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Ben Christo is a guitarist who has learned that volume is rarely the most dangerous thing a guitar can do. Sometimes the sharper weapon is restraint: three notes placed with intent, a riff stripped until it stops showing off, a melody dark enough to carry memory without collapsing under its own drama. That sense of control runs through his long tenure with The Sisters of Mercy, where guitar often works as atmosphere, pressure and architecture rather than simple attack. Yet Christo’s musical life is much wider than one band’s mythology.

With Ricky Warwick, he returns to a more instinctive rock language, closer to the teenage thrill of classic guitar energy. With Diamond Black, the emotional centre moves closer to his own life, touching mental health, chronic pain, alcoholism, recovery and the difficult work of making hope sound earned. His phrase for the thread running through it all is “dark, gritty melody”. It is a useful key to this conversation. In this interview for Side-Line Magazine, Ben Christo speaks with us about The Sisters of Mercy, Diamond Black, sobriety, songwriting as narrative movement, Andrew Eldritch’s lessons in restraint, the way new songs change on stage, and what fans may expect from the next tour.

Ben Christo interview

Karo: Ben, thank you for taking the time. We have around 30 minutes, so I will try to stay focused. I wanted to start with your recent tour with Ricky Warwick. It seems like a very different musical environment from The Sisters of Mercy: more direct rock’n’roll energy, more organic movement, and a different relationship with the audience. What does a run like that give you as a player before you move back toward something more controlled like The Sisters?

Ben: Yeah, that’s such a great question. To see that very clear contrast between the two performance styles. As you’ve pointed out with the Ricky Warwick show, it is very much what feels right in the moment. The last show that we played was this fantastic festival called Bonfest, and that was the last show we played. It was a big stage, big audience, and it really gave me a good chance to connect with something very inveterate, I think, in my own playing, which is simply playing three chord rock on a Gibson SG to an excited crowd. And that’s something that I think is very much in the roots of where I’ve come from as a player, where I’ve come from in terms of my influences and my very early influences being things like AC/DC and Def Leppard and these more classic rock bands. So I did feel during those shows a real connection with myself as a teenager and a child again. It was a very joyful feeling and a very different kind of enjoyment than I get from playing The Sisters of Mercy shows, where I feel within that that I’m stepping more into an existing personality of the band’s aesthetic, which does have perhaps more guidelines, even unspoken guidelines, than something like a classic rock, rock and roll show like Ricky Warwick, where the guidelines are kind of: there are no guidelines, just rock. Just have a good time, just enjoy yourself. And so, yeah, it is a very different dynamic. And both are freeing and liberating in different ways.

Karo: Would you say that Ricky Warwick reconnects you more with a more instinctive guitar language?

Ben: Absolutely. That’s a very good way of putting it. That instinctive guitar language is very much where I feel that I am with the Ricky Warwick dynamic. Absolutely.

Karo: What about Diamond Black? It gives you a different kind of exposure, because the songs, the emotional centre and the visual identity sit much closer to you personally. What does Diamond Black allow you to say or risk that would not belong inside, for example, The Sisters?

Ben: Well, it’s very much talking lyrically about the experiences that I’ve had of issues around mental health, alcoholism, chronic pain, and being able to talk very directly to the audience. Not necessarily going into detail about: this happened to me, this was this thing. The songs talk about that in-between. I get to just talk more generally about mental health and give guidance, but without it being, I’d like to think, preachy in any way. It’s just suggestions and it’s just my experience. And one of the things that I was often saying during the last tour before the final song was that “this song is dedicated to anybody who felt quite nervous about coming out tonight. Maybe they felt like they couldn’t face the world, that they didn’t have the confidence, but they still did it and they’re still here tonight. So whoever overcame that demon, this song is dedicated to you.” And it was really, really enriching that many people would come up to me afterwards and say, “I was that person. That was me. I almost didn’t come because I was too nervous. I felt too self-conscious, but I did it. And to be recognised for that, I feel seen.” And that’s such nice feedback to get, particularly as I imagine a lot of people feel like that. I’ve felt like that. I still feel like that, of overcoming that anxiety to come out for a night, come to an event, put yourself out there. So, yeah, things like that, where it’s not specifically talking about, hey, “this is what happened to me.” It’s more like “these are the observations that I’ve made through my experiences, seen through a lens of what I hope are shared experiences that people can connect with and relate to.”

