A Mortal Binding

After two decades of injecting various degrees of death metal and gothic metal into their sound, My Dying Bride has pretty much been a doom metal band on their last couple of albums. Sure, the atmosphere on ‘A Mortal Binding’ can still be somewhat gothic in nature – though nowhere near as unrelentingly bleak as its predecessor ‘The Ghost of Orion’ got at times – but the slow, mournful guitar riffs have been the focal point of My Dying Bride’s recent albums. Which is a good thing, because that is clearly their biggest strength and does not deserve to be buried under layers of atmospherics.

Overall, ‘A Mortal Binding’ sounds a bit more straightforward than ‘The Ghost of Orion’. Those who were thrown off by the avant-garde touches of the latter will certainly have an easier time getting into this one. Personally, I thought ‘The Ghost of Orion’ was one of My Dying Bride’s best albums to date – possibly the best – and ‘A Mortal Binding’ does not quite live up to it, but some of the better elements fortunately have stayed. Guitarists Andrew Craighan and Neil Blanchett being front and center both compositionally and sonically is one, the fact that Aaron Stainthorpe sings better than he ever has is another.

Still, ‘A Mortal Binding’ and I originally got off on the wrong foot. There is one simple reason for that: I really, really don’t like opening track ‘Her Dominion’. It is the worst track of the album by a significant margin and therefore, an odd choice to open the album with. The riffs, while decent enough on their own, don’t seem to connect up all that well and Stainthorpe’s growls in the minimalistic verses sound forced and tired. That last thing is surprising, because his growls sounds commanding and borderline scary in the excellent doom monster ‘The Apocalyptist’ later on.

Fortunately, the album gets better after its somewhat awkward opening minutes. ‘The 2nd of Three Bells’ , ‘A Starving Heart’ and closing track ‘Crushed Embers’ are excellent examples of the mournful doom metal My Dying Bride is known for, with the extremely slow riffs and dramatic guitar harmonies that were the band’s trademark early on. In fact, a few of these songs could have been on ‘Turn Loose the Swans’ if Mark Mynett’s mixing job did not make them so obviously contemporary. An additional benefit of that is that listeners can actually hear how complemenetary Lena Abé’s excellent bass playing is. The denser ‘Unthroned Creed’ brings ‘A Line of Deathless Kings’ to mind.

The worst thing I could say about ‘A Mortal Binding’ is that it is another My Dying Bride album. However, the niche they have carved for themselves in recent years is – in my opinion, at least – the best representation of what My Dying Bride can be. The guitars don’t need elaborate keyboard arrangements to emphasize the dark, romantic qualities of the music – again, Shaun MacGowan provides texture first and foremost. ‘A Mortal Binding’ doesn’t quite blow me away like ‘The Ghost of Orion’ did, but its best moments are some of the greatest doom metal around these days.

Recommended tracks: ‘The Apocalyptist’, ‘Crushed Embers’, ‘The 2nd of Three Bells’

Originally written for my Kevy Metal weblog