my dying bride (s & d)

i'll put aside my disposable income for the week and pick up a copy.

refreshing to see ackercocke mentioned as well. one of the best live shows i've seen, and the last record was mega

and yeah, i loved the last mdb, so of course i'm necessarily expecting this one to be at least very good

'she came, she saw, she took anything she liked'

very bleak stuff. but that riff is storming.

hard to pick a darkest mdb record, but '34.788...% complete' doesn't offer much light.

oh my god, the foghorn in 'the cry of mankind'!

That lone mantra-like guitar line in that song is the best they ever did and maybe even the best thing in that whole genre. Shame about the godawful vocals on that album, that rediculous overwrought yodeling ruins the whole thing.

It's weird that the vocalist is much better at growling than singing but my favorite album is probably "The Angel and the Dark River". Nothing they released after "Like Gods of the Sun" is as good as the old stuff.

The "Trinity" EP collection is also very good; "Symphonaire Infernus..." and "I Am the Bloody Earth" are two of their best songs.

And I still haven't heard the "%" album, will give it a try one of these days.

I still don't know where to start

i find the understated whiney vocals work really effectively on 'the cry of mankind', specifically. but, i agree that the vocals aren't necessarily up to scratch throughout the record. pity he wasn't growling on that disc, since his contrasting vocal style are one of the more intriguing elements of the band.

no-nonsense, apart from tlts, my fave mdb stuff is actually post-lgots

edward, i suggest you start with 'the dreadful hours' if that was a comment pertaining to the best place to start with mdb's catalogue.

that was a comment pertaining to the best place to start with mdb's catalogue. I thank you, kind sir.

no worries. :)

you also couldn't go wrong with 'the light at the end of the world' which is perhaps their most definitive work. but 'the dreadful hours' is extremely rich and varied - you'll definitely enjoy that one.

greatest single mdb track?

cry of mankind? turn loose the swans? return to the beautiful? what does everyone think.

along with tiamat's 'wildhoney', 'the angel and dark river' has been keeping me very busy these last couple of days

search--Turn Loose the Swan, As the Flower Withers

Angel and the Dark River is meh.

Trinity I'm not sure what I think...haven't heard the rest

The only one I've ever owned is Dreadful Hours (which I liked but apparently sold). All this is about to change though as I am determined to make gothic doom part of my vocabulary once and for all.

I own "Lost Paradise" and "Pentecost III" (by genre-mates Paradise Lost and Anathema respectively) but I think I'm finally ready to hear the slick stuff too... maybe.

Then start with Turn Loose...you'll really like it. some clean vocals, some growls....really good songwriting/ doom riffage.

tlts is also very dark. hope you don't mind ;)

Haha. Dark I can handle. All those folks on the Swans vs Sonic Youth thread are talking about how the Swans are "too ugly" "too brutal" "too heavy" "too serious".

I mean, how can you use those descriptions as pejorative? What a bunch of fucking sissies.

i tend to agree with you there. while a band like swans certainly isn't music for all moods or purposes, it's perfect for a certain time and place and you wouldn't want to change anything about them - certainly not the ugliness, brutality etc.

'two winters only' is like an epic power ballad. really pretty though. i'd overlooked this song for years/

but, this band just works the best when they're really fucking dark. 'turn loose the swans' and 'songs of darkness...' are probably the two darkest.

They've done an awful Portishead cover:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bVO5DduK98

They actually get one of the chords wrong.

they did that one quite a while ago.

misguided and pointless to be sure.