Ben Christo - Photo by Karo Kratochwil — Ben Christo – Photo by Karo Kratochwil

Karo: You have posted very openly about sobriety, and I was following those posts because they were very encouraging. Alcohol is often treated as part of the music scene, or at least part of its mythology. Do you feel that sobriety changed your relationship with performance, recovery, discipline and the emotional rhythm of being on the road? Of course, only if you are comfortable answering.

Ben: Well, firstly, thank you for reading those or watching those so carefully. And that feedback you’ve given me is very encouraging. I definitely think it was a very happy accident that very naturally the necessity for me to move into sobriety then became part of what I wanted to present within my music. What’s really interesting was that in the first bunch of songs that the band released, Diamond Black, we had a song called “If You Kill My Demons”. And the idea about that was, the lyric was written about the idea that “without destructive behaviours, I am not the real me. Those destructive behaviours are the real me.” The voice of the protagonist of the song was saying that “if you take away the demons of alcoholism and self-sabotage, then I stop becoming myself. I need those things in order to be me.” And that was how I felt back then. That was when I was still drinking heavily and engaging in self-sabotaging behaviours. And then I was able to look back at that lyric, still perform the song and go, “this is the way I used to feel. This is a voice of a previous attitude, an incarnation of myself.” But when we entered a newer era of the band, the songs very naturally became about looking at things like alcohol, alcoholism and self-sabotage, and then looking at the positive aspects of overcoming those things in a slightly oblique way, because some of those songs were still written in a time when I was still drinking alcohol. However, what’s great is that the new album that we’re working on is 10 songs that have all been written in sobriety and therefore are able to reflect stories retrospectively regarding alcoholism, chronic pain, self-sabotage, and in a much more progressive way. Because the starting point of the song is one of struggle. But for each of the songs, there is a sense of a journey, that by the end, there is an element of hope, an element of progression that says, “okay, so we started in this place in verse one. By chorus three, we’re somewhere else. We’re still looking at the problem, but we’re looking at some solutions at this point.” And there’s a glimpse of a way out, which is something that previous songs didn’t have. They just existed within the same scene for the entirety of the song. The new songs all have this narrative arc where we go from the initial setup of “this is the status quo at the start – the destructive element. By the end of the song, there’s progression.” And not only do I think that reflects my beliefs well, I think it’s just kind of a cool thing to do with songwriting, to take people on a journey from the start to the end. I never really used to think of it like that. I used to think a song, basically, you start and you end in the same place. Maybe you make some changes to one of the lyrics, or you have an extra guitar at the end or some more vocal harmonies or whatever. That’s the change, not the story. The story isn’t changing. It was pointed out to me by someone who’s very good at lyrics that that was one of the weaknesses in my lyrics: they didn’t have a narrative arc. Anything that’s any piece of art, like a movie or a music video, there’s a journey. Songs are different because they don’t explicitly say, “let us tell you a story.” They say, “let us tell you a feeling.” But you’ve got the opportunity there to observe that feeling from different vantage points from the start to the end. And I find that was a really interesting and fun thing to do with the song, to say: “okay, how can I change this by chorus three so that it still is the same kind of a chorus, but there are little subtle changes in the words that mean that we’ve moved somewhere else?”

Karo: That is a beautiful kind of progress to show. It gives the listener a chance to participate in this journey, even from the outside. Moving to another area of your work: you work across very different contexts, Diamond Black, session work, touring with other artists and The Sisters. When you move between these worlds, what changes first for you as a player?

