Songs of Darkness, Words of Light

After the progressive flamboyance of ‘The Dreadful Hours’, it was something of a pleasant surprise to hear the stripped back darkened tones of ‘Songs of Darkness, Words of Light’ when it was birthed to the world in 2004. Once again recorded at Academy Studios by Mags, there is yet again a new tone to the music and a different approach, whilst still nestled under the My Dying Bride template. A less cluttered musical landscape characterises this release, with plenty of room for the instruments to breathe, and the sum result is an emotional journey and a glorious success.

The beginning of the album is something of a red herring, as ‘The Wreckage of my Flesh’ launches with a monstrous doom riff, with Aaron Stainthorpe’s tortured monosyllabic growls and screams cutting through at various moments. It’s a powerful and exhilarating way to begin an album and it's really quite original. A red herring though, because the majority of the track after that leans back into emotive melodic darkness, and it’s this coolly laid back approach that permeates the set of songs presented here. It's as if the band themselves felt that they’d gone perhaps a little too far, at certain times, into upbeat headbanging territory with ‘The Dreadful Hours’, and so – whether consciously or unconsciously – stripped things back to their component parts a little more. ‘The Wreckage of my Flesh’ is one of the band’s greatest tracks in my view and a brilliant anthem to open the show.

There is a pronounced gothic beauty and darkness here, and this speaks very much to what I love most about the Dying Brides. ‘The Scarlet Garden’ is a haunted track with some shadowy moments in the first half before knocking things up a notch halfway through with a growled section, although much like in ‘The Light at the End of the World’, the up-tempo movement sits in the pocket nicely and grooves along without losing the dark vibe. The second half of the track introduces some heartbreaking atmospheric keyboards that turn a good song into a great one.

And the great moments keep coming. ‘Catherine Blake’ is a gorgeous song, with some of My Dying Bride’s best ethereal twin guitar harmonies, while the slow and sultry ‘My Wine in Silence’ does what I wish ‘A Cruel Taste of Winter’ would have done on the previous album, and that’s taking the listener on a forlorn and sombre journey uninterrupted by any headbanging chug. ‘My Wine in Silence’ is a beautiful song with guitar sounds that have reduced the distortion to provide a more stripped back and slightly frail sound. It works so well. Both ‘The Prize of Beauty’ and ‘The Blue Lotus’ provide a bit more of a kick in their initial stages, with the former including some haunting mellow bleakness and the latter a swinging waltz section that offers a nice change of pace. The aforementioned ‘The Prize of Beauty’ finishes with a beautiful piano and vocal harmony section that is composition at its finest and a show of confidence from the band. The album concludes with the brilliant 'A Doomed Lover', a solid and slow gothic slab that contains an epic ending made up of three and a half minutes of heartrending repetition, where melody is layered upon melody. When My Dying Bride lock in to a repetitive riff, such as at the end of 'Base Level Erotica' or the end of 'From Darkest Skies', the effects are without fail astonishing and awesome. The listener finishes the journey emotionally spent and satisfied.

This would be the final album with Shaun Taylor-Steels hitting the skins, and quite frankly it was disappointing to see him go as he had done an incredible job on the three albums he has appeared on. While Rick Miah will always be the essential MDB drummer, Shaun really did contribute a great style and vibe that I think the band would struggle to match on subsequent albums. The mysterious Sarah Stanton appears suddenly out of the mist on keyboards, and her style carries on that of Jonny Maudling’s background synth approach, although Stanton does contribute some timely piano elements which add some texture and romance to the album. She would also appear on the fabulous 'A Line of Deathless Kings' and then would disappear back, enigmatically, into the mist, becoming another name scribed into the MDB line-up book of the dead - a growing tome around this era and beyond for the band.

I think ultimately what makes this album so successful is that the songs are able to breathe and are not overly cluttered with excess sturm und drang. In fact, it’s one of the band’s most reserved and sultry albums, and yet there is a dark beauty running through everything because of this style. This is genuinely morose, solemn and mature, and I love it.

The artwork is a welcome return to some gothic darkness, although the angel figure on the cover suffers from some unfortunate limitations with the illustration program that was used; her oddly cut off head looks pretty strange, and the nipple ring may be a bit much. The digipak and booklet that I own are quite beautiful, with a darkened forest theme running throughout, and a haunting yet tastefully reserved band photo that merely shows their silhouettes. The whole package is great and fits the musical direction very nicely.

This is a beautifully bleak My Dying Bride album that doesn’t try to do too much, and because of this the dark gothicism and haunting melodies shine through with runaway success. This is highly recommended for doom fans who like their My Dying Bride albums slow, deep and not so hard.