Turn Loose the Swans is fantastic. I just found it the other day, and it's hitting the spot. As I dig in more I'm realizing that I don't like stoner-y doom nearly as much as funeral-y or goth-y doom. I also just found As the Flower Withers which I'm eager to check out. Charlie Howard, I applaud your years of repping hard for them here; more people should check them out. Side question: who are the bands that are closest to them sound/mood-wise?

yeah, i used to rep crazy hard for these guys, didn't i? :) TLTS is the one that holds up for me to this day; unremittingly miserable with a truly original and organic sound from start to finish. i'd probably point to the title track as the best thing on there these days. in terms of similar bands in terms of sound and mood, most people would point to early Anathema and Paradise Lost. i guess a lot of funeral doom like Shape of Despair and Skepticism would also fit the bill. if it's the jarring violins you want more of, i'd even suggest the first At the Gates album, which is kind of all over the place, but very atmospheric at the same time. also, i take it you've heard dISEMBOLMOWELMENT's Transcendence into the Peripheral, Clarke?

Thanks for the recommendations! The only other stuff in this vein I've heard is Stormcrowfleet by Skepticism, which I absolutely love. I'm also really into Into Darkness by Winter, though that's further from this world, it feels like at least. I've got Stream From the Heavens by Thergothon on order right now, and I'm eager to check that out. I looked for that dISEMBOWELMENT record online kind of half-assedly recently and it seems pretty OOP/expensive, but I'll track it down. I'm loving the cold elegance of this stuff, this very deliberate sort of austerity that, unlike the more stoner-y doom, feels totally separate from rock.

that Thergothon album is a great example of early Finnish funeral doom -- you should love that one. and yeah, Winter's In Darkness is a stone cold classic. i'm pretty sure i discovered it on ILM; such a raw and uncompromising sound. i agree with you about the austerity of a band like MDB. i actually think a lot of people have difficulty trying to pigeonhole them, because slot into a middleground between more extreme death doom leanings and traditional doom along the lines of, say, Candlemass. and then the funeral doom genre is different again. i think as far as slow doom-y atmospheres go, my very favourite release could well be Dance of December Souls. that wasn't always the case.

Oh I love the fact clarke is getting into funeral doom. come to daddy...

Listening to them for the first time now, on Turn Loose The Swans. Liking it but sometimes the vocals borrow too much from Michael Gira (who I recall particularly dislikes people imitating his voice, can't remember who in particular he taken issue with).

Really digging this. If it weren't for the occasional Gira impressions and death growls that I don't feel are always that well integrated, I'd embrace this wholeheartedly.
I hear that they mostly drop the death growls later albums on or use them quite sparingly.

Doesn't seem like there's much of a solid consensus among fans of what is their best albums and songs. A lot of people think the title track is among their best but it's not really grabbing me like the rest of the album.

I'll probably get more of their albums soon. New album out later this month.

Somehow I always got the impression that goth metal and doom metal wouldn't have the high quality gothic imagery that a lot of black metal does. So I've pretty much ignored them a long time.
Always wondered how goth metal would even work and I think that question bugging me has made me want to check it out as much as any other reason.

Having read a bit more into goth metal, it doesn't really seem like much more than some trends within other metal genres. But I guess you could almost say that about goth music in general just being darker versions of punk, post-punk, hard rock, neoclassical, ambient, dreampop, cabaret and whatever else.

i looooved these guys live when i saw them at mdf, sort of a perfect headliner in that i was too tired to really endure anything too relentless so i could just settle into their gloomy thing. still have never heard a record but maybe i'll fix that tonight

Bought today: Angel And The Dark River, The Dreadful Hours and A Map Of All Our Failures (along with Paradise Lost - Draconian Times, Entombed - Left Hand Path, Cathedral - Forest Of Equilibrium. My first albums by each band. I nearly also bought more Paradise Lost, Candlemass and Anathema but wasn't sure which ones to get. Need to research a bit more.)
Hope to listen to all this relatively soon.

2nd and 3rd tracks of Turn Loose The Swans are so damn good.

Another reason for delaying getting into this band is the name. Got them confused with other bands I hadn't heard like My Chemical Romance and Bullett For My Valentine. Fortunately I was already familiar with My Bloody Valentine. Three are metal bands and My Chemical Romance is the only band name without a violent/deathy word.

