Good stuff, the faintly shimmering guitars of First and Last and Always are catchy and what keep you coming back to the dreariness. The vocalist is pretty bad though, you can hear him really putting pressure on his throat to create that unnatural deep voice and it’s kind of silly and melodramatic—but everything else about this shows the darkness is meant to be taken seriously, so that’s a problem. Andrew Eldritch’s vocals are far from unlistenable, but he’s so obviously forcing it that I can’t ignore it in favor of the music. The percussion is a bit loud at times, I pity anyone who has a remastered version of the album.

It just dawned on me that Eldritch sounds like none other than one Michael Gira. Of course, Gira has less of a guttural sound to his vocals because they’re more natural.