my dying bride (s & d)

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.

y'know violins in metal definitely became more en vogue after MDB arrived, but I don't feel like any bands really ever deployed them as well as them. it compliments the music so nicely, and they don't just deploy it during quiet passages, but it makes the heavier passages even heavy.

anyway, listening to the new album right now, will report back.

so this is excellent so far, about the only sin you could really accuse My Dying Bride of is settling into a formula, but in reality, that's kinda silly because the band had been like about four different things on the first four albums, then they jettisoned the violin for years, and in their late career they kinda decided they'd live in the space between Turn Loose the Swans and Angel and the Dark River more or less permanently and I'm very cool with that.

Aaron's cleans have come a long way since the first time he employed them.

I like that Stainthorpe still occasionally does his death-vox, and that they're so organic sounding, like you can hear his phlegm really mashing around in his throat. none of the hyper-produced death vox that have been through 73 filters before they ever hit your ears.

also Aaron's smarter than most metal frontmen so ...yeah.

also I'm listening to this after having taken a Valium which only sees appropo

I'm sad they're no longer doing sequels to Sear Me anymore

lol their violin player's name is SHAUN McGowan