Ben: That’s a very interesting question. And I wonder if it’s just been something out of necessity, that due to the nature of how my career has developed, I have by necessity had to fulfil different roles. If I was someone like, let’s say, Dave Gahan from Depeche Mode, that’s what I do. I write the songs like that, I sing like that, I perform like that. That’s it. For myself, however, I have a number of different substrata to my brand or my identity as a musician that I can step into, whether that being something that’s more moody or something that’s more energetic or even something that’s a bit heavier and more aggressive. I love all those things. Therefore, I’m able to step authentically into all of those things. I can play in a hardcore metal band. I can play in a dark indie band. I can play in an emotional, acapella vocal band. Because as long as there’s an element within it that I engage with, then I can feel authentic and excited. And that element for me always is: dark, gritty melody. That’s my kind of keystone of: “do I like this music?” It doesn’t matter what genre it is. “Does it have dark, gritty melody?” If it does, I like it. That tends to be my guiding star. And that means that I can like anything from some singer-songwriter folk that is impassioned and dark and moving to something that is a lot heavier, as long as I still feel it’s got melody. I still feel the lyrics mean something. And I’ve got that whole spectrum because, as I said, that same key thing is there. So all of the projects that I’ve been involved in that I’ve really enjoyed the most generally have a sense of dark, gritty melody. Some of the songs that that band has or that project has might not be completely within the Venn diagram of what I like. There might be some stuff on the periphery, but most of it is in the middle. So, say, for example, if I was to play with a punk band, most of their songs are quite dark and quite aggressive. They might have some ska songs as well. Now, I’m not so much into ska, but as long as the lyric and the melody and the general vibe of the band still retains that element, that personality, and doesn’t suddenly just become, “hey, really fun music”, I still feel I can invest in the project in general.

Karo: When I think about The Sisters’ guitar sound, it is often as much about space and absence as it is about riffs. There is a discipline in what you choose not to play. How do you decide what to leave out? Is that something you arrive at in rehearsal, or something you feel in the moment on stage?

Ben: It’s something that certainly had to be taught to me, because when I first came to the band when I was 25, I wanted to play all the time. I felt like every song was an opportunity for me to show everything. It was driven by a kind of fear of, “if I don’t show everything that I can do, people won’t think I’m very good!” So every song is a chance for me to go, “hey, look, I can do this, this and this,” regardless of whether or not the song’s mood and story needed it. So how that then developed over the years was, first of all, Andrew was very good at saying, “okay, look, I think you’ve got a lot of potential. You’re here. Let’s reduce what you’re doing. Let’s really think about these three notes that you’re going to play all the way through this song. You have to play them really well. You have to play them with the right kind of emotion and restraint. Sometimes you have to not play them and just stand there.” And he taught me a lot about that, and he got me to listen to a lot of Atlantic Records, Motown music that he loved when he was growing up and said: “listen to the restraint. Listen to how one instrument just does the same thing all the way through the song, because that’s its part in the machine of the song. Listen to the emotion behind this music because it’s been written and performed in a time of great oppression from the people who are creating it. Think about how that is being imbued into three or four notes.” It’s not just about, “hey, look at this cool thing I can do.” You’re telling a story of a time and a place and a climate. And so that meant that when I got to play riffs like, let’s say “Dominion”, just three, four, five notes throughout the song pretty much, I was able to think, “I’m not just playing three notes. I’m playing something that tells a very important story about the song.” But also, these three or four notes have found their way into the hearts of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people, and they mean something. I want to play them right. I want people to hear them and think, “oh my God, that takes me back to this. Or that reminds me of that person, or this song feels like me.” And that’s going to work if those notes are played in the right way and if those notes are played with the right kind of sound as well, the right effects, the right guitar, the right kind of velocity that you’re playing the notes. So it’s all really important. And it reminded me, particularly when it’s songs that people really care about, how important it is to have fidelity to what they’ve heard on the record that has been part of their life soundtrack.

Karo: Brutal Assault announced that The Sisters of Mercy pulled out of the 2026 edition because the band had moved up the recording schedule for a new album. That sentence landed like a small explosion in the fan community after so many years of speculation. What was it like watching that public reaction from inside the band?

Ben: That’s something I can’t really comment on, I’m afraid.

