Ah, the joy of doom. Show a punk band a 21-minute record, they’ll call it a double album; show a doom band, and they’ll claim it for an EP. At any event, here we have masters of doom My Dying Bride making a surprise return, a scant few months after the release of their latest album, with a three-track, twenty-one-minute EP entitled Macabre Cabaret. With typically expansive artwork (best appreciated on the vinyl edition), and thee-new songs on offer, this EP is a no-brainer for MDB fans, and pretty much essential listening for anyone with even a passing interest in doom.
Beautifully and crisply produced, the EP’s title track is worth the price of admission alone. With Aaron Stainthorpe deftly switching between the mournful, elegant tones of A Line Of Deathless Kings and the scabrous rasp of the band’s formative years, the familiar sense of decayed grandeur that My Dying Bride evoke is in full evidence here. Despite its length (the piece clocks in at ten minutes), Macabre Cabaret is a free-flowing piece that captures and holds the attention throughout, even nodding towards the underrated 34.788% complete with a heavily processed mid-section that seems to flow dreamily past, until a monstrous riff once more renders it asunder. The piece fades down on some wonderfully gothic organ, and the listener is left awestruck at the richness of My Dying Bride’s vision.
No less potent is the slow-burning follow up, A Secret Kiss, which opens with a solitary guitar feeding back into a dark abyss, before the full band emerge with a folk-infused piece that is given greater weight by the gorgeous harmonies that lie at its heart. Heavy and melodramatic, there’s a sense that The Ghost Of Orion reawakened the dormant beast, and this EP is the pay off – a summation of all that is great about My Dying Bride delivered with flawless execution. The final track, A Purse Of Gold And Stars is a very different beast, almost filmic in scope thanks to its reliance on gentle, synth-led ambience and spoken-word narration. Few bands can draw together such threads with such a potent emotional impact, and the results are heart breaking.
My Dying Bride are one of those bands upon whom you can always rely. Although, across their career, they have tested the boundaries of the doom genre, they have proved remarkably consistent in their delivery, their passion for their form undimmed over the years. Even so, there are undoubtedly moments in the My Dying Bride catalogue that rise above even those lofty standards the band have set for themselves, and Macabre Cabaret is one such entry. With only three songs on offer, the scope is remarkable, the production exquisite and the delivery flawless. An essential addition to an exemplary catalogue. 10/10
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