A certain someone began his review of My Dying Bride’s last album, The Ghost of Orion, by stating that the band has never released a bad album. While that may be very true, there’s no doubt that they’ve had a few notable peaks. The most famous and arguably most glorious run began with the band’s origins and culminated in the dual classics Turn Loose the Swans and The Angel and the Dark River, while another is likely represented by The Dreadful Hours and Songs of Darkness, Words of Light. My Dying Bride’s floor is that of a very good band, so the other albums are at worst quite nice (plus, some of those might be your favorites), but their locked-in moments are truly magical on the ears.
Most notably, A Mortal Binding takes the stripped-down approach of The Ghost of Orion to yet another level and somehow manages to be extra unrushed, even for My Dying Bride. It’s a frequently sparse record, leaving out some of Andrew Craighan’s more proggy riff tendencies and any heightened symphonic flourishes in favor of emphasizing the emotional foundations of the band’s sound. Such an approach is greatly aided by the studio work of Mark Mynett (also the producer of The Ghost of Orion), who deserves extra kudos for how much space, beauty, and beefy heft he helped create here. This record sounds absolutely immense, while all the space means each performance can really breathe. But that space also demands more of the band; there are few studio tricks or busy, dense passages to hide within, meaning a delicate touch and subtle depth are required of everyone involved.
The subtlety is essential. Despite My Dying Bride’s status as lords of rather vampiric, melodramatic doom, they often exhibit the kind of subtlety and nuance that eludes many of their imitators. It’s one of their least replicable traits, especially in the tiniest of inflections in Aaron Stainthorpe’s voice or the seemingly-simple-but-impossible-to-replicate qualities of Craighan’s buttery riffs. A Mortal Binding utilizes these touches like few other albums in the band’s very long career.
The most obvious beneficiary of this focus on space and nuance is of course Stainthorpe. On The Ghost of Orion, his singing was frequently multi-tracked, but here he’s single-tracked almost exclusively (with a few key exceptions), a treatment that greatly fits the album’s overall vibe and raw, naked emotions. From his beautiful and notably less weepy singing in “Thornwyck Hymn” and tiniest of variations in “A Starving Heart” to the way he can keep a sense of haunting intimidation in his singing voice in “Unthroned Creed,” he’s in top form with his clean vocals. As for his growls… right from the gate he brings some of the most haggard and strained growls of his career in opener “Her Dominion.” He really sounds like he’s in pain here, and it’s all the more pronounced when much of the instrumentation is stripped out from beneath him.
Another element of My Dying Bride’s sound that seems to benefit more from this space is Shaun MacGowan’s violin. Throughout the record, the violin is used less for texture and more often as a crucial voice in the whole—closer to how Martin Powell’s contributions were used during the band’s early era than on most albums since he left. During the 11-minute “The Apocalyptist,” for example, MacGowan’s violin beautifully introduces the song alongside some very soft guitars, but also provides the key in some sudden shifts and pairs brilliantly with Stainthorpe’s growls. Craighan of course fills the song with a combination of towering doom riffs and simple, aching harmonies with relative newcomer Neil Blanchett ‒ not to mention some natural harmonics that ring out like demonic church bells ‒ but the violin feels almost on equal footing with the other, more traditionally metal string instruments, despite not appearing nearly as often. (The song also features one hell of a great My Dying Bride lyric in “I can’t even lend you my wings.”)
This being My Dying Bride, there’s also a delicate understanding of how to weave the tiniest of unforgettable moments into songs with wide contrasts between enchantment and horror. The opener of “The 2nd of Three Bells” ‒ with its piano, soft guitars, and quiet singing ‒ is achingly beautiful, and despite shifting away from those melodies as soon as the metal comes in, stays with the listener across the song’s many shifts (bonus beauty: the tiniest of keyboard touches paired with Stainthorpe’s singing later on in the track). It calls back to very old school My Dying Bride, as does incredible closer “Crushed Embers,” which more than anything else here communicates the kind of inexorable sadness that you weren’t sure you needed in your life until you heard Turn Loose the Swans for the first time.
Of course, having a master of the melodic narrative like Craighan helps, who along with the band’s immortally gifted gentleman on the mic and the rest of this supremely talented ensemble, are still the kings of weaving gloriously morose music. On A Mortal Binding, they craft their cozily bleak emotions using what seem like the simplest of tools, extend those feelings until it’s almost unbearable, and provide only the types of resolutions that leave you with that good kind of heartache. Few other acts understand both the foundations and deepest nuances of this particular corner of music so well.
These are but a few of the reasons why My Dying Bride remains one of the truly timeless doom bands, and why A Mortal Binding really feels like it continues a rather spectacular recent run (being almost 55 minutes of very slow music but feeling efficient is also a very good sign). It’s both a stylistic progression for this particular era and also a bit of a calculated regression to a more distilled form of aural sadness and beauty. Regardless of the precise My Dying Bride formula that you hold dearest, you’ll almost surely be pleased with all the spectacularly comforting sadness contained herein.
Come on, baby, don’t fear the weeper.