I think today this album has the I Am The Bloody Earth EP tracks tacked on right? I imagine that'd make the album a bit overlong.

it's all about the title track of Turn Loose The Swans for me.

new one is dope. at times it sounds like 80s pop if it was nihilistic and sung by Gargamel

Cool. I'm hoping to hear a metal band fronted by a guy who sounds like Cobra Commander (or a lot of the other villains Chris Latta voiced) someday.

Feel a bit mixed about Angel And The Dark River. "From Darkest Skies" is terrific but none of the other tracks won me over in their entirety. "Two Winters Only" would have been perfect without the loud bits, the rest of the song is so lovely.
The bonus track "The Sexuality Of Bereavement" is really strange and impressive. It's like this dizzy swaying funeral march with a swirling darkness about it.

"Songless Bird" and "Your River" really are extraordinary.

Still in awe of those two.

of interest: https://www.decibelmagazine.com/2017/11/21/track-premiere-godthrymm-grand-reclamation/#.WhRco7yjhpg.facebook

back when I used to find MDB just too corny. my ability to take stuff on its own terms has gotten a lot better over the last ten years or so though and I am gonna listen to their entire discography this week because their music is completely doing the trick for me right now. listened to Songs of Darkness, Words of Light twice last night. Fuckin great stuff

Listening to The Dreadful Hours these days. I cant think of another band who switch on and off what I love about them so frequently. Really beautiful parts and then parts that don't do anything for me.

Really enjoying this now, the last song is particularly good.

"I can see from your smile that you're not here for the sunset"

"She came, she saw, she took anything she liked
My eyes burned with her horror
They fell, they screamed, they wept but they died
From hands of the abhorrer"

Great part from "Black Heart Romance", one of the best on the album.

There's a part in the last track not in the lyrics book, I think he says "to you that lies dying, right beside the river"....? His voice sounds really awesome there.

Started A Map Of All Our Failures recently and was cheered by the thought that I probably only have 3 to 5 MDB albums to get, but I checked and it's more like 13 albums! Annoyingly the Meisterwerk compilations have album tracks on them.

Not that thrilled by this album but "Within The Presence Of Absence" and "Like A Perpetual Funeral" are great.

MDB never really made a bad album but I can imagine it’s diminishing returns once you get away from the 4-5 best ones. Might be more interesting to check out some of their contemporaries who made records (nearly) as good as peak MDB:
Saturnus - Paradise Belongs To You
October Tide - Rain Without End
Paramaecium - Exhumed Of The Earth
Celestial Season - Forever Scarlet Passion
Decomposed - Hope Finally Died
Ceremonium - Into The Autumn Shade
Enchantment - Dance The Marble Naked (dodgy vocals keep this one down tho)

(assuming you’ve already heard the first three Anathema records and Paradise Lost - Gothic)

Thanks. I have heard Gothic but I haven't started on Anathema yet. Havent heard of those other guys.

Of the 4 I've heard so far (Turn Loose, Angel, Dreadful Hours and A Map) my favorite is definitely The Dreadful Hours.

It’s interesting to read your experience with them, I was a huge fan of them from the debut onwards and most of their contemporaries when this gothic/doom/death thing absolutely exploded, easily a hundred bands got signed around 91-94 with the same formula, but the bonanza didn’t last that long (Angel And The Dark River was probably the last record that really felt relevant at the time, the metal hype machine had by then moved on to black metal and Gothenburg-style melodeath).

But MDB returned after a short stylistic detour and steadily kept making excellent records way after everyone else had sunk into oblivion (bands like Sadness, Orphanage, Paramaecium, Decomposed, Ceremonium etc) or changed style completely (Celestial Season, The Gathering, Paradise Lost, Nightfall, Katatonia, Anathema).

I really liked Feel the Misery despite the ridiculously on the nose title

A bit let down by Light At The End Of The World. A few good songs, mostly at the end. Seems to have been remastered a few years after its first release.