A Slight Case Of Overbombing (Greatest Hits Vol. 1)

The Sisters of Mercy sound is motorcycle guitar meets Bach, and it works. Lead singer and frontman Andrew Eldritch's voice is quintessential Gothic, a la Peter Murphy, carrying all the edginess you'd expect to come with the black-leather, pale-skin look, but soothing in its own right. Lyrically, the songs hit a mark that eludes today's wannabe Goth/Pop tunes. When's the last time anything in the top 40 approached the sharp complexity of "I hear the roar of a big machine/Hot metal and methedrine"? What's more, these lyrics dare to have haunting depth, as the chorus of probably their best-known song, "More," pleas for what we all want: "And I need all the love I can get/And I need all the love that I can't get, too."