My Dying Bride - A Map of All Our Failures
As far as a map of My Dying Bride’s failures is concerned, it seems everyone wants to point the finger at 2011 (the mind-numbing Evinta experiment and the rather worthless Barghest O’ Whitby EP), but if we’re being completely honest with ourselves, the last record from this legendary UK Doom outfit to genuinely floor their legions was most likely 2001’s The Dreadful Hours. I’m not saying the subsequent follow-ups were bad albums, but do you remember them? Can you even remember one song? I can’t. I only remember not disliking them. My point is, they haven’t written a “Your River,” or a “Crown of Sympathy,” a “Cry of Mankind,” or even a “For You” in a long time. Songs that made you want to pick up a guitar and not put it down until you learned them. Sadly, you won’t be finding any such gems on album #11. In fact, this is downright boring, sub-mediocre drivel by My Dying Bride standards. There are a few kingly riffs scattered about (“The Poorest Waltz,” “A Tapestry Scorned,” the title track, “Within the Presence of Absence”), but overall it sounds as if Andrew Craighan is merely going through the (slow) motions. For every one good riff there are ten duds, some of which are so lacking in melancholic weight they almost feel improvised. Speaking of improv, when the band reach into their old bag of classic tricks —short bursts of Death Metal fury circa ‘91-‘92 (see “Kneel Till Doomsday” and “Hail Odysseus”) and the trademark violin— it often doesn’t tie into the songs very well. It’s like they’ve been randomly pasted on after the initial take. Somehow the band has forgotten how true misery sounds, and I’m afraid “adequately gloomy” just isn’t cutting it. Perhaps a much larger deficiency is the continued decline of Aaron Stainthorpe’s singing voice. The man can no longer hold a note without the crutch of some varying level of vibrato. This makes for a wobbly, over-theatrical performance that is incredibly grating throughout. He sounds like a drunken ghost haunting a cheap Karaoke dive. Quite frankly it feels as though he’d rather be reading poetry to us… and on many a track he does read poetry to us. Here and there he reaches fragments of glories past, but I simply do not put on albums from the masters with the intent to wait around for a decent melody or a vocal line that doesn’t sound like Jeremy Irons talking about his cereal. Clearly the band has gone creatively bald, and this desperate comb-over isn’t fooling anyone. Go listen to Turn Loose the Swans, then listen to this, then tell me this is good. Gents (and lady), you will always be legends no matter what, but please don’t wait too long to throw in that bloody towel. That’s how Apollo died.
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