The Mission – God is a Bullet

Release date: Out Now

Format: Album
Genre: Pop Goth
Our Rating: 3/5


The Mission, partially spawned from dissolved goth-rock band Sisters of Mercy (namely Wayne Hussey and Craig Adams,) have managed enough material to cobble together another album to add to their already prolific output. Although they get through band members quicker than Spinal Tap gets through drummers, the two fractured bands have repeatedly created a fairly steady stream of reasonably decent quality songs.

The first track on The Mission’s latest album at first comes across as being a dark, Perfect Circle-a-like song with similar brooding atmospherics, only without the gritty, guttural vocals. This initial sinister start is abruptly cut off with the following song, ‘Keep it in the Family’, which seems to be climbing further up the pop ladder in terms of music, but certainly not in terms of content as it appears from the outset to be about incest...

The tracks that follow on do seem to veer across fairly different styles of the same genre, some offering poppier tracks while others embark on soaring AOR efforts. Some tracks affect the de-tuned aspects of grunge while others claim a slower, deeper approach more akin to a more dulcet toned ‘Radiohead’. This is most notable on the track, ‘Father’, which if listened to out of context from the album could be considered to be an early ‘Radiohead’ B-side. Each song on the album is also separated by varying subject matter, usually regarding some of the darker sides of human activity. In fact The Mission run through the full spectrum, boasting songs about animal cruelty, voyeurism and even premature ejaculation…

Although this album is definitely firmly in the misunderstood teenager camp, (especially with the inclusion of the latter theme…) it still seems to grab attention with its searching vocals and 80’s style jangly guitar riffs. In places the band picks up a slight ‘Faith No More’ twang that I can only appreciate. The fact that the band members are getting on in years but still write the kinds of songs that hormonal kids whose parents stopped their pocket money lap up, actually goes somewhere towards their favour as it does at least keep The Mission sounding fresh. This constant reinvention with every other new song seems all the more of an achievement when you consider that the band celebrates it’s 21st anniversary this year, and they’re still making the kind of music that helped build their cult status. The Mission, like their namesake, have an agenda to spread adolescent, 80’s oriented rock anthems into the new millennium, only without the preening haircutted folk who we’re ordinarily used to when we talk about the 80’s these days. Good luck to ‘em I say.


Review by Paul Walters

www.themissionuk.com

www.myspace.com/themissionuk 

MyVillage, 25th May