My Dying Bride

A Map of all Our Failures

For genre freaks My Dying Bride fall under the banner of Gothic Doom Metal and their last album ‘For Lies I Sire’ propelled them into the forefront of the British doom metal movement and they have been busy as a live band since – ‘A Map Of All Our Failures’ is the first to feature keyboards player Shaun MacGowan.

For metal music freaks, this represents the darkest and most emotional music that the scene has presented in years.
They don’t go for the massive blast of stablemates Cradle of Filth, this is far more Edgar Allen Poe and Hammer Horror than nuclear blast and their songs are filled with Gothic imagery and emotive statements of broken and destroyed love, priestly wiles and everlasting pain.

Tracks such as ‘Kneel Till Doomsday’ or ‘A Tapestry Scorned’ bristle with restrained angst, funereal drumbeats and the guitars of Andrew Craighan and Hamish Glencross set up a drone that Aaron Stainthorpe’s vocals stand out from in relief while the bottom line is carried down, ever down by Lena Abe on bass.
This is music for those who relish the darkness and the songs are brilliantly performed vignettes of impassioned and funereal despair ;oaded woth melody and the occasional blast of raw metal.

They are a unique band and as such cannot be measured against the norm – only against their own past, and on that basis this is a superb piece of work.