Floodland
©Mercyful Release. UK, 1987.
‟For an album that's been labelled THE best gothic rock album ever produced - a view I don't subscribe to - Floodland can be wonderfully uplifting. Maybe it's just my twisted psyche, but the deep, strong, dark, funereal, almost operatic tones that permeate the album have always offered a sense of wellbeing. The music is a vital ingredient of The Sisters Of Mercy's character, a fact sometimes ignored in the face of Andrew Eldritch's growling vocal. Eldritch, the rock world's answer to Lurch, has a voice like velvet covered concrete which suits perfectly the band's industrialised Goth style. It has a deep resonance unlike any other in rock, yet still manages to remain melodic. As a perfect compliment the lyrics, which seem profound, are strangely stilted when examined outside the context of the songs as if they are meant to evoke a feeling rather than a story.
There is no doubting that Floodland was recorded in the eighties – the drums are apocalyptic and the bass makes your arteries vibrate – but, unlike most, the Sisters still translate well today. The epics "Dominion/Mother Russia" and "This Corrosion" still capture the imagination and the choir on the latter is a masterstroke, but "Flood I" sounds weak and tired in comparison. The best of Floodland is in the detail; the bass on "Lucretia My Reflection" is a killer and the piano on "1959" hauntingly beautiful.
So not the classic it's made out to be but still a mighty fine album and one of the few I can play from that period that doesn't make me cringe.‟
There is no doubting that Floodland was recorded in the eighties – the drums are apocalyptic and the bass makes your arteries vibrate – but, unlike most, the Sisters still translate well today. The epics "Dominion/Mother Russia" and "This Corrosion" still capture the imagination and the choir on the latter is a masterstroke, but "Flood I" sounds weak and tired in comparison. The best of Floodland is in the detail; the bass on "Lucretia My Reflection" is a killer and the piano on "1959" hauntingly beautiful.
So not the classic it's made out to be but still a mighty fine album and one of the few I can play from that period that doesn't make me cringe.‟
Grampus