Karo: I understand. Then let me ask more generally about the group of newer songs. Many are credited to you, to Andrew Eldritch and to Dylan Smith, with some other credits as well. These songs have already lived on stage and inside the audience before any possible studio version. If material like that enters the recording process, does it arrive already shaped by the live experience?

Ben: I think what happens, generally speaking, with that process in any band is that the song gets written in a rehearsal room initially, and then sometimes you can record a demo of it just because you want a reference as a band to go, “okay, look, how does this go? Oh, look, we’ve done that, to decide how the parts work.” Sometimes songs can be written like that as recordings, people sending recordings back and forth: “I’ve come up with this. Okay, I’ll send it to your house and your computer, you can add something to it, I’ll send something back.” And that can be a process, that the song is written, or certainly some of the song is written. And then, yes, the live performances will shape the song. You’ll realise things that work and things that don’t work. It’s a bit like if you are performing a play and you start to realise which bits get a good laugh, which bits create a lot of tension, and you’re able to then amp those up or show restraint. “Oh, actually, that joke didn’t work very well. Or when we try and do this dramatic scene, it doesn’t land. It doesn’t feel right.” You can’t tell certain things until you actually do them live in front of an audience, both with music and with acting, performance. So, yes, the songs have certainly been shaped by the live performances and the things that we’ve naturally felt either as players or as performers – what does the audience vibe, what do they get from this – that have then shaped the progression of the song’s development.

Karo: Your name appears in the credits of several newer songs, so your role is not only interpretive. When you bring a riff, a structure or an idea to The Sisters, how much of it tends to survive the process? Does the song strip back, mutate, or become something you did not expect?

Ben: All of the above, really. Sometimes I’ll bring a fully fleshed-out song and one part of the main riff will then be changed and be made into the bassline or something, and the song will develop like that. Other times I’ve come with a fairly comprehensive map of the song and then vocals have been added to it, or riffs and ideas have been taken away or developed, often simplified when I’m working with the other guys in the band. And it’s finally found its final destination through that process. Or I’ve got a bit of a riff idea and then that gets built on by everybody else and myself. And then finally the original riff idea will have disappeared entirely. And it was only what came later that was inspired by the original riff that actually becomes the song.

Karo: You joined The Sisters when you were 25, so it is close to two decades of playing with them, which makes you one of the longest-serving members in the band’s history, apart from Andrew, of course. Beyond the mythology, Andrew Eldritch is a bandleader you have been making music with for a very long time. What have you learned from him about how to lead a band, hold a sound together, or simply make decisions inside a project this singular?

Ben: Yeah, definitely. I think the ethos that I’ve taken away with the songwriting is often when I’m writing for my own projects or other people’s projects that I’ve been asked to write for and I’m composing a guitar melody or a vocal melody, I’ll often think: “could this be simpler? Would this make the cut for a Sisters of Mercy song? Could it be simpler? Could it be more interesting?” It’s often about, you’ve got three notes, but instead of putting them in one place in the bar, you move them to an unexpected place in the bar. And those sort of techniques that hitherto I probably wouldn’t have considered. I’d just think, “hey, let’s do as much as possible. If it sounds cool, let’s just do it.” Rather than “actually, how could this be better by doing less and doing less in a more interesting and unique way? And how can we get more out of this piece of music, not by adding more notes, but by considering how we present those notes and when we present those notes?” That is definitely something that I got from working on The Sisters’ material.

Karo: To close our conversation, I wanted to bring it back to the upcoming tour. I will probably be seeing you in Wrocław on 22 October. What can fans expect from this tour, without revealing too much?

