Hororis II - A tribute to The Sisters of Mercy and The Sisterhood (CD on Unknown Pleasures Records)

 I can remember the day back in 1993 when I bought my first tribute album to The Sisters of Mercy, First and Last and Forever, which was released on what had quickly become the go-to label for goth-related issues and reissues, Cleopatra Records of California. Not quite knowing what to expect – barely any bands had yet attempted to cover any of The Sisters’ songs at that time, although many had mimicked their style, both musically and visually – I put the CD in the player and found my senses assaulted by the wild electronic punk of Automatic Head Detonator’s take on Black Planet. Whilst noting the familiar lyrics, the rest of the song had been radically reworked to the point of being almost unrecognisable, a memorable beginning to what was in fact a mediocre overall album where pale imitation became the order of the day, with a few notable exceptions, such as The Shroud’s low-key ‘cello and female vocal take on Alice.

The tone was set for a series of future tribute albums to the band (a German tribute, Monochrome, surfaced two years later) and an increasing array of bands wanting to acknowledge their musical debt to Eldritch and co, whilst handily boosting their own profile in the process. Relatively well-known artists joined the fray, and some of these better-known versions, by Cradle of Filth, Paradise Lost and Jyrki of the 69 Eyes for example, were compiled earlier this year on Black Waves of Adrenochrome.

So what makes Honoris II worthy of attention in a tribute album genre which has long outlived its novelty value? The answer is largely to be found in the identity of its compiler, Pedro Peñas Robles, founding owner of Unknown Pleasures Records, a label responsible for some of the most exciting releases on the goth scene over the past few years, from Kill Shelter’s dancefloor-ready darkwave classic Damage and the shimmering reverberating gothgaze of Antipole’s Northern Flux to the full-on angular deathrock goth mayhem of Der Himmel über Berlin’s Chinese Voodoo Dolls. A DJ and musician himself who has been active on the scene for well over three decades, PPR personally invited the bands to participate, and largely also selected most of the songs, playing up to his obsessive, “my way or the highway” stereotype – qualities that have also of course been attributed to Andrew Eldritch himself.

A longstanding and genuine fan of the band, PPR’s love and in-depth knowledge of The Sisters’ oeuvre is evident in the selection of songs – for example there’s no Alice, Temple of Love or This Corrosion, just more obscure album tracks and b-sides beloved of the band’s more hardcore fanbase: Marian, Nine While Nine, Some Kind of Stranger, On The Wire and Heartland. On The Wire is perhaps the most appropriate selection, as all tribute albums walk a very narrow tightrope, as there is an inevitable dichotomy: if the songs are too close to the original, what is the point of the cover version? And if it’s so different that it loses the original vibe and feeling of the song, then failure is almost guaranteed, although Nouvelle Vague’s Marian is a much-admired exception to this rule.

As all of the artists on this sumptuously-produced CD – Eldritch would surely approve of the attention to detail and quality of design of the cover, with the lettering in gold leaf and a Gustav Doré image at the centre – are clearly themselves huge fans of TSOM, the overall effect is as much Veneris as Honoris – that is, even the most respected of bands on the current scene end up tweaking, rather than reinventing, the original songs.

There are few better contemporary bands than Delphine Coma, the Kill Shelter/Antipole collaboration and Leeds act Deathtrippers, yet their contributions here (Amphetamine Logic, Nine While Nine and Burn respectively), although spirited updates of the original tracks with novelty endings, bring little genuinely new to the table. Professions of faith, recognitions of musical debts owed, acts of devotion, yes. But these bands’ own thrillingly original recent recordings say far more about the ongoing influence of The Sisters of Mercy than these competently straight cover versions ever could (and can be sampled here, here and here).

The reticence of these bigger names on the current scene to take more liberties with The Sisters of Mercy’s compositions is all the more surprising when you consider Eldritch’s own cavalier attitude to other peoples’ songs. The stentorian gloom of The Sisters’ Gimme Shelter, the bombastic pomp of Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door and the irreverent dash through Jolene all proved the theory that you shouldn’t cover a song unless you can radically improve it.

Covering TSOM songs comes with the additional difficulty of how to attempt the vocals. Eldritch is reviled by many critics because of his idiosyncratic singing style, but the many failed attempts by other artists to cover his songs are testament to the difficulty faced in attempting to better the drama, the emotion and the power of his original TSOM vocal. Some of the tracks on this new compilation fall down on that score: Selfishadows’ Marian has some very heavily accented English and some unorthodox phrasing, Swesor Bhrater’s otherwise promising On The Wire is let down by a Depeche Mode style vocal which crushes the vulnerability and fragility of the original Eldritch performance, whilst the reforming A Wedding Anniversary lather their muscular Giving Ground with a melodramatic vocal better suited to musical theatre (or perhaps a H.I.M. tribute album).

Others are more successful. The “whisper to a strained shout” dramatic range of Opium Dream Estate’s singer on Some Kind of Stranger is a brave attempt, and the overall folky low-fi Levellers feel makes for one of the more interesting tracks on the album. Versari’s arrangement of Heartland also deserves credit, stripping the song back and them smothering it in guitar feedback and harmonics. But the twin highlights for me were The Raudive’s take on Colours and Years of Denial’s tongue-in-cheek Poison Door, which reinvents the song as a highly effective dark electro dancefloor stomper, with a Gina X vibe straight from a seedy Berlin nightclub. The Raudive apparently selected Colours himself as his choice of cover, and the 9 minute 38 second version on the CD is superb, building slowly with increasingly complex layers of sound and fitting new motifs to the stark original, endowing it with an epic cinematic soundscape quality which is (heretical thought ahoy!) arguably superior to the original.

As well as being available on this limited-edition CD (350 copies), Honoris II is also being released on cassette (with accompanying booklet) and pre-order gold vinyl whilst the final few copies of the CD are available from Bandcamp.