Review: My Dying Bride – 'Feel The Misery'

MY DYING BRIDE
'Feel the Misery'
PEACEVILLE RECORDS

There's nothing quite like a good dose of musical misery, and nobody does it better than Yorkshire's gloomy doomsters My Dying Bride. For a quarter of a century their slow anguished litanies of sex and death infected fans around the world with a bleak melancholy that reflects the gothic and haunting isolation of the ragged landscapes of the county. Just as with their fellow harbingers of Gothic Doom Paradise Lost have done with their most recent outing, My Dying Bride have marked their quarter of a century and their twelfth album with a heavier sound that looks back to their early years for inspiration. Throw in the return of original guitarist Calvin Robertshaw and all the ingredients are there for one of the darkest and most majestic albums in the MDB canon to date.

'And My Father Left Forever' clatters into life with a classic My Dying Bride riff the band are immediately on top form as Aaron Stainthorpe's anguished vocals exhale tortured laments bolstered by atmospheric synthesizers and sorrowful violins setting the overall form of the album. The band are at their most monolithic here with eight long and densely layered tracks. 'To Shiver In Empty Halls' breaks out the demonic death vocals over the slow menacing guitars and steady bludgeoning drums interspersed with some delicate piano.

The likes of 'A Cold New Curse', 'Feel The Misery', 'I Celebrate Your Skin', and 'Within A Sleeping Forest' this formula of heavy riffs, stunning guitar work, and lofty atmosphere with the odd death vocal thrown in for good measure. While songs such as 'A Thorn Of Wisdom' and 'I Almost Loved You' turn the band's typical approach around a little emphasising gothic elements such as the prominent bass, violin, and keyboards, or

The album as a whole is not a grand departure from their recent work, but the emphasis on looking back to the band's earlier releases certainly has had an effect. It isn't just heavy in terms of guitars and drums, but atmospherically, lyrically and in a few places even experimentally it is heavier. It is executed and produced with the skill and experience that a band of My Dying Bride's stature should always be delivering.

Whether you are a long-time fan of the band or have only recently begun to scratch the surface of their discography, 'Feel The Misery' is an album that ticks all the boxes. Heavy, haunting and most of all deliciously gloomy, it is 25 years of My Dying Bride distilled into one intoxicating elixir.   

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