Ben: Well, I guess what I can say is that where we left off on the last tour might be a good barometer or a good directional point to say “it will probably have some of these elements.” Where we were when we finished the last tour, we had a pretty fair split of recorded works and unrecorded works in the set list. Things would come and go, so other new songs would come in, other older songs would come in, and there would be some fluctuation there. The show itself, I think, is very visually unique in terms of the way that light and shapes and stage set are used. I think we have developed a really powerful frontline of the band. I think Kai has brought so much to the band that when we last played in certain places in Europe, Kai wouldn’t have been there. So that’s something that some audiences wouldn’t have witnessed before. Kai’s brought something very special, particularly vocally, to the band that was different from what we were doing before. And so for people witnessing the band for the first time since perhaps 2022, there will be key differences. And I think one of those key differences is what Kai brings to the table. It’s a different vibe, it’s a different feel, it highlights a different part of Sisters history than other iterations of the band have highlighted. I’m not saying any particular iteration of the band is better or worse than any other. It’s just I think people who come to this band have some kind of connection and history with it, and they bring that history with them or that connection that they’ve personally made to the band, and then they present that on stage as part of their performance. That’s certainly what I did when I first came to the band. For some reason, I decided it was more of a metal band than it really was, “Vision Thing” being my main album that I’d known as a kid, and therefore I thought, “oh, this must be really heavy guitars all the time.” Not recognising that for many of the fans, the more important part of The Sisters sound was something that was colder and had more restraint and was more spacious and more cinematic, and it took a while to find that nice balance. So, yeah, I think members and players for The Sisters can sometimes bring what they liked as fans or as followers of the band to the band. Even if they weren’t particularly fans of the band before they came to it, everyone pretty much knew something about the band before they came to it, so they bring that something with them. And I think Kai brings a very special something that maybe previous iterations haven’t brought.

Karo: Apart from The Sisters of Mercy, will the time before the tour be preparation for you, or will you be doing some other shows with other bands and focusing on your own project?

Ben: So in July, I’ve got some festival shows with Ricky Warwick again. There’s the Wacken Festival, which is going to be cool. There’s Firevolt Festival in the UK and a few others. And then I’m going to be working on the Diamond Black album. We are in the mixing stage now, so that’s where we’re at. And just trying to get a sound that everybody feels represents what is important to them individually, I think, and as a band. And yeah, that’s kind of the focus for the next part of the year before September.

Karo: Thank you very much, Ben. That was a lovely chat. I really appreciate your time.

Ben: You’re very welcome. And I think your questions were extremely well thought-out and researched. It was a really fun interview for me to do because you’d put the time in and you clearly are passionate about the things we were talking about. So thank you very much.

About Ben Christo

Ben Christo, born Benjamin David Christodoulou on 22 March 1980 in Bristol, England, is a guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and session musician. He began playing as a child and first drew national attention with the punk-metal band AKO, which he co-founded in 1998 and which released the album “Find Yourself” in 2001 before splitting after a 2005 show at South By South West.

In 2006 Ben Christo joined The Sisters of Mercy as lead guitarist and backing vocalist, having been approached by the band in December 2005. He has toured worldwide with the group and co-written newer songs with Andrew Eldritch and guitarist Dylan Smith, several of which were premiered across the 2019-2020 and 2022 tours. Ben Christo is now one of the band’s longest-serving members alongside Eldritch.

Alongside The Sisters, Christo founded the melodic rock band Night By Night in 2008, releasing the album “NxN” in 2014, and established the dark rock band Diamond Black in 2016, whose debut single appeared in 2017. Diamond Black now works as a three-piece with Christo on lead vocals. As a writer and session player Ben Christo has contributed to Lord of the Lost’s number-two German chart album “Judas” (2021), PIG’s “Risen” (2018), records by Esprit D’Air, and Ricky Warwick’s 2025 album “Blood Ties”; he joined Warwick’s touring band in 2022.

In March 2026 The Sisters of Mercy withdrew from that year’s Brutal Assault festival, moving up the recording schedule for a new studio album. In this interview Ben Christo confirms that a new Diamond Black album, written entirely in sobriety, is in the mixing stage, with festival dates alongside Ricky Warwick set for July and a Sisters of Mercy tour that reaches Wrocław on 22 October.

Karo Kratochwil

Based in Wrocław, I work as a music journalist and photographer covering electro, industrial, EBM, gothic, and darkwave. My work includes features and live coverage, as well as concert, portrait, promo, and theater photography. What interests me most is the connection between artistic intention, what the work communicates, and what unfolds live on stage, all in pursuit of the bigger picture behind the music.

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