My Dying Bride are one of the most instantly recognisable and unique bands in doom. Although they may have started out alongside Paradise Lost and Anathema, My Dying Bride always had a sense of scope that placed them apart. Where both Paradise Lost and Anathema focused on earthen death metal, My Dying Bride evoked crumbling kingdoms and vast, decayed halls, imbuing their epic tales with a sense of unyielding melancholy and Shakespearean lyricism. The band’s return, following an enforced hiatus due to family illness, sees the first new material in five years and follows on from 2015’s epic Feel The Misery. As a result of so lengthy an absence, and with new members in tow (Jeff Singer on drums and Neil Blanchett on guitar), there’s a sense that My Dying Bride felt they had something to prove with The Ghost Of Orion, and my goodness do they deliver, the entire band stepping up to provide a performance of monstrous power.
Opening with Your Broken Shore, the band immediately capture the attention with a stepping-stone riff that recalls the majesty of perennial favourite The Cry Of Mankind. Mark Mynett gives the band a gorgeous sheen that perfectly reflects the epic ambition of the piece and the result is one of the most potent openers to which the band have yet put their name. Veering between icy death metal and bleak neo-folk, Your Broken Shore is exactly the entrance My Dying Bride needed to make, and it sets an incredibly high bar for the album. The similarly lengthy To Outlive The Gods follows, the harmonised guitar intro played at a leisurely pace, allowing plenty of room for a mournful violin melody to emerge. However, it’s Aaron Stainthrope’s layered vocal that makes the track something special, giving it a dark fairy-tale feel, enhanced by the ethereal instrumental that emerges mid-song. These are stunning tales of woe that the band have crafted, lyrical and moving and yet with a dark metallic edge and the band have never sounded so darkly cinematic as they do here. Jeff’s taut percussion opens the haunted folk of Tired Of Tears, a mid-tempo track with a tough, metallic core and the violin prominent in driving the melody forward. Although it very much fees like a My Dying Bride song, there’s also a feeling that the band have evolved their style here, with Aaron’s vocal palette in particular having expanded considerably over the years. Next up The Solace, featuring a vocal from Linda Fay Hella, marks the end of the first half. It’s a sombre, sparse affair – featuring only densely interwoven guitar, with Linda’s lost vocals floating through the ether. Mesmerising and quite beautiful, it sits at the heart of the album, ably demonstrating My Dying Bride’s mastery of a dark dynamic that rends the heart in twain.
Opening the second half of the album, epic track The Long Black Land clocks in at ten minutes and uses every moment of that time to explore the darkest recesses of the band’s illustrious past. As such, it is one-part mournful epic, one-part blackened death metal in the vein of early Celtic Frost; Aaron’s scarified roar laid over haunting guitar lines and slow-paced, yet intricate percussive blasts. It all gives way to a lengthy, eerie mid-section that builds to an epic denouement before stopping abruptly, My Dying Bride clearly having lost none of their power to surprise. Somewhat shorter is the title track, a svelte three-and-a-half minutes in length, it shimmers as whispered vocals slip between the vapour trails left by heavily reverbed guitars. Sinister and cinematic, it’s the soundtrack to the best Dracula movie never made and it draws the listener in with its velveteen opulence before segueing into The Old Earth. Another monstrous epic, The Old Earth opens with some truly lovely guitar work before suddenly exploding into life, a gargantuan riff blotting out the daylight with its remarkable weight. It presages some of Aaron’s deathliest vocals in years, his blackened rasp adding even greater weight to proceedings. The Ghost Of Orion concludes with a short coda, Your Woven Shore, which brings the record to a gorgeous close, the deft use of a choir allowing this most eloquent of bands to leave the stage amidst an atmosphere of calm contemplation.
It has been some years since My Dying Bride unleashed their last opus, but the wait has more than proved worthwhile. With a new line up and a renewed sense of purpose, My Dying Bride have successfully carved out one of their greatest triumphs to date – one that stands shoulder to shoulder (and in some instances above) that which they have created before. Even after a week of listening, new elements creep through the mix to further demonstrate the album’s immense replayability. At times heavy, at times remarkably beautiful, The Ghost Of Orion is exactly the album that My Dying Bride needed to make, placing them once more upon the blackened throne of doom. 9.5
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