Rejoicing dark hearts of gothic people: The Sisters of Mercy live in Buenos Aires.

septiembre 30, 2025 Sunray Magazine

The Argentine goth movement must have been absolutely excited about knowing about The Sisters of Mercy’s show in Buenos Aires. The band led by Andy Eldritch had an amazing evening on September 28th at Teatro Flores, where everyone showed up wearing the darkest and gothiest clothes from their closets.
Lots of people with dark nails, make up, dressed as much “funeral-istic” as they could, I even saw a girl dressed up like Lady Dimitrescu, a character from Resident Evil, the video game franchise, and a guy dressed up like Brandon Lee’s ‘The Crow’. Not to mention Victorian clothes…

Well, returning to the show, it all started at 20 pm with the local band “Los Péndulos”, a post punk band that had a very dark sound, and felt well chosen to be the opening act for a band like TSOM. They played an outstanding set, and the venue was almost full by the time they were playing their last songs. Unfortunately, when the singer introduced us to the last song of their set, one of the promoters said “time is up”, and without playing it, they walked offstage, but the crowd started singing “one more song”…
It didn’t change anything, but at least the guys could leave the place knowing that they earned the crowd’s heart.

At 9.15 pm, TSOM hit the stage. The band has a curious lineup: 2 guitar players (Kai and Ben), a DJ that played the MIDI drums and synthesized bass lines (Christ), and the almighty Andy on vocals, wearing his unmistakable dark glasses.

The first songs of the set were “Don’t Drive on Ice”, “Crash and Burn”, and “Ribbons”. I noticed that there were no lights up on the stage, just floor-lights aiming above, and every song has its own colour: sometimes the lights were all green, next song it could be all violet, red, yellow, blue, etc.
And the stage was filled with fog. Sometimes it was hard to see what was going on, but if the objective was to make the performance as gothic as it could be. They totally nailed it.
The next songs were “Doctor Jeep / Detonation Boulevard”, “More”, “I Will Call You”, and “Alice”. Some of these songs had a very new approach on live, compared to the studio version. Like changing saxophone solos to guitar solos, and adding distorted guitar to every single song, as it was a Type O Negative cover of TSOM. Talking ‘bout guitars, they had a lot of presence, with reverb and chorus effects on them, something that made it feel very ethereal.
“Dominion / Mother Russia” was one of the highlights of the night, followed by “Summer”, “Giving Ground”, and “Marian”.

That immersive atmosphere was all we could expect to have a total goth evening. Watching Kai run around and jumping while playing, as Andy walked with a huge amount of serenity while singing, and Ben shaking his hands to make the people go “Hey, Hey, Hey” at the tempo of the song, was very enjoyable.

“But Genevieve”, “Eyes of Caligula”, “Here”, and “Quantum Baby” approached us to the end of the set. Which ended with “On the Beach”, “When I’m on Fire”, and “Temple of Love”
I found it funny when people in between songs wanted to chant “Olé Olé” but couldn’t because every song was played one after another with almost no pause.
So, when this set ended and the band waited backstage for the encore, the abstained crows could finally sing “Olé Olé” loudly, and they made it 3 or 4 times. As if they were letting go of everything they held back during the night.
The band came onstage once again to play the last 3 songs. And, of course, they were from the “Floodland” album: “Never Land (A Fragment)” (the only song with an actual bass being played by Ben), and the classic tunes “Lucretia My Reflection” and “This Corrosion”. I need to add that when “Lucretia…” ended, the people kept on singing the famous bass line of the song, as the band watched in amazement.

This concludes the darkest night of the year, with a setlist of 21 dark songs that made even the blackest heart of a gothic person.