"I'm getting bored," thinks Doktor Avalanche. "I've been playing this jaunty shuffle beat for nigh on 20 minutes. When are the rest of the band going to turn up, for heaven's sake?" He carries on shuffling while the crowd chatters and smokes, until at last he senses a surge in the electrical system, and a crimson flood of guitars bathes him in ecstasy. Now he is licensed to rock.

Doktor Avalanche, of course, is a drum machine. The Sisters of Mercy have, wisely, never employed a human drummer. The uncanny precision of the bass drum and the futuristic violence of the snare remind us that the Sisters forged the template for all the Chemical Brothers-style techno-rock that flared in the mid-90s.

The Sisters have been around so long that frontman Andrew Eldritch's trademark Aviator sunglasses are back in fashion - and, for all I know, so is his white polo-neck sweater. But this is not a band given to visual excess: the musicians prefer to stand backlit, an anonymous brotherhood, while Eldritch prowls through the green and purple smoke.

While Doktor Avalanche pounds and clatters, the guitars crunch out power chords. Eldritch alternates harsh muttering with Bowie-esque yodelling, or those howls with falsetto attacks so beloved of New Romantics. In between songs he growls soothingly in German.

Then one guitarist lets rip the chords that introduce Dominion. "Some day, some way - Dominion!" choruses the crowd. The inexorable riffing offers a seductive illusion of power: the audience is made to feel that, in some way, it is causing the music to happen, driving the riffs through force of collective will.

The Sisters of Mercy offer glorious rallying hymns for the downtrodden, and for that we salute them. But they didn't play This Corrosion, and for that we are inconsolable.

***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable ** Mediocre * Terrible