When someone tries to smite you
Turn the other cheek and walk away
And if they’re spreading lies to spite you
Don’t listen to a word they have to say…
Holding a grudge can become a full-time occupation, with terrible hours and no discernible benefits. There is some satisfaction, then, in denying an antagonist the fight they came looking for, leaving them to argue with the furniture while you get on with your life. The Mission gives that small act of self-preservation a suitably expansive accompaniment on Kindness Is A Weapon, a song built to turn a private resolve into something a whole room can sing.
The British gothic rock veterans have shared the single and its accompanying lyric video alongside news of Songs For Kith And Kin, their first new studio album since 2016’s Another Fall From Grace. The 15-track collection arrives April 2, 2027, via Cooking Vinyl, with a double-vinyl edition among the available formats.
The guitars ring with that trademark Mission chime, bright, interlocking figures recalling the style Wayne Hussey honed on an Aria 12-string electric during his days in The Sisters of Mercy. His interplay with Simon Hinkler gives Kindness Is A Weapon the sweep and scale of classic Mission, while the chorus hits like a howitzer barrage, driving the song’s titular message home in a refrain made for thousands of Mission fans to sing along.
Lyrically, the opening verse casts insults, lies, and broken promises as tests of character. Hussey counsels turning away from provocation and measuring friends by what they do, while the biblical call to turn the other cheek offers a way to break the cycle of harm.
The second verse skewers generosity performed for applause: good deeds staged for admiration, compassion worn like a badge of honor. “Holy Joe” and Cain set self-righteousness against guilt, revealing the distance between seeming virtuous and acting with decency. What matters is motive: kindness should serve someone, whether anyone sees it or not.
The chorus’s repeated invitation to sing becomes a shared pledge. In the bridge, Hussey lays out his answer to aggression: meet it with kindness, denying hostility the reaction it craves. The title redirects the language of combat toward an ethic of restraint, and the immense chorus gives that argument its full force.
As Hussey explains: “You can use kindness as a weapon for good, and you have to let things go at some point.”
Kindness Is A Weapon had already appeared in the band’s live sets before the hiatus around Hussey’s open-heart surgery, though he kept revising its lyrics until the final recording in June 2026. His operation and recovery also affected the wider album, which was originally slated for release in 2025. With that experience behind the record, its concern with how people treat one another carries particular weight.
Watch the lyric video for Kindness Is A Weapon below:
The announcement of Kindness Is A Weapon andSongs For Kith And Kin arrives forty years after God’s Own Medicine, the debut that followed Hussey and bassist Craig Adams’ departure from The Sisters of Mercy. Joined by guitarist Simon Hinkler and original drummer Mick Brown, they established a band whose appetite for big melodies and bigger gatherings gave gothic rock some of its most enduring communal moments. That history lends a song about solidarity a rather natural home.
Hussey, Hinkler, and Adams are joined on the new album by drummer Alex Baum, who came aboard in 2022 and co-wrote Roll With The Punches. Hussey produced the record, with César Lamschtein recording at Faro House Studios in José Ignacio, Uruguay, and additional orchestral sessions taking place in Montevideo. Keyboards, sitar, and tamboura broaden the arrangements around the partnership between Hussey and Hinkler’s guitars.
Hussey describes the album’s progression as a movement from concerns about his health and the wider world toward family, friendship, and the places people call home. Its title makes that destination explicit: these are songs addressed to the people who help make a life bearable, arriving after a period when such connections were especially valuable.
Kindness Is A Weapon is available to stream now. Songs For Kith And Kin is available to preorder through The Mission’s official store on CD, cassette, and double vinyl.
Songs For Kith And Kin tracklist:
- Kith & Kin
- Operation Chaos
- Arrhythmia
- Never Say Never Say Die
- Kindness Is A Weapon
- Circle The Wagons
- Heavy (Is The Crown)
- Roll With The Punches
- Unbroken (asongoflove)
- Diving For Pearls
- Cleansing The Wound
- A Soft Place To Fall
- My Very Favourite Life
- Sanctuary
- The Last Leaf On The Tree
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