“We always like creating a safe space to come together. We’ve always attracted a lot of marginalized people,” says Ben Christo, who’s been playing guitar and bass in legendary English post-punk band The Sisters Of Mercy since 2006, alongside founder and frontman Andrew Eldritch. Last year The Sisters Of Mercy embarked on their first North American tour in over 14 years. The tour included a stellar night at The Fillmore Philadelphia, which featured a plethora of new music, including the first tracks co-written by Christo. “A lot of those unrecorded works had been written by us starting in like 2019, which was the first time I had been a contributor on the work. As someone who grew up as a fan of the band, this was a huge deal for me,” Ben tells me during a recent phone chat. He also says that fans were more than happy to hear the new material: “We stick to this idea of making it 50/50… optimistic that we can get some new, new songs that no one’s heard before… balanced with the greatest hits and songs people have spent years and years listening to… As long as it sounds like the band they went to see, they’ll be happy, and then you’ll throw in a hit next! They’ll be like, ‘This is quite cool,’ and then, ‘Oh! I love this song!’”
Ben tells me that one of the biggest highlights of last year’s 19-date US tour (which he admits to being a highlight of his tenure in the band… who have been making music since the early ‘80s, but who haven’t officially released new music since 1993), was bringing together all of these marginalized people for an event where everyone can feel free to be themselves: “Something had happened in the interim, since the last time we toured the states, in 2008… We’re a lot bigger than it had been in 2008, and it’s been really wide demographics: all different ages, all different ethnicities, all different genders, punks, metallers, goths, pop kids, rock kids… people who are now parents who got on their leather jacket for the night and came down.”
The last time I chatted with Ben Christo was May of last year, the day after opening night of their last US tour (at The Fillmore in Silver Spring, MD) and the day before they played Las Vegas’ inaugural Sick New World festival, which he tells me was a dream-come-true of sorts: “It was brilliant! Sick New World just blew me away. The coolest thing for me about being in The Sisters Of Mercy is that the biggest influence of a lot of the bands I love is Andrew Eldritch and The Sisters Of Mercy, like Cold, Sevendust, Papa Roach… all these bands grew up listening to The Sisters, and I grew up listening to them!”
Christo says that another major highlight of the tour was the band reuniting (Well, technically Andrew was the only one there the first time.) with Berlin’s Terri Nunn at the Hollywood Palladium. And I’m surprised to hear that Ben was actually the one who connected with the legendary LA synth-pop frontwoman: “She and I just started chatting on Instagram, and she sang on ‘Under the Gun,’ the last song The Sisters Of Mercy recorded, and she asked if she could come and sing on the track, and I was like, ‘Well, we don’t play that song, could we do something else?’” Andrew liked the idea and decided that Terri would be perfect for “Temple of Love,” the band’s 1983 single that originally featured Israeli singer Ofra Haza. And Ben agrees that it was pretty much perfect: “We got to soundcheck, and she’d obviously done her homework. I burst into laughter, because it was so good!”
This May The Sisters Of Mercy announced a 26-date North American Fall tour, which will have them playing The Met on Wednesday, September 18th, for their biggest ever date in the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection, and the band is actually sporting a new lineup since we last saw them. Joining Andrew, Ben, and Chris Catalyst — who served as a guitarist from 2005-2019 and last year took on the role of “duty nurse” for Doktor Avalanche, the band’s famous drum machine – is Kai, the leader of British-Japanese prog metal outfit Esprit D’Air, who’s now playing guitar for TSOM. And apparently Ben and Kai met while doing a pretty different type of ‘80s music: “Shot Through The Heart is a night of doing ‘80s rock and hair metal covers in London. We did the obvious things like Guns N’ Roses, Motley Crue, Def Leppard, but also unexpected things, like D.A.D., Dokken, Winger, and Cinderella. We bonded over Night Songs, the first Cinderella record, and Kai does a really good Tom Keifer impression.”
However, Christo and Kai have also collaborated on original music: “I did the song ‘Dead Zone’ with Esprit D’Air [on 2022’s Oceans], which is a song I wrote about my recovery from alcoholism, which was very new at the time. I’d been sober for about three or four months… Working with someone on something that’s so meaningful to you really helps to create a bond.” And when it came time for Esprit D’Air to tour the album, Ben joined them with his own project: “My band, Diamond Black, then came and supported them on tour and we did ‘Dead Zone’ together every night.” When the opportunity for Kai to join the fold in The Sisters Of Mercy, Ben tells me that he just felt like the obvious choice: “We were looking for another guitarist who sings and who’s talented and has a good work ethic, and I knew he could do it!”
Although The Sisters Of Mercy have spent the past year or so perfecting their current live show, Ben assures me that it won’t be the same every night: “The setlist tends to change on a nightly basis. It can change on the night, much to the annoyance of the technical team, who have to put together the production and setlist in like 30 minutes [laughs].” However, he tells me that Alan, the band’s lighting technician, always pulls through, putting a new spin on the group’s famous (and sometimes infamous) live show: “It’s more like a theatre performance than a big rock light show, there’s a lot of drama to it. We had a reputation as being a band that used a lot of dry ice, and it got a little stupid [laughs]. Now we say that lights are the new smoke.” Ben even admits that his first tours with the band could be a little ridiculous: “We did some shows in the early 2000s when the smoke was a bit overwhelming. It might just sit there in the venue for 90 minutes and you can’t see anything beyond the first five rows, which just gets annoying [laughs].”
The band’s upcoming tour not only features The Sisters Of Mercy playing more dates than last year, but has them playing bigger rooms, both of which Ben tells me he’s quite excited about.
“There’re places we’ve never played before, like the Florida show is a town we’ve never played before, and I’m really excited for these legendary venues, like Radio City Music Hall and the Greek Theatre. I’m excited for going back to Canada. I was disappointed we couldn’t do that on the last tour… And with these classic venues, that was something we really wanted to do, to play these classic venues where the very experience of being in that space augments the experience.”
*Get your tickets here.
