Artist: My Dying Bride
Title: Feel The Misery
Genre: Doom Metal
Release Date: 18th September 2015
Label: Peaceville Records
Album Review
MY DYING BRIDE, one of the pioneering bands of Doom Metal, is celebrating their 25th year of making music with a bang of a new album, ‘Feel The Misery’ (and Calvin Robertshaw coming back, replacing Hamish Glencross). I’m weird; this sort of music always cheers me up so feeling its misery is all my pleasure and I can only hope it can be yours too.
Actually let me contradict that, I’m disappointed that I wasn’t disappointed by it. Is that a strange thing to say? Thing is, I’m running out of praise for this band. It’s a hard day for a critic when one can’t get critical (I know, I know, poor me). The only thing that I could say is more a technical whinge that the production seems to be quiet so that I have had to crank up the speaker to a level I’d usually not just annoy my neighbours but the whole town and then I could just about hear it well. Let’s bear in mind that I have a digital recording rather than a physical one so I’m more than likely clutching at straws here.
The album’s been quietly growing on me, gnawing at me, gripping me, haunting me, not least because I keep coming back to ‘I Almost Loved You’ with a nearly obsessive need. I will even make a confession here...
...I woke up the other day in the middle of the night thinking of that song (ground-breaking confession, I know, I know...)!
It somehow gives a nod to ‘Evinta’, getting out of Doom towards neo-classical; its mood is akin to laying in a grass, watching it slowly bend in the soft breeze, watching clouds go slowly by across the sky that is darkening on the horizon. That is to say it’s a very, very evocative song, atmospheric in such a serene way. It has this beautiful, reflective quality that is gripping. That being said, this song didn’t make the other songs overshadowed or negligible. There are also other nods to their past, take ‘To Shiver In Empty Halls’ as it leans towards the days of imbibing in the Death Metal, back to focusing on the corpse growl there and it ends with a spoken, actually whispered, word.
On a whole the album feels the most sincere out of their catalogue; there is a raw emotional quality to the lyrics, a yet bigger connection of Aaron to what he’s singing about. In some way they feel more stripped of the poetic flesh and getting more at the bone. Getting away from the lyrics, I’d say they have here songs that are classic MDB songs, yet with more confidence, and also songs that expand what they’re doing and had been doing so well for years.
I’ll end this on a not so poetic note: fucking ace, man, fucking ace! And raise a glass to 25 years of excellent misery, love it, love it and love it some more. Thank you MDB! May you be making music for many more years!!!
Tracklist
01. And My Father Left Forever
02. To Shiver In Empty Halls
03. A Cold New Curse
04. Feel The Misery
05. A Thorn Of Wisdom
06. I Celebrate Your Skin
07. I Almost Loved You
08. Within A Sleeping Forest
Line-up
Aaron Stainthorpe – lead vocals
Andrew Craighan – guitar
Calvin Robertshaw – guitar
Lena Abe – bass
Shaun MacGowan – violin, keyboards
Dan Mullins – drums
Websites
www.mydyingbride.net / https://www.facebook.com/pages/My-Dying-Bride-Official-uk/282179138510618
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 10
Sound: 9
Total: 9.5 / 10
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