At the end of June 1984, The Sisters of Mercy went with producer Dave Allen into the Strawberry Recording Studios in Stockport, near Manchester, for five weeks to record their first studio album. Studio costs were £500 a day and £3,250 a week. Eldritch spent the whole five weeks inside the studio and, according to Dave Allen, used large amounts of amphetamine on a daily basis. In Stockport, backing tracks and vocals were to be recorded. Additional vocals, overdubs and the final mix were planned for August at Genetic Studios. The finished album was to be released in the third week of October 1984. The band immediately started to record, with Hussey and Marx often providing guide vocals with their own lyrics which later showed up on bootlegs. Both Hussey and Marx later used some of these lyrics for their own bands, The Mission and Ghost Dance. An early recording of "First and Last and Always", which, according to Gary Marx, was "previously called 'The Scottish One'", was "completed pretty early on". Marx sang an early draft of the later Ghost Dance lyric of "When I Call", which mentioned the name of a friend of the band's from Hamburg; Marianne.