two years later, internal dissent had split them apart; Marx left to form Ghost Dance, and Adams and Hussey departed shortly thereafter. A legal dispute ensued over the rights to the name Sisters of Mercy; Adams and Hussey attempted to use the name Sisterhood, but Eldritch released an EP under the name to prevent its usage, and the two finally settled on the Mission. Eldritch chiefly utilized a corps of temporary sidemen from this point on (although former Gun Club bassist Patricia Morrison was an official member of the group for a short time) and rebounded with his two biggest-selling American LPs, Floodland and Vision Thing. He is currently the group's only member.