European Summer Festivals 2019
In December 2018, after nearly a year of silence, The Sisters of Mercy gradually announced
various summer festival performances all over Europe in 2019. Finally, seven concerts were
envisaged in total. To everyone's surprise the first show was scheduled for France followed
by Spain, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Portugal.
Almost at the same time announcements trickled in of a worldwide club tour in autum 2019.
However, as the festival events drew near it showed that Chris Catalyst would not be available
for touring with The Sisters of Mercy that year and speculations started about who would be
there to possibly replace him.
Finally, the guitarist of choice turned out to be Dylan Smith,
an Australian instrumentalist and composer and a friend of
Ben Christo's. A confirming picture of him was soon installed
on The Sisters' Live News Page.
The first performance of Dylan Smith with The Sisters of Mercy
took place on June 22nd, 2019 at HELLFEST 2019 in France.
Band/Line-Up
- Andrew Eldritch - vocals
- Ben Christo - guitars, backing vocals
- Dylan Smith - guitars, backing vocals
- Doktor Avalanche - drums, bass, keyboared
- Ravey Davey - The Nurse
Tour Schedule
Finally six gigs, five countries ... apparently only few audience recordings were made.
But videos from the gigs are available in the pages for each date as came in from YouTube.
After the festival gigs, The Sisters of Mercy stopped over in Greece for two club shows
in Thessaloniki and Athens before starting off their National Treasure Tour 2019 with
a Near Meth Experience preparatory concert in Belgium.
During all three of these concerts
a new and to-date untitled instrumental was played to the audiences which met with general
appreciation and remained part of the setlist not only for that year.
| DATE / EVENT / LOCATION | RECORDED |
| 22/06/2019 - Hellfest 2019 - Clisson (near Nantes) - France The first ever appearance of The Sisters of Mercy at a festival in France took place late at night between 1:05am and 02:05am of June 23rd to be exact |
FULL SHOW VIDEO |
| Unfortunately, the revival of this famous festival first got moved from the Pryrenees to Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, a racecourse in Montemeló near Barcelona, and then had to be fully cancelled and given up by the organisers. | |
| 31/07/2019 - W:O:A - Wacken Open Air Festival - Wacken - Germany Being invited to play at the Wacken Open Air for the first time, The Sisters presented their show between 10:45pm and 11:45pm on the W:E:T Stage. | |
| 09/08/2019 - PictureOn Festival 2019 - Bildein - Austria The Sisters of Mercy played on Day One of this two-day festival from 10:05 to 11:35 pm. | |
| 16/08/2019 - Hammaburg Fest 2019 - Hamburg - Germany The Sisters of Mercy headlined this festival in their once hometown of Hamburg. |
POSSIBLY |
| 21/08/2019 - Venoge Festival 2019 - Penthalaz - Vaud - Switzerland There's nothing but a regular stop in Switzerland for another festival gig... So after Rock Oz'Arènes in Avanches 2017, it was Venoge in 2019. |
YES |
| 23/08/2019 - Vilar De Mouros Festival 2019 - Vilar De Mouros - Caminha - Portugal The oldest rock festival in Portugal welcomed The Sisters of Mercy on Day 2 of that year's three-day event. |
YES |
| Greek concerts between tours | |
| 12/09/2019 - Fix Factory Of Sound - Thessaloniki - Greece The last concert here was 10 years ago. |
FULL SHOW VIDEO |
| 13/09/2019 - Gazi Music Hall - Athens - Greece A new instrumental was presented to the Greek audiences. |
FULL SHOW VIDEO |
Further information on the individual gigs, including reviews, photos and recordings can be found under the according links
and/or in the Sisters 2019 Section @The Heartland Forums.
Shirts and Merchandise
A view of The Sisters' merchandise stand in Hamburg (as well as reports from the fanbase) showed that there was no wide range of or any new mechandise for this tour.
With one exception - for the concerts in Hamburg, Bildein, Venoge and Vilar De Mouros head-and-star-logo t-shirts with the individual concert date on the back were printed.
Whether this was the case for the other 2019 festival gigs in at Hellfest and W:O:A as well is not known. Many thanks for the first series of the below photos to poison-door-
net and Eggi. The second series of pictures is taken from The Sisters of Mercy's Offical Online Merchandise Store, where these and other items are available.
Song Statistics
The setlist of this tour consisted mainly of the 15 songs performed at Hellfest 2019 in France. The following gig in the forerun of Wacken Open Air 2019, Germany saw Lucretia replaced by Marian. But both tracks remained part of all further festival gigs that year. As The Sisters of Mercy headlined Day One of the Bildein PictureOn Festival in Austria allowing for a longer stage time, Summer, Flood II and Something Fast were added to the set. The following Hammaburg Fest in Hamburg, Germany saw the initial set plus Marian complemented by Flood II for which Arms was taken off. The final two gigs at Venoge Festival, Switzerland and in Vilar de Mouros, Portugal came without both Flood II and Arms. The latter song as well as When You Don't See Me were also omitted from the concerts in Greece, which instead brought with them I Was Wrong, a rediscovered Something Fast and a new instrumental untitled up until to-day. The second Greek concert, in Athens, ended without Lucretia and was one song shorter (17) than the Thessaloniki gig (18).
| Song | Times Played |
Song | Times Played |
Song | Times Played | ||
| More | 8 | Ribbons | 8 | Doctor Jeep / Detonation Boulevard | 8 | ||
| Crash And Burn | 8 | No Time To Cry | 8 | Alice | 8 | ||
| First And Last And Always | 8 | Marian | 7 | We Are The Same, Susanne | 8 | ||
| Dominion / Mother Russia | 8 | When You Don't See Me | 6 | Lucretia, My Reflection | 6 | ||
| Vision Thing | 8 | Temple Of Love | 8 | This Corrosion | 8 | ||
| Arms | 3 | Flood II | 4 | Summer | 1 | ||
| Something Fast | 3 | I Was Wrong | 2 | New Instrumental (Untitled) | 2 |
